Have you heard about B2B and B2C marketing? As a business owner, you have to explore different strategies of marketing due to the level of competition in the online market. To get sales these days is no more a child’s play. You have to be smarter than your competitions. If you’re still struggling with finding out the best way to market your products/services, you’re really far. The interesting part is that not all marketing strategies are not created equally. So you have to pick the ones that work perfectly for your business. The ultimate goal of every business is to make sales. If your marketing strategy is not doing that then you have to change it.

With all these been said, you need to know the types of marketing available. But first, you need to know that as a business owner, you are serving two kinds of customers. They are;

• Other businesses
• Customers.

If it’s to other businesses, it’s called Business-to-Business Marketing (B2B), while if it’s to the consumers, its referred to as Business-to-Consumer Marketing (B2C). For both marketing types, sales are the end gain which important.  It still doesn’t mean both are the same. They might share some similarities but there is also a difference. Find out as we keep unraveling B2B and B2C marketing.

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What Is B2B Marketing?

According to LinkedIn, business-to-business marketing refers to the marketing of products or services to other businesses and organizations. B2B marketing simply the situation whereby one business markets or makes a commercial transaction with other business and company for their productional services or for resale to other consumers. It could the supplying of materials for production or providing services entirely. B2B targets professional and knowledgeable users which are its target consumers. It involves more people and decisions maker.

What Is B2C Marketing?

B2C stands Business to Consumer. It’s the process of selling or marketing a product/service directly to consumers or end-users. It also involves the promotion of the products and services until it gets to the consumers. B2C focuses on the emotional response of the consumers.  The transaction of B2C tends to be more instantaneous and impulsive. Companies that sell directly to consumers are referred to as B2C companies. In B2C, you have to focus on the distribution channels of your products and services. You need to focus on reaching your customers at the right time of the day. B2C marketing is more creative, subjective and emotional.

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Advantages Of B2B Marketing

It was earlier mentioned that B2B marketing is the selling of products/services to other businesses. For you to get involved in B2B marketing, you need to know the advantages of B2B marketing. Here are the advantages of B2B marketing.

1. Improves Brand Awareness

When people keep doing transactions on your website bu purchasing your products/services through your website, your traffic automatically increases. When your traffic increases, your relevance increases on search engines. Your rank, therefore, increases. When people search for your industry on search engines and your website comes up, it improves your brand awareness. People get to know about your brand and its awareness increases.

2. Encourages Business Growth

Effective B2B marketing will allow your business to grow. How? When you supply products/services for other business, your backlinks increases. Before you know, your brand will be recommended to others looking for the products/services you supply. Recommendations/reviews bring more customers which allow business growth.

3. Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is a key advantage of B2B marketing. When a company becomes your customer, they’ll most likely remain with you. Companies find it hard to change their suppliers or those providing a product/service to them. If your customer service is great, you have won that customer to yourself for life. Ensure you have good customer service and you deliver the right product/service.

4. Easier Communication

With B2B marketing, you don’t get to communicate with individuals. You speak directly to the company or organization. It’s easier to convince single or multiple companies than just one or a group of individuals. You don’t need to run after them for your money.

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Advantages Of B2C Marketing

Most business owners have evolved from using the old way of marketing. B2C marketing is between a business and the end-users. So you get to interact with your consumers directly. Here are the advantages of B2C marketing.

1. Promotes Business Growth

Since you are dealing with the end-users directly, your website becomes an unlimited marketplace. Customers can shop at their own convenience. When customers feel relaxed on your website, it makes them return and recommend your brand to other people. This contributes immensely to business growth. When your customer base keeps expanding, how will your business not grow? If you’re involved in B2C marketing, be assured that your business will grow.

2. Easy Business Administration

For B2C marketing, your business administration becomes easy. Since your customers can navigate the website themselves. They also get to order the products/services on their own. Delivery and other business administration become easy. B2C marketing gives you real-time updates about your brand and sales.

3. Encourages Good Customer Services

With this type of marketing, you’ll have no choice but to improve your customer service. This is because you’re dealing with the consumers directly and you need to build the reputation of your brand. You know this type of marketing deals with customer’s emotions.

4. Cost-Effective

B2C is cost-effective because you can relate directly to the consumers. You don’t need to spend exorbitant money on adverts. There’s no need to employ a lot of staffs. You can also make your website your office.

Differences Between B2B And B2C Marketing

Over the years, most people confuse B2B with B2C marketing but they differ a lot. Even if their goal is to get customers, their strategies and approaches are totally different. From the definitions, you’ll notice the difference between both types of marketing. Below are the differences between B2B and B2C marketing.

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1. Target Audience

It’s important for every business to recognize its target audience. The target audience determines the level of traffic and sales they get at the end of the day. They both have a different target audience. For B2B marketing, it involves marketing to top professional and decision-makers. Its target audience is highly knowledgeable folks that understand the products/services a business is offering. They’re familiar with products/services.

For B2C marketing, it’s target audience are people you find everywhere. These people are therefore divided into groups like their demographics and age. They are less of a decision-maker. Once the products/services appeal to them, they’ll purchase.

2. Selling/Purchasing Process

Buying process differs a lot and requires a lot of deliberation. B2B marketing selling process is quite expensive than B2C marketing. For B2C marketing, selling costs are cheaper because there are distributors and dealers that would get the products/services to the end-users. Moreover, a customer knows what they want so they go for it.

B2B marketing is more complex than this. This is because of the decision to buy or purchase any products/services can not be taken by a single person. So there’s a lot of deliberation, therefore, It takes a longer time to reach a deliberation. The money involved in B2B marketing is always huge, so they have to carefully make the decision.

3. Advert Message

You already know B2C connects with their customers on a more personal and emotional level, therefore, their advert message must do the same. The adverts used in this type of marketing must appeal to the customers. But for B2B marketing, the advert message is focused on providing useful information. It also has to build the confidence the clients has in the business by providing the necessary information. This type of marketing doesn’t use emotional adverts because they’re dealing with decision-makers.

4. Marketing Style

For their marketing style, B2B marketers use their websites and social media to get conversions while B2C marketers tell their customers about their products/services on social media. B2B blog contents provide solutions to their client’s problem by providing educational contents. For B2C, the customers are interested in what the products/services will do for them. So, the contents will be about that. But for B2C, it requires proper and detailed information about the products/services.

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5. Products/Services Knowledge

It has been noticed that B2B customers have more knowledge about the products/services. This is because they require detailed information about any products/services they intend to purchase. On the other hand, B2C customers are not interested in the detailed information. All they want to know is what the products/services can do for them.

6. Brand Loyalty

Every business requires some form of loyalty from their customers and it can be gotten from their consistent customers. For B2B, brand loyalty seems to be higher. This is because they take their time to scrutinize a company before they start purchasing their products/services. They understand loyalty and they maintain it. For B2C, brand loyalty is quite weak. They only go for products/services if it works for them at a particular time.

As B2C is selling to individuals, B2B is dealing with other businesses. The choice of picking any of these marketing types depends solely on your target audience. When you know your target audience, you won’t have a problem in picking the one that works for you. Both B2B and B2C marketing are important for every business.

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