Given the level of competition in the B2B world, it has become hard for organizations to build meaningful relationships with distributors and customers. Even existing relationships are under pressure. The constant refrain is, “how to make it easier for the buyer to buy?” The overwhelming focus is on product content to provide the customer experience that allows the buyer to progress on a frictionless buyer journey.
The right product content presented in just the right way must become available to the buyer (or distributor) at exactly the stage of the buyer journey where it can make the greatest impact. Content syndication is a great way to manage, transform, and publish “personalized product content” for channel partners and marketplaces. But given the volume, variety, and variability of product content, distributing it presents a massive challenge. A challenge that technology is helping to address.
Today, using technology, manufacturers are able to leverage their product data to connect with new prospects and audiences, improve searchability, and drive more conversions. They are able to do so by improving the quality of data they generate, automate mundane manual processes, ensure product data is always visible and available, and more precisely targeted.
Here are 5 ways technology has changed B2B content syndication:
1. It has increased product data efficiency:
The use of technology in B2B content syndication has enabled manufacturers to make complete and consistent product information available across channel partners, thus improving customer experience. For example, Machine Learning-powered state-of-the-art recommendation engines reduce guesswork, increase product data effectiveness while eliminating friction from the manufacturer-distributor relationship.
Smart recommendations make connecting with data a breeze while allowing organizations to comply with industry or data standards and meet channel requirements 100%, every time. Since manufacturers and distributor catalogs can easily connect, they can easily publish content in any format, and update it as and when required. This means products can arrive on the digital shelf faster, resulting in increased revenue, and lower costs.
2. It has improved visibility:
Modern B2B content syndication platforms offer reporting and analytics capabilities to manage supplier and channel partner onboarding progress and completeness. They help in transforming and transferring the catalog information to meet the demands of channel partners, enable consistent delivery of product information to channel partners and provide a holistic view of channel management across all trading partners.
Technology has made it easy for organizations to track and manage customer journeys captured through syndication. Using technology, they can now know which channels drive the best, most productive results. For example, manufacturers can find what format or messaging works with their target audience, and what type of content a certain segment of customers respond to.
3. It has made it easy for manufacturers to achieve scale and sustainability:
B2B content syndication is not a shortcut to sell your products to more people. It is a way to connect with newer audiences so you can strengthen your conversion strategy.
Technology has made it easy for manufacturers to connect categories and attributes with user-friendly point-and-click workflows. They can apply global rules at remarkable speed, tap into a new audience, and increase the chances of connecting with more potential buyers. It also helps buyers proactively address questions or queries and progress in their buyer journey. With a single click of a button, manufacturers can influence thousands of potential customers and achieve scale and sustainability with ease.
4. It has enabled suppliers and channel partners to have a dynamic and living relationship with the master catalog:
Technology has also enabled suppliers and channel partners to have a more meaningful and ongoing interface with the master catalog. Using technology, manufacturers can now deliver complete, and accurate product data to distributors and suppliers, so they, in turn, can provide exceptional experiences to end-users. Software-driven solutions can ensure the product data is aggregated, organized, enriched, and delivered to distributors – while preserving the core message of the content. Intelligent, programmatic enhancements make it easy for channel partners to interact with, and share content with end-users, while improving the chances of lead and revenue generation.
5. It has automated the process of catalog updates:
Technology has also made it possible for manufacturers to automatically update their catalog with new and current product information.
Using technology, manufacturers can now eliminate the task of manually (and sometimes erroneously) entering product data into spreadsheets. They can ensure automatic updates to catalog information reaches suppliers and channel partners in time – through automated workflows. Such automation updates all channels with changes in near-real-time, driving quicker time to market for new and updated product information, while drastically reducing manual operating
costs.
