Business Basics: Differences Between B2B And B2C Marketing

On the surface, B2B and B2C concern marketing your business products and services to different types of customers. To engage in B2C marketing, you market wares to consumers. If you want to engage in B2C marketing, you reach out to other businesses. Each type of marketing has the common denominator of trying to create a need for your wares among target groups in the market, whether your consumers are people or companies.

Using Internet marketing techniques, or reaching out to customers over the World Wide Web, you can reach a wider audience. At the very least, you can build an informative website that will give consumers information they need to decide if they want to buy what you have to offer. You can also use email marketing, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, viral video marketing, and other Internet marketing strategies to expand your communications to billions of consumers. Or, at least, reaching billions is the true potential of marketing on the World Wide Web.

The great part is that Internet techniques can be had for little or no cost if you know what type of opportunities to look for. For example, if you submit an article to a free article marketing service on a topic like pressure washing a home, your article will be available to publish on any consumer or business website. When your article is published by another website, your blurb at the bottom reaches out to that site's readers, which equals a new target audience. This type of article marketing is free! Just take the time to write the articles and post them on the right article marketing sites.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing means a business like yours must create messages that will speak to people on a personal level. And these consumers have very different needs and wants, especially according to their type of household, geography, level of education, income, and personal interests. Consumers get to make their spending decisions with only small repercussions, perhaps by infuriating their spouses when they waste $200 on one of the home shopping channels.

Business-to-business (B2B) marketing requires using different strategies. According to Sherri Leopard of the Denver Business Journal, business marketers have to use factual information to make the sale. You must convince a business buyer that your offerings will be useful and create a better value for your buyer's consumers. Your buyer's senior leaders may have to justify why they purchased your products or services to their shareholders.

That is why Leopard recommends that you "focus on providing sales with the facts." You can create a B2B marketing campaign that aims to provide information that can be easily verified by business buyers. How does your product or service solve a problem for a business? How does it compare with the competition, and especially why is it better than other products? What research can support your product? What do your customers say about your products? How have your products helped other businesses?

As you write marketing material for this type of audience, look for the opportunity to include case studies, client testimonials, market research, independent testing, and other facts. Convince businesses to examine the potential Return on Investment (ROI) to be had from buying your products and services.