Let’s start with the why, because the why is compelling.

According to McKinsey, companies that do personalization well see up to 40% higher revenue growth. B2B companies that personalize web experiences see an average increase of 19% in sales and a 40% lift in order value. And 77% of B2B buyers say they won’t even make a purchase without personalized content. This isn’t aspirational. This is documented.

So why aren’t more B2B companies doing it?

Because personalization in B2B is fundamentally different from what most people think it is. It’s not personalized banners. It’s not a hero image. Those things are nice. But the real opportunity — the revenue opportunity — lives much deeper. It lives in how you merchandise the site. How search works. How catalog and content shape themselves around who the customer is and what they’re trying to do.

And here’s the thing I need to say upfront: I actually don’t love the word “personalization” in B2B. As Val’s post also speaks to, the account is the master. That’s where the contract lives, where the pricing is defined, where the relationship exists. People matter, absolutely — but in B2B, the account is the unit that matters most. So when I say personalization, what I really mean is: shaping the experience around the account, its users, and its needs.

That distinction matters because it changes everything about how you approach it.

Let’s start with the why, because the why is compelling.

According to McKinsey, companies that do personalization well see up to 40% higher revenue growth. B2B companies that personalize web experiences see an average increase of 19% in sales and a 40% lift in order value. And 77% of B2B buyers say they won’t even make a purchase without personalized content. This isn’t aspirational. This is documented.

So why aren’t more B2B companies doing it?

Because personalization in B2B is fundamentally different from what most people think it is. It’s not personalized banners. It’s not a hero image. Those things are nice. But the real opportunity — the revenue opportunity — lives much deeper. It lives in how you merchandise the site. How search works. How catalog and content shape themselves around who the customer is and what they’re trying to do.

And here’s the thing I need to say upfront: I actually don’t love the word “personalization” in B2B. As Val’s post also speaks to, the account is the master. That’s where the contract lives, where the pricing is defined, where the relationship exists. People matter, absolutely — but in B2B, the account is the unit that matters most. So when I say personalization, what I really mean is: shaping the experience around the account, its users, and its needs.

That distinction matters because it changes everything about how you approach it.

Here’s the part nobody wants to hear: B2B personalization is not about the platform. It’s about the data and the platform. In that order.

You can have the most capable e-commerce platform on the market. But if you don’t have the underlying data, you’re not personalizing anything. You’re guessing. And in B2B, the data doesn’t just show up. You have to go get it. You have to build the process. You have to make it a discipline — a strategic one.

BTW, I define this as perhaps the most distinct difference between B2B and B2C eCommerce — and a true differentiator when it comes to the platforms. In B2C, personalization can easily be derived from the online behavior (landing page, search terms, pages visited, etc.). In B2B it’s shaped around the context of the relationship — which fundamentally starts offline.

While not all-inclusive, here are the areas that will matter in what you deliver inside the eCom platform.

Segmentation

This is the lowest-hanging fruit, and it’s where you should start if you don’t have it today. If you’re a distributor, what markets do you serve? If you’re a manufacturer, what markets do you manufacture for? Understanding this segmentation unlocks your ability to merchandise the site better — from search results to content to category pages. It translates to both a better experience and better revenue.

If you don’t have segmentation data, start building it now. Your sales team is a great place to begin. Whether it’s account by account or leveraging what’s already in your CRM, put a process in place. This is foundational.

Roles

Especially as you deal with larger enterprises, there are multiple roles involved in the buying process. Specification roles. Design roles. Purchasing. Project management. Each of these roles has different needs, different behaviors, and different expectations of your site. You need to be capturing this information. Your sales team is a great source here too, and you’d be surprised what tools like Apollo, ZoomInfo, or similar services can do to augment what you already know. The point is: you need role data to deliver role-relevant experiences.

Behavioral Data

This is the online side. What are users doing on your site? What are they browsing, what content are they consuming, what assets are they downloading, what are they searching for? When you can associate this data with specific accounts or user types, it becomes incredibly powerful for shaping the experience in real time. Understanding which content types drive engagement by segment or role, and what customers are searching for, gives you the signals to start personalizing search, merchandising, and content before a customer ever picks up the phone.

