The opportunity for B2C businesses to find, convert, and sell to new customers has never been greater.
Alongside this opportunity though, come a range of sales challenges.
Customer behavior is constantly shifting and expectations are rising. Today’s buyers want more from companies than ever – including personalized marketing, immersive experiences, and immediate responses to their questions or concerns.
In this blog, we’ll cover the biggest sales challenges that B2C businesses experience. But don’t worry, we won’t stop there!
We’ll also tell you about the strategies and tools – like ScoreApp – you can use to fix them.
1. Attracting the right customers
Why it’s a challenge:
When thinking about lead generation for your B2C business, it’s tempting to take a ‘broad strokes’ approach.
If your message is more general, it will appeal to everyone – which means lots of customers, right?
The reality is that the opposite tends to happen.
When your message – or lead magnet – is too impersonal, you tend to waste your marketing budget on people who aren’t your ideal customer…or you don’t attract leads in the first place.
Either way, you aren’t connecting with people who will buy from you.
How to solve it:
- Define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Work out exactly who you want to buy from you – think about their demographic information, pain points, and interests. Get clear on if you are targeting one group, or if your ideal audience has multiple segments. If you aren’t sure, you can use ScoreApp to collect invaluable market research and refine your customer profile(s)!
- Design interactive lead magnets to attract people who are genuinely interested in your products. For example, if you run a fitness business, you could create a ScoreApp assessment called “Which Fitness Plan is Best for You?”. People love learning about themselves: there’s a reason why interactive lead magnets convert at a rate of up to 50%!
With a ScoreApp quiz, you can automatically pre-qualify every lead based on their quiz answers.
Our range of ready-to-use templates can be easily edited to match your branding, and our AI quiz software suggests copy to get your quiz, landing page, and results pages ready to go in minutes.
Here are a few quiz templates to help you get started:
The Financial Freedom Scorecard
The Job Satisfaction Analysis Scorecard
2. Converting leads into paying customers
Why it’s a challenge:
Getting the right people onto your website is one thing; converting visitors into buyers is a completely different challenge.
Low conversion rates on B2C websites can be best illustrated by abandoned cart rates – which, according to Hotjar, sit at around 70% on average. Plus, it is estimated that worldwide, $260 billion worth of revenue lost to abandoned carts is recoverable.
To turn hesitant buyers into excited customers, you have to show them that you understand what they are looking for – and have the exact product to fit the bill.
How to solve it:
- Use personalization: Studies show personalized emails are six times more likely to drive conversions than generic ones. Send tailored abandoned cart reminders to everyone who leaves your website without purchasing; it could be the nudge they need to buy.
- Create lead magnets that genuinely offer prospects a lot of value! For example, a ScoreApp profile quiz like “Find Your Perfect Skincare Routine” on a beauty product website can help prospects find the perfect product for their needs. This level of bespoke support makes them far more likely to convert.
- Send targeted follow-up emails: ScoreApp can be seamlessly integrated with your CRM and email marketing platform to split your leads into segmented groups. Send personalized nurturing content and product recommendations to each group based on their quiz answers.
3. Increasing customer retention and loyalty
Why it’s a challenge:
Customer retention is a vital ingredient of a profitable B2C business.
It costs around five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, and 77% of people are more likely to buy products if a friend recommends them. Imagine how much easier that could make your customer acquisition efforts!
If customers aren’t returning to your business, you need to improve your post-purchase experience.
How to solve it:
- Implement loyalty programs: Exclusive rewards like discounts, VIP perks, or free delivery, can encourage people to stay loyal to your brand.
- Use ScoreApp surveys: Encourage your customers to share what they love (and don’t love) about your brand. These surveys can help you score your customers on their purchasing frequency and likelihood to buy again, so you can send tailored follow-ups with personalized incentives to improve customer retention.
4. Competing with industry giants
Why it’s a challenge:
Big brands have an established reputation in their industry and large marketing budgets. This massive reach means they have more opportunities to connect with prospective customers than smaller businesses.
Don’t think this means all hope is lost! In the UK for example, surveys show that over 50% of shoppers prefer to support small businesses over purchasing from industry behemoths.
To attract and convert your ideal customers, smaller B2C brands must find new ways to stand out.
How to solve it:
- Differentiate through storytelling: People make buying decisions based on emotion. Share your brand’s story, mission, and values to connect with your ideal customers on a personal level.
- Build a community: Around 60% of customers stay loyal to a brand if they feel they belong to a community. Interact with your customers on social media, build exclusive online forums, and share user-generated content to show them how valued they are.
- Leverage interactive experiences: If you run a boutique clothing business, a quiz such as “What’s your Sustainable Fashion Personality” will engage customers in a way that larger brands might not.
Another way you can gain customers over industry giants is by providing huge value from a video mini-course.
For example: if you run a small fitness studio, your competition is likely a big-name gym with a low monthly membership fee.
You could use ScoreApp to attract new members with a fitness video course covering different fitness routines. This gives prospective clients a bite-sized experience of working with you before they buy, which has huge personal value.
You can then use the data you collect through your sign-up quiz to segment your audience and send them tailored advice on getting started in the gym, before offering them a free trial.
The result? A highly engaged audience that transforms into committed clients!
5. Managing rising customer acquisition costs
Why it’s a challenge:
Getting a good ROI on your marketing spend is becoming more difficult.
The online advertising space is becoming increasingly crowded, which has led to increased competition and ad costs.
