The industrial products industry was forced to shift gears quickly when the pandemic pushed buyers from making purchases in-person to predominantly online. The reality is that shopping has moved online in general, and industrial products are no exception to that. The industrial buyer's mindset is the driving force behind the change. According to Gartner's research, B2B buyers spend only 17 percent of their time meeting with suppliers when considering a purchase. In contrast, they spend 27 percent researching online to help make their buying decisions.
These results indicate what has been steadily happening for years. People want quick insights when researching suppliers and believe shopping online is the most efficient way to shop. Industrial brands need to undergo an e-commerce transformation to keep up with the evolving landscape of today's buyers. To position themselves as viable competitors, industrial brands need to be equipped with advanced solutions to reduce time-consuming manual processes and increase profit margins.
Comprehensive tech platforms leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and machine learning (ML) can help companies efficiently build their e-commerce brand on marketplaces, including Amazon Business. Industrial brands have an ample opportunity — and it’s one driven, in part, by shifts catalyzed during the pandemic.
How does the adoption of emerging technology solutions reach online industrial buyers?
People are sticking to e-commerce marketplaces, and companies like Amazon reap the rewards after reporting a 44 percent sales growth in the first quarter of 2021 and steady, substantial growth throughout 2020. It is becoming increasingly more critical for industrial brands to keep up with the changing landscape of e-commerce. One way to penetrate previously complex populations like small and midsized businesses is by incorporating e-commerce solutions that use advancing technological tools like AI to increase online sales and communication. AI technology can help streamline product content creation online by performing data mining, employing performance data, and improving online brand visibility. AI data also has the ability to provide real-time pricing intelligence to position companies for optimal profit.
ML, a branch of AI, can help companies uncover key insights within data mining strategies while predicting buyer behavior which helps brands forecast current trends in their marketplace. This enables more rapid profitability and avoids accounting errors and preventable bill backs.
Additionally, automation is a tool that streamlines manual tasks, leaving industrial brands with more time to meet their buyers’ needs and specialized preferences. Automation and data mining manage advertising spend by creating targeted online ads and technical reporting to achieve better ROI.
Further, industrial brands can utilize advanced tech platforms to master the marketplace by receiving ongoing insight into online performance data, enhancing product visibility, and optimizing content. They also can take advantage of tools that dramatically simplify accounting processes and remove tedious tasks with automated monthly audits and review of handling charges associated with delayed or errored chargebacks and incorrect shortage claims. In turn, this can save industrial brands millions of dollars, upping profits on sales
Incorporating a comprehensive platform into an e-commerce marketplace strategy is pivotal to industrial brands to succeed. While the initial outlook on adopting technologies may seem like a daunting endeavor, the reality is that it will drastically reduce costs, eliminate time spent on menial tasks, and increase profit margins. Most of all — the time is now for industrial brands to adapt to the changing habits of industrial buyers.
Thambrahalli
