·¬ÇÑÉçÇø

Even with multiple touchpoints, the B2C sales cycle is kind of like a sprint.

• It's short.
• Communication is one-way.
• You only have to convince one person to buy your product or service.
• Your audience is sensitive and responsive to marketing efforts.
• Retention is important, but a purchase doesn't need to have strings attached.

The B2B customer journey, however, is a marathon. To deliver a rich, connected and personalized B2B customer experience, you need solutions that support multiple digital channels and content types over longer sales cycles — from 1-2 months to well over a year.

And for that, you need a digital experience platform.

What is a B2B digital experience platform?

A digital experience platform (DXP) is an integrated set of technologies (based on one core platform) that provides a unified and comprehensive view of customers across all digital touchpoints. It connects content, data and insights from multiple systems, so you can create engaging and personalized experiences across various devices and channels.

It's built off a content management system (CMS), with additional capabilities to support omnichannel delivery, e-commerce, personalization, analytics and automation. It connects to microservices and third-party software through APIs, making it a flexible and scalable solution for large enterprises.

For B2B brands, a DXP should cater to the unique challenges of selling to other businesses, like managing longer sales cycles, addressing the needs of multiple buying group members and handling diverse content types.

B2B enterprises have unique needs when it comes to DXPs

The B2B customer journey is uniquely complex. While direct-to-consumer brands have to manage multiple sales and marketing channels, they don't have to contend with the additional layers of decision-makers and influencers that are common in B2B transactions.

• B2B sales take an average of to close and involve .
• At every stage of the funnel, buyers need different content and experiences to help them make informed decisions.
• Different members of the buying group have different priorities and pain points, all of which you need to address with personalized content and interactions.
• Product complexity and technical specifications mean you have multiple ICPs and use cases, each of which you'll have to speak to separately.
• Your customers are in it for the long haul — retention and upsell opportunities are just as (if not more) important as the initial sale.

Gartner research finds that describe their most recent purchase as "very complex or difficult." This is the most critical pain point you need to address when assembling your digital experience platform.

Core features of digital experience platforms for B2B brands

The B2B sales funnel starts with awareness, moves through research and seller-guided evaluation, and ends with retention. Every step of the way, your DXP should help you deliver personalized and relevant content and experiences that drive conversion, retention and advocacy.

Let's dive into the core features of a B2B digital experience platform:

A content management system (CMS) is the core of any DXP. It allows you to create, distribute and manage content across various digital channels and devices. You'll use it to manage your full-funnel content strategy.

Content management

• Awareness-level content (blog posts, whitepapers, case studies) that helps you generate leads and build brand awareness
• Middle-of-the-funnel content (product information, demos, trials) that guides buyers toward a purchase decision
• Bottom-of-funnel assets (data sheets, technical specifications, support documents) that drive conversions, retention, and upsells
• Unlike a traditional CMS, a DXP's content management capabilities extend past web content. It supports diverse content formats, persona-based segmentation, analytics, and omnichannel content delivery.

Sales enablement

Sure, your content is primarily a marketing asset. But it's also a sales enablement tool. The vast majority of the decision-making process happens without your sales team, so you need to have the right content ready for buyers at every stage of the funnel.

• Content tagging and metadata — so your sales reps can easily find, personalize, and share relevant content with buyers
• Playlists or collections — to group content by use case, target account, or vertical
• Lead and account tracking — to help sales reps understand a prospect's interests and pain points, so they can deliver more relevant and timely content

Personalization and segmentation

B2B marketing isn't about reaching thousands of people. It's about targeting key accounts and individuals. It also entails greater diversity in the types of content you need to deliver, including:

• Newsletters
• Blogs
• Case studies
• Reports
• Videos
• Webinars
• Events

Some of your customers will register for an event or download a gated asset, while others prefer to consume your content via blogs and newsletters. As your DXP collects data on each buyer, it'll compare their behavior with their implicit and explicit data, parse your content library and deliver content that's relevant to them.

Ecommerce and self-service functionality

A Gartner study found that prefer to complete their purchases online. And say they don't want to talk to Sales at all. Your DXP needs to cater to this growing preference for self-service.

For a SaaS company, this means having a comprehensive knowledge base, self-service portals, customer communities and your application's subscription management functionality. It could also mean integrating with microsites, landing pages and online marketplaces to support specific products, events and campaigns.

Manufacturers need a DXP that allows buyers to view product information, check stock levels, place orders and track shipments online without having to go through Sales or Customer Service. It should also incorporate bulk order forms so customers can easily order large quantities of products by SKU or part number.

Supplier and partner management

If you're a manufacturer, reseller or distributor, you need to be able to manage your channel partners' experiences on your DXP in addition to your customers'. Fundamentally, this works similarly to customer-facing portals, but with some tweaks:

• Custom catalogs and pricing for different partners
• Different permissions and access levels for sales reps, account managers, distributors, resellers, etc.
• Order fulfillment tracking, so you know when an order was placed, picked up by the partner, and delivered to the customer
• Partner performance metrics so you can track sales, returns, etc., by partner

Analytics and reporting

Your DXP's analytics and reporting capabilities should cover a few key areas:

• Content performance
• Channel performance
• Revenue and ROI (attribution) 

It should also get granular enough to provide insights into customer journeys, individual asset performance, and campaign success. You can use this to create content that aligns with your audience's interests, deliver content through the most effective channels, and build a better understanding of how each piece of content contributes to revenue.

Integrating your DXP with sales and marketing tools

At its core, your DXP is about delivering personalized and relevant experiences at scale. To set that up, you have to design multiple touchpoints — campaigns, reminders, alerts, promotions, etc. — to reach out and engage with different buyers based on their unique needs, behaviors, and stage in the funnel.

To achieve that, you have to integrate your existing customer data and third-party data sources like:

• CRM
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Customer service systems
• Marketing automation platforms
• Sales enablement software
• Ad platforms
• Social media

It should also have the ability to connect behavioral data from web, mobile and other digital touchpoints. That's how you create a single view of the customer and use data to drive personalization, segmentation and content targeting throughout the buyer journey.

Best practices for B2B digital transformation

Your ability to actually execute a seamless, connected omnichannel experience hinges on your ability to select the DXP and integrated technology that (a) integrates with your tech stack and (b) is built to work together.

The average company has because its tools don't play nicely together. And that simply won't work when it comes to delivering a cohesive, personalized experience at scale.

On your digital transformation journey, follow these best practices:

• Make sure your leadership team is on the same page about the goals and outcomes of your digital transformation.
• Start by identifying gaps, redundancies, and limitations in your current technology infrastructure.
• Map out every touchpoint and interaction a buyer has with your company.
• Invest in products designed for your business, rather than trying to fit your business into a generic solution. 
• Put your DXP at the center of your transformation initiative, then consider tools that build into or improve its workflow.

Beyond this, choosing a composable DXP that takes a modular approach to design and functionality will allow for greater flexibility and scalability.

Digital experience platforms facilitate B2B growth

Today, B2B sales and content are so closely intertwined that the two can no longer work effectively in silos. You need your content to connect with customers at every stage of their journey, even as they move through the sales process.

An API-first digital experience platform creates a unified ecosystem between your content and commerce infrastructure. By connecting the dots between customer touchpoints and delivering one-of-one personalization with a DXP, you'll generate more leads, convert more of them to customers and increase your customer lifetime value.

Contact us today to learn how Brightspot can fit into — and enhance — your DXP approach.