Combine this with the fact that customer acquisition costs have risen, on average, by 60% in the last five years, and it is clear that B2C businesses need to become more creative to bring in new leads and get the most out of their marketing spend.
How to solve it:
- Prioritize organic lead generation: Instead of relying on paid ads to generate new customers, use a ScoreApp quiz to capture leads in a more in-depth and engaging way.
- Optimize your quiz for referrals: Offer customers an incentive – such as a discount or free delivery – to share their quiz results on social media. This can help you simultaneously attract new leads and improve customer retention rates!
- Use data-driven decision-making: With ScoreApp analytics, you can easily track conversion rates to refine and improve your marketing strategy.
If you want to gauge interest in a new product without spending a fortune on lead generation, why not set up a waitlist?
With a waitlist, you can collect invaluable insights in the run-up to launching a new product or service, and build excitement by drip-feeding information to your audience.
With ScoreApp, you can set up a waitlist for your B2C business in minutes. Here are a few templates you can use as inspiration:
Join the Waitlist Example 1 Template
Join the Waitlist Example 2 Template
6. Dealing with long sales cycles
Why it’s a challenge:
The length of your sales process will depend on your industry and the products you sell. Sometimes it can take minutes, weeks, or even months to move a prospect from an interested browser to a fully-fledged customer.
Typically, the more an item costs, the longer it takes to convert a customer.
No matter what your business sells, there are key ways to speed up the purchasing journey – and it all starts with providing as much value as possible.
How to solve it:
- Create lead nurturing campaigns: Set up email marketing journeys based on quiz results to keep leads engaged with high-value, personalized educational content.
- Create urgency: Share limited-time offers or incentives to create a feeling of exclusivity and encourage faster decision-making.
- Host educational webinars: Live events like webinars can help prospects move through the decision stage much faster, as you can directly interact with qualified leads. With a webinar funnel, you can also ask engaging questions that help ensure your event is as useful as possible for your target audience.
7. Handling customer objections
Why it’s a challenge:
Customers always want to be sure they are making the right purchasing decision.
This means that objections can arise throughout the B2C sales process in the form of:
- Price concerns
- Product skepticism
- A lack of product understanding
As a brand, your responsibility is to overcome as many of these objections as possible to keep people moving through your B2C sales and marketing funnel.
Often, your ability to meet objections comes directly from your sales enablement content.
How to solve it:
- Address concerns with interactive content: for example, a profile quiz like ‘Are Organic Skincare Products Worth It?’ can educate and convert hesitant buyers by addressing their objections throughout the quiz questions and providing customized results pages that match their concerns and requirements.
- Showcase social proof: Prominently display customer reviews, testimonials, and success stories across your social media channels, emails, and website. Over 40% of customers prefer user-generated content to content created by businesses. Don’t forget to prioritize UGC as a key part of your marketing strategy!
- Use ScoreApp follow-ups: You could set up customer segments based on specific objections, and then send personalized responses based on quiz results to address them.
8. Scaling while maintaining a personal touch
Why it’s a challenge:
As you grow, it gets harder to keep marketing and communication personalized.
But when over 70% of customers only respond to personalized communications and bespoke experiences can turn over 50% of consumers into repeat customers, it is critical to keep the personal touch front and center of your marketing and sales strategy.
Artificial Intelligence tools make it easier to provide personalized experiences at scale.
From AI chatbots to ScoreApp’s quiz builder, the key is finding the tools that help your business make every customer feel like they have a personal relationship with your brand.
How to solve it:
- Maintain engagement with interactive tools: When done correctly, automation creates a sense of direct communication that keeps your customers involved and invested in your brand. For example: send regular surveys to your audience to collect insights and make your customers feel like their opinion is valued.
- Automate personalization: Use ScoreApp’s segmentation tools to send targeted follow-ups to your customers based on their unique situation. Once the setup work is complete, your leads will receive personalized messages and offers on autopilot.
How ScoreApp helps overcome B2C sales challenges
ScoreApp makes it easier than ever to overcome your sales challenges and generate leads for your B2C sales funnel, through:
- Interactive lead magnets – Build engaging quizzes, assessments, surveys, and video mini-courses – alongside beautiful personalized results pages – that provide incredible value to every potential customer.
- Automated segmentation – Data analysis becomes automatic, as ScoreApp groups your leads based on their interests to provide targeted follow-up opportunities.
- Email & CRM integrations – Streamline communications and lead nurturing. ScoreApp connects with over 3000 marketing tools – including CRMs and email marketing software – to build an all-in-one B2C sales and marketing funnel.
- Analytics & insights – ScoreApp tracks data and engagement to the most granular details, so you can continuously refine and optimize your lead generation strategies.
Turn your B2C sales challenges into opportunities
No matter the industry, every B2C business will experience sales challenges. With the right strategies, tools, and support in place, you can transform them into real opportunities for growth.
You can use ScoreApp to create an end-to-end B2C sales and marketing funnel.
Alongside creating interactive lead magnets in minutes, our quiz software helps you create personalized content and make data-driven decisions to boost conversions and build lasting customer relationships.
We want to give you the support you need to refine your lead-generation efforts and overcome sales challenges.
Our library of resources includes:
- Dozens of ready-to-use quiz templates
- Canva designs
- Social media templates
- Follow-up email swipe files
And much more!
Ready to transform your B2C sales strategy? Try ScoreApp today and launch a quiz for FREE!
