Today we’ll be discussing how HubSpot can be used for e-commerce businesses in both B2B and B2C applications, but first: what does the ideal HubSpot e-commerce user look like, and is that you?
Buyer Profiles
In order to discuss what the ideal e-commerce HubSpot user looks like we’re going to assess multiple buyer profiles.
Examples of these buyer profiles include business to business merchants expanding into e-commerce for the first time, direct to consumer, and business to business merchants looking to integrate offline efforts with online efforts, as well as business to consumer merchants leveraging significant content and sales functionality.
The New B2B e-Commerce Merchant
This business to business profile does between $5 million and $150 million in revenue per year. The industry that they participate in is often flexible but more than likely they are a manufacturer of industrial and/or niche supplies. The e-commerce platforms that these businesses currently operate on are typically Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento. These businesses typically have a dedicated sales team as well as a dedicated marketing team.
B2B Merchant Challenges
Now we know who these businesses are, but what challenges do the face? They often have a strong offline sales presence but need to stay competitive with an e-commerce channel. E-commerce is a new territory to them and switching customer relationship management platforms while going through this process can be overwhelming. Legacy technology is the path of least resistance but it may not integrate with more modern technologies.
B2B Merchant Goals
With these challenges in mind, these businesses look to reaching their goals as merchants. These goals include pursuing e-commerce technology to make it easier for clients to place orders without the need for a sales representative. They want to strengthen and empower offline sales efforts, while improving reporting and attribution. Additionally, these merchants look to integrate offline sales efforts into an e-commerce and marketing friendly platform..
B2B Merchant Example: Ballard Industrial
To better understand what a business to business merchant looks like, let’s take a look at Ballard Industrial. Ballard Industrial is an industrial manufacturer and first time e-commerce retailer. Ballard Industrial leverages HubSpot for email marketing efforts, offline deal tracking, and customer relationship management. This business integrated their new e-commerce store with existing offline sales processes to improve reporting.
B2C and B2B Profile
This buyer profile typically does between 15 million and 200 million in revenue per year. The industry that they are involved in is flexible but leans toward manufacturing niche supplies, clothing, or consumer packaged goods. The platforms that they host their e-commerce stores on include Shopify, BigCommerce and Magento. These companies typically have a staff with a dedicated sales team, a dedicated marketing team, as well as a dedicated website/IT Team
B2C and B2B Merchant Challenges
So what are some of the challenges that B2C and B2B merchants face? B2C and B2B channels are typically both strong but can feel siloed and far from each other. This is because the sectors of the company are often in different teams, using different technologies, and are responsible for reaching different goals. Business to business is often a majority revenue driver in these companies, so growing e-commerce revenue can be often overlooked.
B2C and B2B Merchant Goals
The goals that these merchants are looking to achieve include evaluating and consolidating technological solutions to create a maximum impact between business to business and business to consumer efforts. They look to improve both tracking and reporting for business to business and business to consumer channels. They additionally look to leverage powerful automation tools including abandoned cart workflows, calendar scheduling tools, and customer dashboards.
B2C and B2B Example: Cutter & Buck
For an example of a B2C and B2B merchant let’s look at Cutter & Buck. Cutter & Buck sells their fashion products both to other wholesale businesses as well as directly to consumers. They use HubSpot for email marketing, blogging, offline deal tracking, and customer relationship management. Cutter and Buck leverages a HubSpot e-commerce integration for order recording, marketing automation, and loyalty programs.
B2C and B2B Example: KegWorks
Another example of a B2C and B2B merchant is KegWorks. KegWorks sells their keg supplies both to other alcohol-related businesses and to consumers. KegWorks leverages HubSpot for their email marketing efforts, landing pages, blogging, offline deal tracking, and customer relationship management. KeyWorks leverages e-commerce integrations for order recording and marketing automation.
B2C Profile
This buyer profile typically does between $10 million and $20 million in revenue per year. This buyer profile covers many industries but are often a supplier of parts/materials or a niche retailer. The e-commerce platforms that they typically leverage are Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento. The staff that they have on hand is typically composed of both a marketing team and a dedicated web/IT team.
B2C Merchant Challenges
The challenges that B2C merchants face are: current technology may be expensive and too robust for their actual needs. Their current tech stack only addresses piecemeal issues (MailChimp for email, Gorgias for support, etc.). They are having trouble establishing e-commerce specific marketing automation such as abandon cart workflows, win back workflows, and promotion workflows. They also have trouble tracking and reporting sales numbers accurately.
