CAN WE USE B2C MARKETING FUNDAMENTALS IN B2B MARKETING?

Honestly, the idea of incorporating B2C Principles and methodologies onto a B2B Marketing Niche sounds ever so promising and challenging at the same time. This is the first time, since I started content marketing, that I have delved deep into a topic and luckily I have been able to come up with a few principles and methodologies Niche B2B Industries can adopt for their marketing strategies. Yes, It's possible.

But first, let's start off by stating the important differences between B2B and B2C Marketing that every budding and aspiring marketer should know about.

Business-to-business (B2B) marketing is the practice of marketing goods and services to companies rather than individuals (B2C).

When you start selling to companies rather than customers, you quickly realize that different rules and regulations apply. Yes, the fundamental rules remain the same; you will continue to conduct email campaigns, segment your audiences, and attempt to quantify response rates and ROI. However, there are significant variations in how you handle business-to-consumer marketing and how you can approach B2B marketing strategy.

What distinguishes B2B marketing from B2C marketing?

The fundamental explanation why B2B marketing is distinct is simple: businesses are not the same as individual customers, and they act differently when making purchasing decisions.

Buyers are more responsible and logical.

As independent buyers, we are both aware of our freedom to purchase products we desire but don't really need, mostly on the spur of the moment. However, in a corporate setting, we are not investing our own money; we are, understandably, more responsible to others and must defend buying decisions to peers and the organization as a whole.

There are only fewer buyers available

Simply put, the number of businesses that may be interested in purchasing the product or service is much less than the number of possible buyers for a mass-market consumer product – may be in the hundreds rather than millions. Furthermore, the size gap between your biggest and smallest customers is expected to be far larger. This has some significant implications: an individual customer is more important and is worth working hard to transform and maintain, while an SME customer would more likely need a different strategy than an enterprise client.

Relationships should last longer, ideally

A company buyer's order is often just the start of their partnership with you as a supplier. Business customers typically need (and expect) more after-sales service and assistance. Since consumers are rare, the advantages of keeping them are greater – and the costs of losing them are worse.

Having an end-to-end perspective of each customer, from initial touch to the transaction and beyond, can be a valuable asset in B2B sales and marketing. Sharing customer data and reporting among marketing, sales, and customer support will boost customer satisfaction by ensuring that leads are properly formed and service problems do not slip through the cracks.

Personal relationships are more significant

Longer-term partnerships and smaller buyers characterize B2B distribution and marketing. As a result, B2B businesses aim to focus more on salespeople and account managers who can build and retain meaningful relationships with clients, learning about their interests and assisting them through their shopping process and beyond.

As a result, effective B2B marketing necessitates detailed, up-to-date consumer knowledge to facilitate this relationship-building operation. Your CRM can enable you to monitor a customer's interaction with your company from the first contact to purchase and beyond. A structure in which marketing, distribution, and other teams share the same customer details and can see each other's operation allows you to really organize the marketing in a customer-focused manner.

To summarise:

Fewer consumers with more strict purchasing requirements need more cooperation and coordination from the marketing, sales, and customer service departments in business-to-business marketing.

WILL B2C MARKETING PRINCIPLES WORK FOR NICHE B2B MARKETING INDUSTRIES?

When it comes to a company's marketing strategy, there is undeniably a gap between B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) campaigns. Despite the fact that you are selling a good or service to humans in all scenarios, there is a significant variation in the direction we can take.

To truly comprehend where these disparities stem from and why practices in B2C marketing will be insufficient in B2B, we must consider many factors, including customer preferences, marketing material, and marketing platforms.

What are the interests of the buyers?

When it comes to B2B markets, the topmost priority for businesses is to save time, capital, and energy. As a result, there isn't much room for emotional appeal. Most businesses in the B2B market base their purchasing decisions primarily on the characteristics and technical specifications of the product under consideration.

In B2C markets, the focus is not only on the product's value but also on the emotional side of the product. While B2C customers seek value in deals and entertainment, B2B customers seek quality and experience.

Content for Marketing

Finding a message that will reach the right demographic in the right manner is one of the most difficult challenges of applying B2C marketing campaigns in comparison to B2B marketing. Although B2C social media actions can selectively focus on amusing and shareable material, B2B viewers may choose a promotional pitch tailored to them or extremely informative content on B2B marketplace sites.

In general, B2B customers enjoy ideas that are short, easy, and catchy. B2B customers, on the other hand, expect a longer marketing message that covers all of the requisite information and gets right to the point.

In addition, business jargon is widely used in B2B advertisements, but in B2C campaigns, the message can be written in layman's terms so that it is understandable to the substantial majority of customers.

Channels of Marketing

B2B advertisers are constantly on the lookout for alternative platforms and channels to generate more leads. However, actually replicating the networks used in B2C projects seldom yields the desired outcomes. This is particularly true in social media. While some of the most popular B2C campaigns in recent years have been done on Facebook Live, this strategy does not actually work with B2B campaigns. A B2B corporation, for example, will profit far more from webinars or physical conferences.

This limitation also relates to tools like Snapchat and Pinterest. While these sites are excellent for targeting a B2C audience, it is difficult to find B2B decision-makers on them. And if B2B decision-makers are frequent users of these platforms, they would almost never purchase a product or service via the site. A company executive, on the other hand, would have a much higher chance of conversion if they came across the same goods or services on a B2B marketplace website.

