Customers’ earned trust of you and your business is “pure gold,” says Alison Zepp, vice president of marketing and strategy at Jessup Manufacturing Co. The cost? Providing a great customer experience every time.
Zepp will speak at B2B Next 2019, to be held in Chicago Sept. 20 – Oct. 2. Prior to joining Jessup in January 2014, she was vice president of marketing at Follett School Solutions; she has also held leadership roles in marketing and product development at Grohe, Juno Lighting Group, Grainger and Citicorp/Citibank’s payment services provider, WorldLink.
Alison Zepp
In a peer-to-peer roundtable at B2B Next, “Best Practices for Sharing Content Across Channels and Touchpoints,” she’ll talk about why product content is key to winning and keeping customers, and the best ways to deliver it to B2B buyers—wherever they look for it.
B2BecNews caught up with Zepp recently to talk about how B2B companies are growing by selling online.
Q: What is driving B2B companies like Jessup Manufacturing to expand online?
Zepp: Customers expect it. B2B buyers of commercial and industrial products like ours want to research us on their own before they decide to buy. They also like the ease of doing business online.
Q: What are the biggest challenges?
Zepp: Keeping up with the pace of changing ecommerce technology is certainly one of our challenges. Another is developing the kind of user experience that supports our custom engineered products.
Q: What are the chief gains you’re realizing?
Zepp: Every time we invest in Jessup’s online content, we see an increase in website traffic, leads and sales. The sales may be won by our channel partners, but we know our customers are visiting our website store to view our product content and make buying decisions.
Q: What’s the biggest thing B2B companies still need to realize about ecommerce?
Zepp: Ecommerce changes traditional marketing channel partnerships and drives efficiency among all the players. Manufacturers and distributors need to cooperate closely on essentials like product data feeds and co-op marketing.
Q: From what you’ve learned yourself—What is your most valuable piece of advice for B2B companies looking to add online sales or increase them?
Zepp: If you provide a great online experience, customers will reward you for it. The trick is to find out what your customers value most. We’ve had customers pay the highest price from our store because they trusted the Jessup brand. That kind of loyalty is pure gold.
Registration for B2B Next 2019 is open. Click here to register.
Learn more at B2BNext.net