Register Now

insight
Blog
By: Sagar Sharma

How PIM Software Becomes Essential Tool For B2B Marketplace Strategy?

Digitalization has changed the way customers shop and has given them the opportunity of searching for the product on various choices across the different channels, comparing it based on its specifications, cost, etc. before making the purchase.

Due to this reason, providing complete and accurate product information to the customers across the different channels has been important for the company.

What is PIM? Why is it so Important?

Product information includes all the details of the product right from the product designing stage to the product sales. Each team has its input for the product information. Product information management is the system that allows the enterprise to manage all these product details efficiently.

It is important to understand what is PIM and how this system works? PIM system allows in collecting, organizing, editing, and managing all the product-related details centrally and providing them to all the end-users.

If you want to get profound insights about Product Information Management, don’t miss to read What is PIM? – An Ultimate Guide for Product Information Management Services.

It is also necessary to understand what is PIM software’s importance for the different teams? The PIM system collects the information of the product at every stage thus keeping all the teams involved in product development informed about the product status.

This helps in having better coordination between the teams thus fastening the process of the product reaching the market. The teams using the PIM system are designers, sales, marketing, eCommerce, customers, collaborators, etc.

To explore the PIM benefits, you must visit What Are the Benefits of PIM (Product Information Management) Systems?

B2B Marketplace – A Brief

The business-to-business (B2B) is the online marketplace where the business owner can sell their products and services to other business systems. This B2B commerce acts as a platform for selling their goods.

The customers search and select their products of choice. These customers contact the sellers for the different transactional conditions like costing, discounts, delivery deadlines, payments in installments, etc.

The B2B vendors are usually the distributors or the wholesalers. The clients of these B2B vendors are the companies providing the products to their end customers on a contractual basis.

Clients can be smaller companies, government institutes, or others having annual contracts for providing the supplies for different types of works. The B2B service acts as a platform that helps these clients in planning for the procurement, periodic ordering, scheduled deliveries, etc., based on their client requirements.

The B2B service provider should provide the details to their customers like the details about their price list, conditions, the number of goods, delivery dates, shipping oversights, returns, documentation, approvals, etc.

The B2B service provider should check for the stock and make the products available to their customers. Before creating the B2B eCommerce solution, they need to have good planning for setting up the business environment.

Why is PIM Software Essential For B2B Marketplace Strategy?

B2B eCommerce focuses on sales through web stores. For an enterprise when they want to expand their business through different channels. The B2B marketing strategy will help the enterprise to reach out to the larger crowd. For this expansion, it is important to have a solid foundation for providing accurate product details to the end-users. This will lead to having a faster time for attaining this exponential business growth.

The working of the B2B business model is complex and requires additional product bundles that provide the supporting information. This includes the details like product spreadsheets, diagrams, additional digital asset details, etc.

A PIM platform provides the ability to the enterprise to define the specific workflow and all the essential product details for the efficient B2B marketing strategy. PIM allows in managing and distributing all the accurate product information to all the users across the different channels.

The PIM system allows the product managers to create relevant channel-specific details for the product. Providing these details promptly for reaching out to the marketplace places enables the company to provide updated current information to the customers.

The different attributes used for defining the product details allow the customers to easily search for the product. The accurate and true product details help in building customer trust. This increases the sales of the product while reducing the chances of product returns.

How PIM Software Can Be Useful On B2B Marketplace Strategy?

There are different reasons why an enterprise should adopt using the PIM system for enhancing their B2B marketing strategy; here are a few vital reasons to take a look.

1. Growing customer expectations

As the competition in the market is increasing, the online shopping trend is increasing exponentially and the eCommerce users are increasing. The expectations of the customers have increased by shopping with the bigger eCommerce companies.

The traditional method included using a manual method for managing all the product data and this method had chances of incorporating errors.

Using the PIM system makes this task of incorporating the data accurately while reducing errors. This accurate and consistent data across the different channels help in building the customer’s trust.

2. Modern solution for modern problems

With the growing trend, expanding the business using omnichannel and multichannel strategies is important. PIM helps in scaling the marketing efforts. It allows managing the content that is distributed to the different channels. It also provides an improved, personalized, and customized experience to the customers for increasing their purchases.

3. Importance of time

The traditional method for curating the product information uses manual collection, addition, and managing of the data. This process consumes a lot of time, effort, and resources. The manual method also has an increased risk of incorporating errors. Implementing the PIM system makes this task easier and more convenient.

PIM fastens the process of collecting and organizing the product information and also minimizes the risk of incorporating error. The enterprise can utilize the time, money, efforts, and resources for more important tasks. It helps the product in reaching the market at a faster pace.

