Currently, having an online business represents great advantages over those who only count with a physical store, this is due to the growing demand for the products they offer. Besides, instead of only covering a sector or a city, an online store can cover a much wider field, from a couple of states to an entire country, and in some cases it can have a totally international reach; with this, you will be able to generate a greater number of sales.

The main advantages of electronic commerce are:

• Exceeding geographical limits
• Much lower start-up and maintenance cost than a traditional business
• Greater ease and speed to find the goods or services for the buyer
• Greater ease of promoting products for the entrepreneur
• Ease of implementing and developing marketing strategies based on discounts, coupons, raffles, etc.
• Obtaining a greater number of clients both online and offline
• Ease of offering a comparison between products including prices and features
• Optimization of time dedicated to business

      • Better customer service capacity

Difference between B2B and B2C E-commerce

In electronic commerce there are 2 main types of commerce: B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer)

The B2B are the services that a company performs to another associated company to increase sales of goods and services. An example of these businesses can be all those companies that provide web content to others. These can be blog entries or job positioning in social networks to name a couple of examples.

The B2C, consists of an action to promote some good or service by the marketing company to the end customer, it tends to work with direct advertising, promotional blogs and social networks to name some of the types of work most used by these companies.

B2B E-commerce: the great alternative during the pandemic

Although currently in all the countries of the world we are facing a serious crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, better known as the Coronavirus, health care and therefore biological sciences have become of utmost importance to society today, since it influences the socio-economic and political spheres. While it is not possible to go out to work normally electronic businesses represent a great alternative to this problem.

The B2B e-commerce has created these new alternatives for all those organizations that run their operations in the health sector or life science market.  Everyone involved, from practitioners like doctors and nurses, to insurance companies, have been taking advantage of the digital world, not only for reducing costs, but also for reaching a greater number of people which are potential buyers, with their products and services. 

If you are someone who prefers numbers, we have the results provided by the Health Industry Distributors Association report released last year, which predicted that by 2020 the 85% of the relations established by B2B commerce, will be completely digital. This only tells us about the great business opportunity there is for all those individuals and companies with this model.

Tips for your B2B strategy

Following the schematization proposed by the B2B e-commerce model, we are presented with several alternatives and advice or recommendations in which the following stand out:

• SEO optimization.
• Community management.
• Web development.
• Attendance and coverage of events and presentations.
• Launch and execution of SEM or Social Ads campaigns.
• Writing articles of a scientific and informative nature either for blogs, forums or other web pages.
• Monitoring and social listening.
• Newsletter deliveries.
• An online purchase system with explicit guidelines to make the ordering process easier for customers.
• Spaces for varied interactions, which include all the ones that can happen among organizations, providers and patients.
• Call to action content with multimedia elements like videos which attract clients and help them decide to buy the products.
• Tools that can be able to execute detailed customer’s necessities like:
• A contracted GPO pricing to make negotiations on discounts possible for suppliers, according to the purchase amount or quantity of products.
• Carts that can be shared among different sites, where customers can always see all their items updated.
• Shipment alternatives for splitting an order in different packages or delivering in more than one destination.

Among others…

Real results in the healthcare and life science field

A clear example of how to put these tips into practice is demonstrated by the Kiversal company. It is a European company, specialized in the design, manufacture and certification of medical equipment. The Kiversal company provides ENT (otorhinolaryngology) and electro-medicine solutions in hospitals, clinics, prevention services and hearing centers around the world, as well as having physical branches in Germany, Italy, France, India and Malaysia.

Now if we analyze the digital marketing strategy that was used by Kiversal we can see that for the content of their blog they mixed interactive and informative content, to attract more people to their business, which is audiology. The customer service is very efficient, treating them extremely well and solving their doubts.

They organized fairs and public events to attract more the attention of their consumers in this way their number of subscribers increased exponentially, in addition to the publications of their newsletter where they inform their customers even more, progressing both in a market that often goes unnoticed such as audiology, reaching clinics, hospitals and distributors in several countries with its medical equipment and ENT solutions.

Another example of this is represented by the company Dy care is a company that provides werable solutions for the field of medical rehabilitation, which has collaborated with clinical hospitals and universities. What made this startup successful was its website which is in both English and Spanish, which helps to reach different audiences and users worldwide since when you write something either on your preferred search engine most of the results appear in your language. Dycare has put into practice all the tips mentioned above.

Another thing that they put into practice was to create a site on Facebook. Currently, it is highly recommended to create pages through social networks since these are basically in every corner of the globe. By putting your website or what you sell on a social network, you make your content much more visible than by placing isolated entries on the company’s own website.