Right now, a huge number of people are considering a career change. Given world events over the past couple of years, this isn’t all too surprising. The pandemic completely threw many people’s careers off track. People who thought they were in lifelong roles or working in industries they’d never want to move from found that they were suddenly jobless due to company collapse or redundancy.
Those who were uncertain about their roles in the first place, or simply getting on with the roles they occupied, may have had enough time during periods of furlough to consider what they actually wanted to do and may have found that they want to try something new. Regardless of what may have caused you to get interested in setting up your own B2B company, it’s a positive step to take. Sure, setting up your own business is going to be a lot of hard work, but it can also come hand in hand with a host of benefits.
Many revolve around becoming your own boss. You’ll be able to decide what industry you work in, who you want to work with, how much you charge for your products or services, what hours you work, where you work from and so much more. What’s more? You’ll be building your own fortune rather than somebody else’s. So, to get the ball rolling the right direction, here’s some information on B2B companies and how to get started with your own.
By focusing on the B2B market, you can leverage its potential and help your startup succeed using these tips and strategies.
Let’s start out by establishing what B2B actually is. B2B stands for “business-to-business”, and you may also see it referred to as B-to-B. It is essentially any form of transaction that takes place between two businesses, as opposed to between a business and a consumer, or a business and a government.
These alternatives are known as B2C and B2G respectively. Examples of B2B transactions or business operations can take place between a manufacturer and wholesaler, or a wholesaler and a retailer. These are just two examples - there are many more.
Business to business transactions tend to be most common in relation to supply chains. For example, companies purchasing components and products including raw materials for use in their own manufacturing processes, or to sell on to other buyers or the consumer market. Business to business transactions can also take the form of services, such as a business buying the service of cleaners or groundskeepers for its retail settings and other commercial premises.
All too many people make the mistake of only considering the B2C (or “business to customer”) market when starting up their own company. This is completely understandable.
The B2C market trends to be the one that the vast majority of us are more familiar with. We engage with it ourselves on a day to day basis, so when we think about buying and selling goods, this tends to be what automatically comes to mind. Instead, you should always consider all of the options available to you and determine which will best suit your needs.
The B2C market has potential, but it’s not the only market with potential. It also tends to be more saturated than the B2B market, as more people get involved with it.
When it comes to B2B, there’s a whole lot of potential there. Late in 2018, Forrester said the B2B e-commerce market topped $1.134 trillion. This well exceeded the company’s predictions and forecast of $954 billion. This percentage is expected to climb a further 17% by 2023. As you can see, there really is a lot of potential in the B2B market, especially online.
If you’re going to have a successful B2B company, you’re going to need a website. As we briefly mentioned above, B2B E-commerce has endless potential, as the internet provides a strong environment for your company to raise brand awareness, promote its products and services and secure sales at any time of the day or night.
Your website will lay the groundwork for future business-to-business transactions and can help you to benefit from return customers and repeat customers. Of course, to have a website, you need to create a website, and the vast majority of us don’t have experience or expertise in doing this. Instead, outsource this work. It will save you a lot of time, money and effort and see you get the job done in the shortest amount of time possible. Make sure that your site doesn’t only look good, but is functional too. You need it to work and be easy to navigate around, so consider user experience too.
Directing businesses to your site is important too. This means getting involved with SEO or “search engine optimisation”. This is the process of getting your site to rank as highly as possible in search engine results when other businesses search for whatever it may be that you’re selling.
Believe it or not, B2B SEO can work in different ways to B2C SEO, so again, you may want to leave this work to the professionals. They’ll be able to do whatever it takes to get your site ranking highly and to consequently maximise website traffic and conversions or sales.
Of course, it’s always good to have a good reputation within the industry or field you’re specialising in. Positive word of mouth or recommendation can really help to secure your positive reputation and encourage others to get involved with you. So, make a name for yourself.
This can be achieved in a variety of ways. First, you could visit trade shows to get your name out there. Then, the best way to make a name for yourself is to make sure that your products or services are actually good quality.
B2B really can help you to get started with your own business and generating profits. But hopefully, some of the information, tips and tricks outlined above can help you to get your startup off the ground!
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