Feb 08, 2021
These days, B2B buyers and B2C shoppers are harder to please than ever. They, of course, want to find a product that suits their needs — but the...
These days, B2B buyers and B2C shoppers are harder to please than ever. They, of course, want to find a product that suits their needs — but they also want to find a brand they can fall in love with.
They want to find a company that understands who they are and what they care about, one that will meet them where they are and speak their language, and one that can answer all of their questions. Living up to those expectations can be a tall order, yet it’s crucial not only to success but also to survival in the omnichannel age.
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, we here at Akeneo wanted to give you a few of your very own Cupid’s Arrows to help customers the world over fall in love with you and your product experience. So, read on, and use these tips to add to your arsenal, build up your PXM practice, and offer your customers a product experience worth falling in love with!
B2B buyers and B2C shoppers are becoming increasingly selective in the omnichannel age, and with good reason. Thanks to the advent of the internet and massive online shopping networks, your customers are presented with more options than ever before. The first step to encourage people to fall in love with your organization is to understand them and their buying journey.
By understanding the criteria your customers use to evaluate potential purchases, you can be sure to include relevant pieces of product information and invest in the channels you know your customers are shopping on. Midwest U.S. farm supply store Rural King, for instance, understood that customers wanted to get products ordered online delivered cheaply and quickly. Akeneo’s enterprise PIM capabilities, coupled with Adobe Magento’s eCommerce platform and order management system, delivered a truly omnichannel experience for Rural King’s customers. As a result of this initiative, Rural King doubled their online product offerings in six months and built a buy-online-pick-up-in-store offer (BOPIS), which resulted in a dramatic increase in online sales as well as in-store foot traffic.
Knowing which channels your customers shop on is crucial. No matter their age or where they may come from, B2B buyers and B2C consumers are both embracing omnichannel shopping, with the number of channels used by the average customer increasing in recent years. If you want to earn your customers’ love and affection, you need to be on the channels they prefer to shop on. You also need to provide a great product experience that can catch their eye and dazzle their senses.
This is why you need to contextualize your product data. That way, buyers and shoppers browsing any one of your shopping channels will be greeted with a perfectly tailored product experience for that channel, one that conforms to the rules and norms of each one. Learn from the example of Akeneo customer Midland Scientific, a U.S.-based manufacturer of scientific and laboratory equipment that used PIM to create an omnichannel offering while cutting enrichment costs 80% and accelerating time-to-market.
Along with omnichannel shopping and an increase in the number of channels used by customers, there’s also increased cross-border transactions. If you want to make cross-border customers fall in love with your experience, you need to translate your product information into the language of love — that is, whatever language your customer happens to speak. Your PIM solution should enable you to efficiently connect to translation services, and be able to track product completeness in each language so your product experience.
You’ll also need to localize your product descriptions, convert measurements and numbers to local units, and ensure that you’re in compliance with foreign regulations and legislation. Akeneo customer Pierce, for instance, has been able to cut cross-border enrichment costs by roughly 40% and increase team productivity by 100%.
When customers visit your shopping channels, they’re often looking for the answer to a specific question. Will this dress look good on me? Is this the right part for my classic car? Does this product come in green? What other products are related to the ones I’m searching for? Make sure you have the answers to all of their questions by providing them with accurate and consistent information, so your customers feel confident when making a purchase.
This not only increases conversion rates by boosting customer confidence, but it can also help you eliminate returns by ensuring that the products that customers receive align with their expectations. Furniture seller and Akeneo customer Made.com, for example, know that customers have plenty of questions about potential purchases they plan to bring into their home. So, the company offers the “Sofasizer,” a tool that allows customers to find out almost anything about their products, from the available colors of a sofa to its size, shape, and other data that could help determine whether it will fit well in a customers’ home. This exciting product experience is a great example of how to win over your customer’s heart.
Your customers don’t just want to read about your product — they also want to see it in action. That’s where dynamic digital assets like photos and videos come in. These allow your customers to get a first-hand view of the product, which helps them feel more confident, and thus more likely to make a purchase. But that confidence – and the likelihood of making the item into their shopping cart – can vanish in the blink of an eye if your digital assets take away from your product experience If a customer chooses a blue shirt but sees a green one displayed on your product page, you’re not likely to see a conversion.
To give your customers fantastic photos and valuable videos to allow them to feel as confident as possible when it comes time to make a purchase, you’ll need a solution with strong digital asset management capabilities. This will allow you to take control of your photos, videos, and other documents and use them to elevate your product experience — just ask Akeneo customers John Deere. The world-renowned equipment manufacturer has used photos and videos to stir emotion and build a compelling product experience and demonstrate what customers can achieve with a John Deere tractor or mower.
Closely related to the buyer’s journey, we discussed above, we know from our research that buyers increasingly want to know that the company they are purchasing from is worthy of their love by ensuring that the organization shares their values. So, broadcast your own brand values and show how you put them into action. This could include information about the origin of a product, ingredients or materials used, a manufacturer’s social responsibility or carbon footprint, and more.
Akeneo customer Bergfreunde knows the importance of brand values. The outdoor and winter sports apparel and equipment seller recognizes that as outdoor enthusiasts, their customers care about the origin and impacts of the products they purchase. So, it advertises its 100% climate-neutral selection prominently on its website and allows customers to filter products based on different product attributes related to sustainability that support Bergfreunde’s brand values.
A strong PIM solution is the best, and really, the only way to ensure you’re giving your customers everything they need to fall in love with your product experience.
A good PIM solution will give your enrichment teams the tools they need to understand your buyers’ journey and build an experience that can help enhance it by meeting them where they are, speaking their language, providing dynamic digital assets, answering their questions, and sharing their values. Not only that, your product teams themselves will feel the love when they use a tool that delivers a good employee experience.
So, as we mark Valentine’s Day, get ready to arm yourself with a quiver full of cupid’s arrows and make customers swoon for your product experience.
See Akeneo in action — we’re sure you’ll fall in love with PIM!
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