If you’re aiming your marketing at other businesses, there are some key differences you need to understand. Here’s what you need to know.
Every business has its own unique demographic to which they tailor their marketing.
You might be marketing to urban, professional men with high disposable incomes; your targeted audience might be young people, with lower incomes, but with high interest in brands and making TikTok videos.
But what if your core business isn’t selling products or services to individuals, but rather to other businesses?
It’s called B2B marketing, and if you’re aiming your marketing at other businesses, there are some key differences you need to understand. We’re breaking it down for you.
What is B2B marketing?
B2B is shorthand for business-to-business and refers to the marketing activities conducted by a business to other businesses.
Marketing to businesses differs from marketing to customers, right through the customer buying cycle.
The purpose of B2B marketing is to make other businesses familiar with your brand name and the value of your product or service, and to convert them into customers, which are objectives not dissimilar to marketing to customers.
It’s the demographic of the customer that makes marketing to them unique.
What’s the difference between B2B and B2C marketing?
There are some key differences between business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketing.
To begin with, B2B customers usually involve more than one decision maker, whereas B2C customers are individuals; and there’s usually a smaller pool of potential B2B customers than B2C customers.
Also, return on investment (ROI) is something B2B customers think about; less so B2C customers.
B2C customers tend to be led by emotion and respond well to brand awareness, whereas B2B customers need to justify their decision making and tend to want more details and specifics.
Business relationships are important to B2B customers, whereas B2C customers care less about that and more about their relationship with the brand.
What is the B2B marketing journey?
The buying cycle of B2B marketing looks on the surface very similar to B2C buying cycle – it’s the marketing to each of the stages where the difference lies.
The awareness stage is at the very top of the funnel and it’s where customers start realising they have a problem to fix. This is where B2B customers want detail – they need to understand in great detail why your product or service will solve their problem and why your business is the one to fix it.
The next stage is consideration, when the customer weighs up all the information in order to make a decision. Timeliness is important here. Knowing your potential customer is set to make a decision allows you to be front and centre, presenting your perfect solution and any other benefits your competitors may lack, as well as why you are better than your competitors.
The customer then makes a decision. Here’s where marketers reinforce why they have made the best decision and set in place the beginnings of the relationship.
Finally, there’s the retention stage. B2B marketing doesn’t end when the contract is signed, it just enters a new phase, a phase when relationships are forged, developed and grown. Businesses are often obligated to regularly review their supplier decisions, so constant reinforcement is required.
What are some B2B marketing strategies?
Here are some quick things you can do right now to bolster your B2B marketing efforts:
Know your audience
Understanding your customers, what issues they face, and what they are looking for in their suppliers is essential to determining how to market to them.
Work out your goals
Defining your goals will help you develop your marketing strategy, marketing budgets, and the marketing activities you undertake.
Be across your value proposition
What is it that you offer that your competitors don’t? Your marketing messaging should leverage this advantage.
Plan your marketing activities
How are you going to reach potential customers and what are you going to offer them? It’s crucial to have a sound marketing plan to ensure you can return the best result possible from your marketing activities.
Create marketing content
Once you know who you want to reach and how you plan to market to them, creating content will give your audience what they need to work through their buying journey. Remember, businesses make decisions based on research and ROI – they are not interested in emotive language, but respond better to short, sharp facts and detailed specifications. Let this approach shine through in your content marketing.
B2B marketing done right
Given that B2B marketing requires unique and specific marketing strategies, it’s an area where it’s worth bringing in the B2B marketing professionals.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne with the expertise and experience to deliver B2B marketing strategies that really yield results.
To find out how we can help your business, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or send us a note via the contact form below.