Historical Data

This is the transactional side — and most of it lives outside of your e-commerce platform entirely. Orders, revenue, equipment owned, products purchased. Your ERP has data your e-commerce platform has never seen. Your sales team knows things your website doesn’t. This is the record of who your customers actually are and what they’ve done. Understanding what they’ve bought, what equipment they run, and what their purchasing patterns look like gives you the foundation to recommend, suggest, and guide their experience. This is what Val cites often as the “jobs to be done” — what is the customer actually trying to do, and what triggers tell you where they are in the process?

Here’s the important nuance for B2B specifically: behavioral data tends to live online. Historical data tends to live offline. If you’re only looking at one side, you’re only seeing half the picture. You need a process for gathering and connecting the two.

This is actually the most fundamental piece of the entire personalization conversation. Because on the platform side — which I’m about to get to — there are capabilities that need to exist. But without the underlying data, those capabilities are empty. You’re building a race car with no fuel.

This is the part that excites me most, honestly, because this is where the misconceptions live. People hear “personalization” and they think sales messaging — promotions, pop-ups, etc. But the real opportunity is so much bigger than that.

When you start considering the value of personalizing search results, category pages, recommendations and B2B merchandising — that’s where conversion goes through the roof. That’s where you start seeing the kind of revenue impact the research talks about.

In my opinion, there are four pillars that need to be solved for, in terms of platform capabilities. And this is honestly where the real difference between platforms shows up — the ones that are built for B2B merchandising out of the box versus the ones that will cost you a significant amount of money in customization to get there.

Customer Data and Attributes

Can your platform support custom customer attributes? And more importantly, can those attributes be leveraged across the experience — not just in a profile, but in search, in content, in pricing, in catalog visibility? This is the foundation. If your platform doesn’t let you attach rich, custom data to customers and accounts — and then use that data elsewhere — you’re going to hit a wall before you start.

The Customer Experience Layer

This is the layer that allows you to actually do something with those attributes. Can you embed data objects into content pages based on customer attributes? Can you guide search results by customer segment or role? Can you shape what content, assets, and product information a user sees based on their profile? The question you need to answer is: can the customer experience be defined by customer attributes? This is the critical platform capability, and it’s the dividing line between platforms that are architected for B2B personalization and the ones that weren’t.

The Catalog

Fundamentally, eCommerce is about the catalog. As such, the catalog needs to be built for B2B personalization as well. Can you define attributes in the catalog that are specific to customer types, roles, or segments? Can you shape what products are visible, how they’re sorted, what’s merchandised to whom? One way or another, there has to be a relationship between the catalog and the customer. Without that relationship, there’s no mechanism to define how the experience looks for different users.

Account Structure and Inheritance

This is arguably the most fundamental capability — and frankly, you’d be surprised how many supposed eCom platforms don’t handle this elegantly. In B2B, segments, pricing, catalogs, and permissions are typically defined at the account level. From there, inheritance needs to happen within the users inside the organization — even though those users may have different roles, different permissions, and different needs. This inheritance model is what makes B2B personalization structurally different from B2C. If your platform can’t handle it natively, you could be looking at some sizable customization just to get the basics right.

B2B personalization is a massive opportunity. And, in all honesty, even some of the more mature organizations we deal with are really just scratching the surface. The capability gap is real, and the complexity is legitimate.

But to do it right, you have to understand that it’s not just a technology problem. It’s a data problem and a technology problem. You need the discipline to gather and organize the data — segmentation, roles, behavioral signals, transactional history. And you need a platform that can actually leverage that data to shape the experience.

At the core of all of this is the idea of relational capability inside your e-commerce platform. Products need to relate to accounts. Accounts need to relate to segments. The experience needs to relate to the customer data that defines who someone is and what they need. If those relationships don’t exist natively in your platform — if you can’t connect the catalog, the customer, and the experience through data — you don’t have the underpinnings necessary for B2B personalization. Full stop

Get those things in alignment, and the upside is immense. The research proves it. The question is where you start — and having an honest assessment of where you stand today is the first step.

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