Many marketing tactics that work on a B2C audience clearly do not apply to a B2B world, no matter how simple it can make a marketer's task. As a result, it is important to understand the needs of B2B audiences in order to send the right message across the right platforms.

ON THE OTHER HAND, WHAT ARE SOME OF THE PROVEN B2C MARKETING TECHNIQUES THAT CAN BE USED FOR B2B NEEDS?

Historically, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing have occupied separate lanes in the business sector. Part of this was due to connectivity – prior to high-speed broadband, B2B businesses didn't have a convenient way to communicate directly with new clients and experiment with various marketing strategies. The impediment vanished a long time ago. Marketers now have access to a plethora of resources intended to assist them in engaging with target markets.

However, access was not the only factor that separated B2B and B2C marketing. Another significant factor was the supposed mental disparity between the two. Unlike B2C marketing, which is based on sentiment, B2B marketing is generally thought of as a logical pursuit based on raw statistics and meaning rather than emotion and brand recognition.

However, this difference has also been altered. Emotions are no longer found inappropriate in B2B marketing and, in many ways, can be used to boost sales and strengthen consumer relationships. Evidence shows that buyer patterns in industry and consumer markets are beginning to resemble one another. Approximately 71% of B2B businesses begin their study by Googling – the same approach users use to discover new goods.

Today, both companies and customers tend to buy from brands that they can relate to. Value is a major concern, but it is not the only one. Purchases are often influenced by emotional factors such as commitment, personalization, and entertainment. Having said that, it might be time for B2B marketers to take a page or two from the B2C marketing manual.

HOW TO ADOPT B2C MARKETING TECHNIQUES FOR YOUR B2B MARKETING STRATEGY?

If you plan to add B2C components into your B2B marketing, you must ensure that such strategies are fully implemented. Here are four ways to ensure that your venture into B2C strategies benefits your company:

• Do some research on the target demographic

Never undervalue the significance of understanding your audience. After all, it makes no difference what B2C campaign strategies you use if you don't know who you're aiming to target. Begin the audience research by looking at the market.

After that, you should pull current user info. Even if you haven't been too diligent about collecting input from your customers, you most likely have asked them a few simple questions when they first signed up. When it comes to understanding your target demographic, seemingly insignificant details like email address, organization, job description, and position can be extremely helpful.

Then, contact and talk with real clients. Choose a dozen people and contact them through videoconferencing or phone calls. This is an excellent way to supplement your analysis and obtain personal touchpoints to close the holes in your internal data reports. This exercise can also show what distinguishes the products in the minds of customers. A complete image of your target demographic is essential for successful emotional marketing.

• Create a strategy

After you've completed your analysis and identified a demographic that is expected to be open to B2C marketing, it's time to develop an action plan. There's no reason to be too optimistic or abstract – at least not at first. Instead, concentrate on how your business strategy will complement your organization's current objectives and how you will communicate your strategy to customers.

A B2C marketing campaign should not be a mirror copy of a B2B strategy. This business plan will assist you in determining who you're attempting to sell to and the message that would be more successful in reaching them. It separates out a number of items, such as the value propositions, cost structure, consumer categories, and anticipated platforms. When planning something different, having a bird's-eye view of where the company is and what you intend to do with your marketing campaign can be immensely beneficial.

Having it obvious that you believe your B2C marketing tactics would help the business is just as critical as nailing down the how of your campaign. Your CEO will almost certainly question you if this proposal will create income; make sure you have a response prepared.

• Commence little by little

It might be tempting to leap in now that you have an audience and a schedule, but it is still not time yet. It's quick to overestimate your time and money at the beginning and bite off more than you can chew. It's possible that your targeted audience isn't interested in B2C marketing tactics, in which case you might waste a lot of money and get very little in return.

Rather, think small. Concentrate on small tasks, such as modifying the words you use while talking to users to make it more personable or changing the colours on the page to induce unique emotions. These are subtle changes, but they can have a significant impact on how people view your brand.

Once you've changed the vocabulary to be more in line with emotional marketing tactics, look for other minor improvements. Start by crafting a narrative about your brand that can resonate with customers, or write more emotionally loaded case studies about actual customers and their stories. See what kinds of reactions these changes elicit, and then decide whether to step it up or cut the losses and do something new.

• Give it some time

In an ideal environment, you will see positive results from your recently adopted B2C marketing plan almost immediately. However, it will take some time to see the fruits of your work. That's fine! Only be sure that everyone – from the marketing staff to your CEO to the customers – understands that the results will not be imminent.

If possible, predict when you'll be able to publish results. While timelines vary, assessing outcomes every quarter is normally a safe bet. Know that it is preferable to foresee later and deliver sooner rather than the other way around. When everybody is waiting, make sure to log and calculate things on a regular basis so you know what's working and what isn't. Following that, you'll need to iterate accordingly, building on the positive and excluding the poor.

When B2B marketing becomes more emotionally focused and gaining access to customers becomes simpler than ever, the distinction between B2B and B2C marketing would get even more distorted. This provides companies with fantastic new opportunities to find and retain clients. But don't dive in without first devising a plan. When done right, you could take advantage of the best of both worlds and propel your company to new heights.