The line between B2C and B2B experiences is fading quickly. What digitalization has served up for the buying public (responsiveness, personalized digital experiences, and seamless customer journeys) is gathering pace within the supply chain. And against this backdrop, legacy sales practices are left exposed and ineffective.

This is the age of “Amazonification” in B2B. Customers increasingly expect the same speed, transparency and convenience that they enjoy as consumers. Buyers and supply chain leaders are frustrated by the frictions of slow-moving email negotiations, dated PDF catalogs, and opaque pricing. Of course they are; it’s been decades since consumers had to tolerate them.

This realization isn’t lost on the digital-first millennials now moving into leadership positions within manufacturing. As the industry welcomes a generational change among its buyers, sellers throughout the chain must respond to evolving buying preferences, and serve up the experiences their customers are coming to expect.

But if the industry is grappling with a shake-up precipitated by B2C, it can also look to B2C for the answers. There, omnichannel has emerged as the defining marketing and sales strategy, providing customers with a seamless, integrated experience across all channels,  whether online, in-store, mobile, social, phone, or any other touchpoint. The move to omnichannel business selling is well underway, and the change will be permanent.

Previously, we’ve looked at the hidden cost of expansion, and the price businesses pay for failing to adapt. Here, we look in more depth at how manufacturers can adapt and thrive amid fast-paced, buyer-driven change.

The shift toward B2C expectations in manufacturing

It’s instructive to look at how consumer buying expectations translate into B2B behavior and preferences. Business buyers increasingly prefer to undertake a self-directed buyer journey, drawing on multi-channel digital research to evaluate potential products, manufacturing partners, and their pricing.

B2B buyers now spend more than two-thirds of their buying journey researching before they even contact shortlisted sellers. According to McKinsey’s 2024 B2B Pulse Survey, business-buyers today use an average of ten distinct interaction channels in their purchasing journeys, and at any stage of the buy-cycle roughly one-third prefer in-person engagement, one-third remote interaction, and one-third digital self-service. This was true even as long ago as 2021 – double the number of channels the same survey had found just five years earlier.

This leaves a smaller window to influence the decision. If product data, specs and pricing are inconsistent across channels or not available in their preferred language, buyers will move on before sales is even in the conversation,

Consumers have long shown a preference for localized language in digital buying experiences, so it’s no surprise that the same holds true in business. However, with more exacting demands and less tolerance for complexity, businesses are now even more demanding in this regard.

Research across B2B buyers in 28 countries found that 66% were either likely or very likely to pay more for a product that was localized, rather than in a foreign language (almost twice the proportion (34%) of consumers who said the same).

Against this backdrop, B2B manufacturers face pressure to create suitable digital experiences. Consumers have long become used to always-on and self-service platforms.

Business buyers also expect the flexibility to research, specify and order products when it suits them. This change is more pronounced given that centers of manufacturing may not align with their buyers. For example, a garment manufacturer in the Philippines may be buying components from India; 3,000 miles, 2 ½ hours, and multiple languages away.

Geographical separation adds to the challenges of providing businesses with seamless buying journeys.

While modern logistics can conquer distance, manufacturers’ sales and marketing platforms need to work asynchronously to the business, providing data and quotes whatever the hour, and accepting orders whenever they come. Here, highly relevant adaptation comes to the fore, and companies get it wrong at their peril.

Yet there’s already evidence that manufacturers are drawing on lessons learned from the B2C value chain to offer compelling business buyer experiences.

When asked, 36% of B2B customers graded their most recent digital purchasing experiences as an ‘A’ (Excellent: Outstanding satisfaction; the experience met or exceeded expectations), with a massive 49% awarding them a ‘B’ (Good: Positive experience; met expectations but not outstanding). Much of this satisfaction is driven by the adoption of omnichannel, coordinated digital journeys, as pioneered within B2C.

Manufacturers adopting omnichannel are able to offer the experiences commonly enjoyed within B2C. By meeting customers where and when they’re actively looking, manufacturers raise awareness, putting themselves under consideration from the earliest stages of the sales funnel.

Using customer experience and inbound marketing platforms, they can track buyers across touchpoints, influencing and smoothing the journey, while reaching out with more relevance when buyers are ready to engage.

