Your guide to business-to-business (B2B) marketing basics. A business model where two or more businesses engage in commerce are B2B businesses providing sales, products, or services to other businesses. Both businesses can be retailers, wholesalers, or manufacturers.
What is the difference between B2B ecommerce and B2C ecommerce?
The goals and targets of both B2B and B2C companies differ, and so do the marketing tactics and strategies they use. While a B2C company targets individual buyers or consumers, a B2B company focuses more on targeting entire businesses.
B2B ecommerce – utilises online platforms to sell products or services to other businesses. A company that sells office furniture or stationery, or marketing or cleaning services to other businesses would be an example of a B2B company.
B2C ecommerce – targets personal consumers.
B2B e-commerce involves heavier research, less marketing-driven buying, and has very tight parameters around the purchases.
B2B buyers are repeat purchasers and make buying decisions for entire companies, so they have a tighter remit than B2C customers.
B2B Marketing
For a B2B company to run smoothly, their marketing strategy should be executed in a specific way. B2B consumers are not impulsive or emotional buyers but have specific needs for their business needs.
Therefore, their marketing strategy should be carefully woven for the consumers.
A B2B company has its own unique set of challenges such as managing cashflows and payments or making a market presence and maintaining customer loyalty. For a good B2B marketing strategy, there are not a vast number of buyers, and the buyers are rational and answerable to the stakeholders and partners. The buyers must be sure of what they are getting and from whom they are getting.
Therefore, it is important for a B2B company to have good relationships and connections with the consumer.
A B2B company is also easily able to target potentially larger industry and succeed with them and they also offer more loyalty as compared to B2C companies resulting in them being able to strike more deals than a usual B2C company.
Target Audience
As a B2B company targets larger industries which are logic driven and long-term preference investment, they want to make sure they invested right. To achieve this goal, your B2B company should have a strong marketing strategy.
Furthermore, that should include good social media marketing as most prefer to search the internet for whatever they want, digital sales and influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing may look odd from a B2B point of view, but B2B companies are known to follow these trends and it is working quite well for them. Of course, it brings some complexities with it.
Nevertheless, contacting a blogger, a podcaster or a big name from that very business can make your work easier.
A B2B company can have a very rapid business growth as compared to a B2C company because it needs only one major deal to get their sales and business skyrocket, whereas a B2C company needs a lot of them to get to a certain point where they can consider it a success.
Benefits
There are many benefits of a business-to-business company, even more than business-to-client companies. To look at the bigger picture, a B2B company can grow sales with a smaller number of high-value deals if we compare it to a B2C company because of the bulk quantity of sales and purchase.
If you are a B2B company looking to improve your marketing strategy, talk to marketing specialists at FBS Digital by dialing 0204 526 5195, or emailing at hello@finchleybusiness.co.uk today!
