B2B Personalized Product Recommendations: An Essential Guide to Boost Sales

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Product recommendations have the potential to help B2B companies provide a more targeted and personalized experience that helps increase engagement and revenue.

B2B e-commerce is here. According to Digital Commerce 360, online sales from B2B e-commerce sites, login portals, and marketplaces increased by 17.8% to approximately $1.63 trillion in 2021. Statistics indicate that the North American B2B e-commerce market will exceed $4.6 trillion by 2025. E-commerce itself is no longer a new channel that B2B companies are exploring.

However, McKinsey & Company reports that approximately 65% ​​of B2B companies in the industry will do business exclusively online. And for the first time, B2Bs are more likely to offer e-commerce to sell themselves. Why? Because e-commerce increases revenue. The same Mckinsey & Company study shows that approximately 18% of B2B revenue comes directly from e-commerce. Higher than phone, email, and video conferencing.

This is in line with data shared by Wonderman Thomson on the buyer side, which revealed that in 2021, approximately 49% of B2B purchases in the UK, US, and China were made online. However, if you want to be successful in B2B eCommerce, it’s no longer acceptable to have a basic website or a subpar customer experience.

In fact, 52% of B2B buyers report being disappointed with an online purchase. And even more damaging, a whopping 90% of B2B buyers will turn to a competitor if the supplier’s digital channel can’t keep up with their needs. To deliver the shopping experiences buyers expect, offering B2B product recommendations needs to become a part of their e-commerce strategy.

The benefits of implementing product recommendations for B2B brands

Product recommendations have the potential to help B2B companies provide a more targeted and personalized experience that helps increase engagement, increase your team’s efficiency, and increase revenue.

Increase engagement with continuous personalization

With extensive data about your users’ sessions, micro-factors like time of day or channel, and other successful purchase journeys, Product Recommendations help businesses deliver highly relevant, data-driven recommendations.

Product recommendations offer a great way to say to your users, “We understand you and can help you solve your problems.” It’s like a concierge service. You can anticipate your customers’ needs before they do. A personal profile is created for each visitor, allowing you to provide personalized recommendations at the individual user level.

Personalized experiences also have a positive impact on website KPIs such as time on page, engagement, conversions, and more.

Build team effectiveness

By letting AI and machine learning drive product recommendations, you’ll increase your team’s efficiency. You let the machine learning algorithm optimize for the best product without having to set up manual rules that are often difficult to implement and maintain. Instead, your team can focus on other duties while you let the AI ​​genius run the site.

In addition, the product recommendation panel provides your team with useful insights that can help you optimize your program and, in turn, your website. Quickly and efficiently recognize emerging trends and better comprehend how your products can assist certain customers.

Revenue management

By improving your cross-selling and up-selling strategy, you can bring more revenue to your organization. There are several ways product referrals can help increase revenue:

  • Increase awareness of your product range
  • Product margin evaluation
  • Add lines to the order
  • Increase your conversion rate
  • Increase revenue from abandoned carts

The different types of B2B product recommendations

IDC predicts that by 2026, companies will use artificial intelligence to deliver a more personalized travel experience and eliminate 40% of human touchpoints for marketing and sales.

Product recommendations can fill this space, especially if they are on your B2B website – on the homepage, search page, category pages, product pages, shopping cart, and confirmation pages. There are also four different types of referrals for B2B products.

The first is “behavior-based” – and focuses on the buyer’s previous buying patterns.

Examples:

  • Bought This, Bought That – Recommends items mostly bought by buyers who bought the item listed.
  • Viewed This, Bought This – Recommended items that are frequently purchased by buyers viewing the specified item.
  • Viewed This, Viewed That – Featured items frequently viewed by buyers viewing a specified item.
  • Recently Viewed – Displays the products the buyer last viewed.

The second category of product recommendations is “based on popularity”. It focuses on:

  • Conversions (views to cart) – Recommend products with the highest view-to-cart conversion rates. Simply put, what percentage of the product was added to their cart during all shopper sessions that viewed the product?
  • Conversion (view to purchasing) – Recommends products with the highest view-to-purchase conversion rate. What percentage of all buyer sessions that view the product purchase the product?
  • Most frequently added to cart – Recommends items most frequently added to cart in the last seven days.
  • Most Purchased – Recommends items that shoppers have purchased the most in the past seven days.
  • Most Viewed – Recommends the items most viewed by buyers in the last seven days.
  • Trending – Recommend items based on the product’s recent rise in popularity.

