In the market update held on 5th September 2022, with the topic “B2B Marketing in Digital Marketing Era”, Binus Business School (Creative Marketing) invited Rhendy Purwadi Indradjaja,MM. To share about his experiences in B2B marketing in the digital era, he had over fifteen years experience in marketing and business development initiatives. Rhendy is the Country Manager in DCH Auriga, and he had many B2B marketing experiences in Southeast Asia. Why is this topic important for Rhendy? Because when covid-19 happened in quarter one of 2020, it accelerated any company’s needs to go digital, including the world of B2B.

In this market update, Rhendy brings up the real case that DCH Auriga Indonesia was working on with its partners, Unilever Professional. Unilever works with DCH Auriga to build new divisions/B2B professional Model. That is because Unilever thinks that retail segments are something that they have a power over, but they need to growth even bigger, that is why Unilever wants to build B2B professional Model, because the scope of B2B market is very wide. To be able to enter this sector, Unilever needs some experts who knows inside and outside about retail/expertise working in the B2B world. The way to provide solutions to the B2B world is to understand the existing working situation and conditions which will be the benchmark in designing solutions to the B2B world, because the intensity is different from the existing personal situation.

Unilever penetrates the market approach in three segments/pillars, there are hospitality, food services, and commercial laundry. The segments of hospitality are Non stars hotel, 2-3 stars Hotel, and 4 starts Hotel above. In Food Services pillar, there are three segments, full service, quick service, and medium/large operations. And the last pillar, commercial laundry has three segments, there are Laundry kilos, Laundry & Dry Cleaning, and Medium/large franchise.

After the market is defined, They need to make market strategy. In this step, Unilever dan DCH supply the products to any channels like e-commerce, but Any wholesaler, cash and carry, and also before that, they still do direct sales, but they focus to what do they do in B2B digital era on e-commerce especially in the professional segments for accommodate demand in e-commerce before and after covid-19. As a company, they should adapt to the changes like Covid-19, for the real case is that E-Commerce highly important to help the company sales to survive and sustain in pandemic era so Unilever could serve customer needs.

The important one to do B2B marketing in Digital Era is Building Digital Ecosystem. The things needed in digital ecosystem are:

• Dynamic website, because most buyers will start their due diligence through a website fot building credibility. Unilever Professional Website contains the type of business, product, sharing session (virtual usage guide), and cleaning expert. Next they serve the menu for retail, and also The website and e-commerce must be connected, so that buying and selling transactions can still be done. The last menu is Virtual tools, in this step Unilever will give consumers what is the best product solution to your problems/needs

• Social media Presence, a brand need to build some presence in social media platform. Unilever Professional is active on instagram @unileverprofessional_id, the brand approach includes laundry, restaurant, cleaning products, etc. The goal is to share their brand story and awareness. The Instagram approach is important, because nowadays people have more screen time on Instagram than on the website.
• Sales force application, sales call planning and analytics with geo tagging and real time inventory visibility.
• Availability in Key marketplace It’s hard to build website, so they can start from small things like selling products in E-Commerce. Unilever must exist in various marketplaces. To be able to manage all these marketplaces, Unilever must install detailed stock if they have multiple marketplaces. To avoid stock errors in various E-commerce applications, namely API (application programming, interface) which is a program that can handle multiple marketplaces at once so that inventory is controlled, promo settings are controlled, all in one interface.

B2B is a wide business sector, the marketing of B2B must transform and adapt with the newest Digital Era. To explore the B2B Marketing in digital era, we must clearly do the market overview to know the right segment to our business, make market strategy, and build digital ecosystem.