Digital marketers the world over should know the differences in marketing, but there is still some confusion over what the differences are between B2B marketing and B2C marketing. As you probably already know, B2B marketing focuses on the marketing from business-to-business purchasing decisions. There are logical processes involved here, where business-to-consumer marketing is mostly emotional over logical when it comes to decision making processes.
Tiga, a Creative Marketing Agency say that “There are several key factors that make B2B marketing different from its B2C counterpart. For starters, good B2B marketing tends to be more informational – focussing on the benefits offered to the business they’re selling to.” As with anything, this isn’t always cut and dry and sometimes the two marketing processes overlap. However, understanding five key differences is crucial to be able to develop a careful marketing strategy. Let’s take a look!
Customer Relationships
When it comes to management of customer relationships, a B2B marketing strategy will focus on building personal relationships as these will be responsible for driving long-term business. You can prove your ethics and morals as a business, which is crucial to continuing your business relationship. B2C marketing strategies will work to establish a transactional relationship. The whole point of B2C marketing is pushing the consumer to buy a product and drive sales!
Branding
Branding is a big part of the marketing strategy for any business, and for B2B marketing, it’s more popular with relationship building than it is anything else. B2C companies prioritize the message that they want to send and they can deliver a better, more focused message about their product with the right branding.
Decision–Making
For a B2B marketing strategy to work, it’s important that the lines of communication are maintained and open at all times. The decision making process will be open and rational to come to a good result. For B2C, the process is simplified. Whatever the conversion funnel is, B2C marketing strategies follow that funnel to the end. Consumers are more flexible when they are looking at products compared to businesses who have a specific need.
Targeting The Right Audience
A B2B business will work in a specific market. It’s because of this that understanding data implicitly is so important. You need to have someone working to compile and analyse data as accurately as possible. This includes Google Analytics and keyword research, too. A B2C business follows the sales funnel to the end and the target is spread out due to the scalability of their market!
Content & Advertising
B2B businesses will choose to buy their products and services from those who know what they are talking about. They will look at reaching their target audience by using the right language in their content and advertising. From a B2C perspective, advertising and copy is more emotional, with a relatable and trusting voice used to convince the consumer to buy. When advertising is emotional, it gets to the heart of the consumer and they are then compelled to buy.
- DISCLOSURE – This post has been written by an outside source