Omnichannel helps manufacturers begin selling their proposition and building the customer relationship before the customer realizes it’s even started, reducing the speed-to-sale once the prospect is actively looking to buy. It also supports higher conversion rates, as customers arrive at their buying decision already having been thoroughly engaged and sold on what the business has to offer.

Significantly, omnichannel is a major driver of customer loyalty. In a global sector, spanning regions, nationalities and languages and cultures, localized and fluid omnichannel experiences break down barriers, and help create and underpin valuable new partnerships.

Case studies

Omnichannel is not a channel strategy. It is an operating model built on trusted product and service information across every market. Here are two examples of manufacturers putting that model into action and how localization ensures a consistent experience wherever their customers are.

1) Turning localization into operational advantage

For instance, Toyota Technical Development Corporation (TTDC) used Phrase’s translation-management platform to streamline its multilingual documentation workflows. 

Within three months, TTDC reported more than a 20 percent improvement in work-efficiency on large-volume technical projects. By standardising terminology and automating translation memory reuse, the manufacturer was able to maintain technical accuracy while reducing time-to-market in multiple languages.

2) Delivering localized digital experiences at global scale

Mazak standardized and automated its multilingual content across 20 markets with Phrase, laying the groundwork for B2C-grade digital experiences for B2B buyers spanning product catalogs, knowledge content, and future hyperautomation, for consistent, locally relevant journeys

The localization advantage

We’ve seen across this blog series how localization sits at the very heart of delivering locally relevant customer experiences. Among rapid shifts in the way buyers find, price and buy goods, it’s essential to making the sales and marketing journey accessible, usable, and competitive. Where buyers are turned off by foreign languages and poorly translated information, nuanced and culturally aware localization emerges as a strong differentiator, and an enabler for strategic growth.

To succeed in an omnichannel, global landscape, manufacturing businesses need the capability to localize the full breadth of their activities.

This starts with product descriptions, manuals, technical documentation, and even with the products themselves. In highly technical industries, accurate information is crucial to everything from the correct fit and operation of components, through to operator safety and end-product quality.

Customers and potential customers encountering poorly translated materials will lose trust in the business’ ability to deliver and support consistent, quality products.

Here, glossary-driven translations help ensure technical accuracy, while translation memory delivers consistency in the localization of terms. Something especially important in the context of technical clarity or regulatory requirements.

Just as significantly, manufacturers need to adapt their entire digital and e-commerce presence to reflect regional languages, regulations, and business norms. By tailoring every stage of the customer journey, they can deliver intuitive, culturally relevant experiences that meet the expectations of buyers in each market. Intelligent automation supports this process (for instance, using Phrase’s integrated CMS workflows to accelerate multilingual website updates).

Competing globally also demands flexibility in pricing, offers, and compliance. Regional adaptation underpins consistent go-to-market execution, from localized promotions to legally aligned marketing materials. AI-enabled tools (such as Phrase Portal) make this scalable, empowering sales and support teams to produce market-ready content without adding pressure to central teams.

Strategic recommendations

With localized omnichannel experiences driving growth for manufacturers, how can commercial directors and other supply chain leaders exploit them to serve the needs of global buyers?

• It’s key to understand that in this market, your digital platforms are strategic assets, vital to adapting the organization to compete on new global terms. Senior leaders must champion them within the business, aligning them to organizational goals, and setting measurable targets for their performance.
• Against this, customer experience remains paramount, and should also be continually benchmarked and assessed. Manufacturers must prioritize and verify a consistent, regionally adapted experience across all channels and touchpoints: search, product specs, order flow and post-sales support.
• Finally, localization is essential to your global competitiveness. Just as omnichannel lets you reach buyers across digital channels, localization lets you talk to them on their terms, wherever it is they’re coming from. It’s not a bolt-on to think of in the closing stages, but an essential ingredient that needs to be integral from the very start of the customer journey.

In the fast-changing and competitive manufacturing landscape, achieving growth means operating across territories, and resolving all the language, time and cultural barriers that entails. Far from being a retail buzzword, omnichannel is a strategic imperative for meeting buyers where they are. Alongside it, localization ensures you know what to say to them.

In an increasingly borderless industrial economy, manufacturers that combine omnichannel engagement with culturally fluent customer experiences will define the next wave of global growth.