B2B & B2C Marketing strategy

In an increasingly competitive media landscape, finding the right media channel and target audience is of paramount importance. Over the next five minutes, I’m going to talk about the following topics that are critical to planning B2B and B2C campaigns:

Difference between B2B & B2C?

• B2B stands for Business to business where companies sell their products and services to other companies for e.g. Cisco sells their Security products or AWS sells their cloud services to other companies.

• B2C stand for Business to consumers where companies sell their products and services to Consumers for e.g. Puma sells their sport shoes or Zara sells their clothes to customers

Planning guidelines for B2B & B2c

There are four key principles that will determine the correct approach for any enterprise.

1. Target audience – The primary difference between the B2B and B2C segments is the target audience. Getting the right audience for a product is incredibly important. In B2B, you need to identify the decision makers within a company who will be involved in making a decision to buy products/services. According to the latest survey of a high technology brand, in a business organization, about 21 people are involved in a buying team. So, in B2B, we reach a very niche set of audiences that is decided depending on the brand product and the audience character is created.

When, as in B2C, you attempt to reach a single decision-maker who is looking to buy a product for their own use or for the family.

2. Decision Making process – In B2B Marketing, decision-making can take long time before finalizing and it can be due to many factors like many stakeholders are involved in the buying decision, company budget etc. Sales cycle can start from 3 months to even a year or more. In B2B, it is very important to continue to nurture your target audience with relevant content for a longer period of time. In B2C a consumer may decide within minutes or days, the selling cycle tends to be much shorter.

3. Messaging – Content plays a critical role in communication with the B2B and B2C audiences. B2B messages must be processed on the basis of the user’s purchase stage. The content of B2B advertising must be business-oriented and emphasize the logic and benefits that the enterprise can achieve. In contrast to B2C marketing, messages can be more relaxed and relate to their target audience either through emotional advertisements or simple advertisements that are the voice of the customer. Many B2C companies do a lot of research and come up with phrases that relate to their audience.

4. How to select the channel in order to reach the right audience?

I think the planning should be audience-based rather than channel-based. Therefore, the activation of syndication will depend on the audience behaviour, messaging, format and purpose of the campaign.  In all planning, we need to consider the full buyer journey: The interaction with a specific persona will differ based on their role and stage within the buyer’s journey. We have to be visible and reach our target audience with relevant paid media channels and content opportunities to drive them toward conversion.