4. Easy data management

The data collected from a single source may not be sufficient to cover all the product-related details. Implementing the PIM platform allows the company to have access to different collateral for collecting the data that is necessary for convincing the potential customers for making their purchases.

PIM also allows in management of the digital assets using the DAM feature that will help in enriching the product data.

5. Setting up a proper strategy

The spreadsheets providing the product details are not sufficient for giving real-time details. At times this data can be challenging when real-time data is required. Implementing PIM ensures that all the product data is accurate and updated in real-time. This ensures that any immediate decision based on the current and latest information will be taken accurately.

6. Improved collaboration and communication

PIM allows for better communication with the different teams within the organization. It also helps in improved communication with the internal members, collaborators, end-users, etc.

As the PIM manages all the documents centrally and is shared easily with all the members, it improves communication by keeping all the members on the same page. It also allows for better tracking of the product details as compared to the spreadsheets and allows better accountability.

7. Easy adaptation

The PIM platform is easy to adapt and use. It can manage larger data efficiently with not much effort. PIM allows for the scalability of the data. It allows integrating the different channels as the business expands.

PIM helps in smoothing the process of managing the product-related data providing it to the different users based on their needs and improving the brand status.

8. Minimize data vulnerability

The product data plays a very important role as it helps in building up the brand image and status. Any wrong data can adversely affect the brand name implementing the PIM platform for managing the product data ensures that the true and the best product data reaches the users. It also assures that the duplicate or wrong data is removed to reduce confusion.

As PIM stores the data centrally, any change made in the PIM system reflects the change immediately across the different channels without affecting the brand status. PIM allows in reducing and fixing the data vulnerabilities thus maintaining the brand status.

Factors To Be Considered By B2B Businesses Before Buying PIM Software?

There are certain factors that the B2B business should consider while considering the selection of the PIM software, take a look.

1. Flexible catalog management for B2B using PIM

For the B2B companies, they require the digital catalog that is critical for the marketing channels. The PIM should be able to incorporate the details that are essential for printing the simple or the digital catalog for the various channels. These catalog printing should be flexible and depend on the different marketing strategies used for sales.

The B2B business can have a seasonal catalog based on the products available that depend on the seasonal variation. The PIM software should be able to manage the different catalogs based on the different requirements

The shopping trend and the customers are evolving and new trends are coming up in the market. To stay ahead in this competitive business, the B2B business should change and provide different touchpoints for their customers to reach out to their products. B2B businesses can make use of digital as well as print catalogs for reaching out to their customers in an effective way.

The digital catalog allows the B2B business to incorporate all the details of the products pleasingly and aesthetically. These digital catalogs are easily trackable and can even be modified with ease.

The B2B business can check or view the analytics reports for these catalogs to understand where the users are liking, clicking, or bouncing from. This gives a clear idea and based on it also provides the chances for improvement while saving the cost.

The different catalog features include the InDesign plugin, multiple catalog options, interactive and dynamic, product findability, and a self-service portal. These digital catalogs can be easily viewed from any type of device without affecting its view or quality.

2. PIM with SEO features

For the product to be noticed by the customers, a good SEO must help in searching the product of choice. For an adequate search, the product information must be categorized and tagged properly. This categorization and tagging will help the search engines to search and provide the details to the users.

The different types of search intent that are important for searching any product on the website include:

Informational search: This search intends to answer a question or seek information as requested by the searcher.

Navigational search: The intent is to locate a specific site or page or navigate through the wide search area.

Transactional search: The intent is to purchase a product in mind. The person can search for the product in their mind based on its description, image observation, or qualities. It can also be searched based on the intended function of the product.

Commercial search: The intent is to research different product options considering the buying or selling information of the product.

Using the PIM platform allows in using the content and tagging the product information in a way that the search engines can identify and allow the customer to reach the desired product.

3. Support the B2B omnichannel experience

The B2B buyers interact with multiple channels and touchpoints to select the products of their choice. The product must have uniform product information available to all these sites or channels thus it will help in building the brand image and also the customers can have confidence in the product before making the purchases.

PIM allows in providing accurate details to the potential buyers thus there are reduced chances that the customer is not satisfied and returns the product. Thus it also helps in reducing the product returns. This helps in increasing the loyalty of the customers towards the brand.

Bottom Line

It is important for expanding business in this growing competitive world. Implementing the B2B marketing strategy comes in handy when the enterprise wants to reach a larger crowd.

PIM system works best with the B2B marketing strategy to provide the best shopping experience to the customers. This will lead to enhancement in the business by attracting more customers and retaining the older by strengthening their confidence.

Say goodbye to data chaos and embrace the power of PIM/MDM to supercharge your business growth!