B2C Merchant Example: Final Draft
As an example we look to Final Draft, the premier script writing software for films in Hollywood. Final Draft is a B2C with for specific product offerings in the form of software and they leverage HubSpot for email automation, ad management, landing pages, blogging, and support.
Why HubSpot for e-Commerce?
HubSpot’s CRM platform has all the tools and integrations you need to solve for the many challenges mentioned above. HubSpot was created so that never again do you have multiple platforms you’re trying to force to work together, and instead everyone is operating from one single source of truth. Likewise, each one is intuitive and easy to use for the ultimate customer experience. Each product in the HubSpot CRM platform is powerful alone, but the real magic happens when you use them together.
HubSpot helps you to create a connected customer experience for individuals and companies seeking your services. It allows you to automate and unify your sales, marketing, and service teams so everyone is on the same page. It allows you to create workflows that make communication more efficient, while at the same time tracking them to ensure all leads are followed-through and buyer’s needs are met.
Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub, and Operations Hub are each part of HubSpot’s connected CRM platform to help you grow better. When you use two or more hubs together, your data is automatically connected on the platform, enabling you to easily (and powerfully) track your entire customer journey from first website visit, to closed deal, to happy customer.
Sales Hub
HubSpot Sales Hub is a time-saving sales CRM that provides you with an in-depth 360 degree view of your prospects, while minimizing busy work and giving your sales team time to close deals. Sales Hub can also help you leverage documents, and track bids and proposals, ensuring the right follow-up communications occur. Sales Hub helps you track revenue by deal stage across various pipelines. Create email onboarding sequences to automate deal stage communications and reduce manual follow-up for recurring communications. And, that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Rather than using multiple tools to accomplish each of these tasks separately, HubSpot’s sales software enables teams to do all their work under one roof. Save time and energy by using a single tool, rather than splitting up your team’s energy (and information) across multiple platforms..
Marketing Hub
HubSpot Marketing Hub is a CRM-powered marketing platform that allows you to create, manage, and track your marketing campaigns. It provides everything you need to get found, connect with new prospects, and nurture them into buyers.
With Marketing Hub, all your marketing tools and data are in one place, so you don’t have to juggle multiple solutions and waste time stitching together reporting. It’s deeply powerful and easy to use. Last but not least, you can easily sync Marketing Hub with more than 1,250 custom integrations so your marketing team has all its favorite tools on one platform.
Popular features in HubSpot’s marketing software include the ability to:
- Build personalized, automated email campaigns
- Track marketing performance with built-in analytics and custom reporting
- Manage all your social media accounts in one place
- Design and host SEO optimized blog posts and web pages
- Get your whole team speaking with one voice with campaign management tools
Service Hub
Service Hub allows you to provide superior customer service. Among other things, it allows you to manage the onboarding of new customers, collect, organize, and respond to customer support requests, and ensure the growth and satisfaction of your customers.
While most customer service software solutions solve for a specific use case, Service Hub is unique in its connection to the HubSpot CRM platform. With features that make it easy to deliver authentic, personalized service, Service Hub empowers you to prioritize the customer experience.
CMS Hub
CMS Hub is a content management system (CMS) that facilitates creating, managing, and modifying information on a website. With a CMS, your developers can build flexible, beautiful website themes that your marketing team can use to make website updates on their own, creating and personalizing your website for every visitor.
HubSpot’s CMS Hub allows marketers to take ownership over their website. You won’t have to worry about security concerns or broken pages, freeing you up to focus on the experience you’re providing customers instead. And with flexible themes, you can ensure your brand and design stay consistent across pages.
Operations Hub
The Operations Hub seamlessly integrates with all the tools above, and allows you to connect data and automate processes for a friction-free experience between your teams. You are essentially aligning large amounts of data around a secure, single source of truth and presenting it in a clean, consistent, and easily accessible manner. Likewise, the Operations Hub helps you streamline processes that allow you to reduce manual work while at the same time personalizing your messaging and improving customer experience.
Wondering if HubSpot is right for you? Schedule a call with Carrie Gallagher at Lovable Marketing and learn how to start generating and nurturing the right leads for your business.