The third type of recommendation is “Item Based”. It focuses on previous product searches and looks for:

  • More than this – Recommend items based on similar content and attributes.
  • Visual Similarity – Recommend products that are similar to the product being viewed.

And last but not least, the fourth recommendation is “Based on the personal shopper”: Recommended for You – Recommend items based on each buyer’s current and past behavior.

How to use product recommendations for B2B sales

You may be wondering, “How do you make a product recommendation?”, and we’re here to answer that question. It starts with looking at how to engage b2b customers, and by looking at a few B2b product examples in e-commerce that you should consider implementing for your business, we’ll be able to do exactly that.

Here are some simple methods of product referrals to increase sales:

Machine learning

Product recommendations based on machine learning use this real-time multimedia data to identify patterns reflected in customer behavior and act on them – for example, using data from thousands of shoppers who have purchased your platform to target new visitors.

Referral to homepage

When a customer is new to your site, they start seeing recommendations based on the buying patterns and products of previous buyers on your site. When a customer revisits your website and logs in after purchase, they will find personalized suggested products on the home page tailored to their previous browsing habits.

Offers page

Include a Promotions page that automatically displays all products offered in your online store at a discounted price.

Category recommendations

Category page recommendations are created by algorithms that offer shoppers the most appropriate product categories based on their past browsing history or purchase history. Online sellers often don’t realize that optimizing their product category pages can improve their overall sales.

Recommendations on the product page

The most obvious way to post your product recommendation is on the product page. Designing the most effective way to display your products is an important part because it can manipulate your buyers into paying or leaving your online platform. As your customers delve deeper into your product pages, you’ll discover their true interests by collecting data on how they browse and search for products.

Shopping cart recommendation

The shopping cart in the online store is the last step to achieving a successful conversion, as it is where the customer’s payment and information about the shipping process take place. And so, some online merchants use a one-step checkout process to achieve a faster conversion rate. However, this creates a problem, as deviating from specific marketing strategies, such as recommending products in your shopping cart, can prevent you from maximizing higher sales opportunities.

Recommendation of search results on site

Site search results can be an excellent source for product recommendations. When a web visitor searches for a specific item, make sure your web search results page suggests the right items based on the search terms entered by the visitor. If you display related products and recommend similar products, your platform can have an additional 2.3% sales.

Order confirmation recommendation

Once customers have purchased products from your online store, you don’t want to stop there. The order confirmation section that shows the items they have purchased can still be a great place to recommend products that they may find interesting and relevant to increase the likelihood of their next purchase.

Personal email recommendations

Email marketing is easily one of the most effective methods of increasing sales. However, traditional email marketing has been upgraded to facilitate more personalization. Customers who want to receive relevant and customized messages regarding the desired product they are interested in are now trending for personalized email referrals. The more buyers receive relevant email content, the higher the email open rate, and website traffic, and the higher the likelihood of potential purchases.

Upsell, down-sell & cross-sell

Consider upselling, down-selling, and cross-selling as effective suggestions to help your B2B customers make the right purchase on your e-commerce platform. Upselling is the process of pushing a customer to buy a more expensive item as a product upgrade or addition to the first product they added to their cart. Down selling is an effective way to develop brand loyalty among new customers and increase the likelihood that customers will buy. Cross-selling is the process of suggesting products related to the item the customer has decided to buy.

Product recommendations are the next step in B2B e-commerce

If you are already part of the e-commerce world, you’ll know that finding a way to connect with your customers for a personalized experience is important. What better way to do so than with personalized recommendations? It’ll show them that you’re paying attention and that you have the product they need.


Ghia Marnewick is a creative content writer working with Aumcore Digital Marketing Agency New York. An agency that specializes in eCommerce, PPC and Search Engine Optimization Services. She is passionate about finding new ways of sharing information with the world