b2b marketing vs. b2c marketing

B2B Marketing vs. B2C Marketing

When it comes to your marketing efforts, it may seem at times like you are doing a lot of what you think you are supposed to be doing, only to be met with some underwhelming results. You may have accounts on all the necessary social media platforms, updated your website and even dabbled in paid advertising and still, you are not seeing the returns that most of these tactics guarantee. Believe it or not, it may be a matter of tweaking your strategies to suit the vastly difference sales cycles and your buyer’s needs. There are notable differences when marketing to a consumer versus marketing to other businesses. In this blog post, we will highlight some major distinctions between B2B marketing vs. B2C marketing which may allow you to adjust your sails and change course.
 
When you are marketing to a B2B, most businesses are aiming to streamline their existing processes in hopes of saving valuable time and money. Your marketing should be speaking directly to solutions that will benefit a business’s revenue streams and make their business more efficient.
 
A potential transaction for a B2B often requires a lot of research and consideration. Also, the cost of a sale for a B2B company is typically more expensive and much longer than a sale for a B2C company. Based on this fact, your marketing must be logical and answer what their potential ROI is (return on investment). What are the features of your product that will garner a favourable ROI for your client? How do the businesses you are marketing to operate? What are the roles within an organization that will use your product/service? What is important to those people? When you focus on these questions, the focus will shift from your product, to the individuals using the product and its impact on the business as a whole.
 
For example, OnePosting is a client of ours who provides accounting software to organizations seeking to automate the invoicing process digitally. Some of their marketing includes:

  • How their solution will reduce wasted paper, long approval processes and the accuracy of information on an invoice. Essentially these are some of the pain points a busy accounting professional may experience, which are the driving forces behind OnePosting’s marketing.
  • OnePosting’s blog posts and supporting material are geared toward educating a visitor on helpful accounting tips and may provide insight into how digital invoices are vital to getting paid faster! Content marketing is a great way to get the right information into the hands of your prospects when it is most relevant to them.
  • Separate landing pages are created on each feature of their solution that may appeal to a different part of the accounting process (accounts receivable vs. accounts payable) which in turn, may appeal to different roles within an accounting team. This helps to generate ads or social posts to have a laser focus on the different types of problems they can solve.
  • Their marketing also includes a healthy mix of industry trends and global topics to promote thought leadership and further aid their prospect in their research.

This is not to say a B2B doesn’t use any emotion in decision making what-so-ever, because what you are doing is building trust, however, your marketing should support your client’s motivations with facts, data and professional advice.
 
When you are marketing to a consumer, the sales cycle tends to be more immediate, a potential sale can take minutes rather than days. This will require your marketing to focus on convenience to facilitate a purchase. Your marketing will demand that you make your product available on a variety of channels, which not only promotes brand awareness, but you are making your product significantly more accessible. Your marketing needs to be clear, to the point, and similarly to B2B marketing, highlight how this product will benefit them. How does your product benefit someone personally? Instead of a free download of a white paper as mentioned above in our B2B example, a B2C marketer will offer a discount or a limited time offer. This incentive provides instant gratification to your buyer. Furthermore, when forming a marketing strategy, you are looking at other aspects of your buyer such as age, gender, interests and hobbies, that you wouldn’t typically need to consider as in depth for a B2B prospect.
 
In both instances, you are still marketing to people at the end of the day, the major differences are the decision makers, the sales cycle and using the appropriate channels effectively.
 

B2B Marketing vs. B2C Marketing