In marketing there are basically two types of marketing efforts based on the type of company we are catering to; they are Business to Business(B2B) and Business to Consumer(B2C). A marketer has to understand who they are targeting while building strategies so that they can maximize the effectiveness of the campaigns.
In digital marketing, both categories consider similar matrix and KPIs to judge marketing efforts like Cart Abandonment Rate, ROIs, Bounce rates etc. However, there are some differences we have to consider while catering to them.
Buying Cycle:
While the buying cycle for B2C clients are smaller with a smaller number of individuals making the decision, the buying process for B2B companies is lengthy and involves people from various departments.
While B2C clients learns about the item through reading reviews and testimonials of other people. Here we must pay great attention to designing product pages and also a section of reviews and may even encourage customers to upload pictures like Lulus.com. By providing social proof we can shorten the decision cycle.
B2B companies spend a lot of time and money in learning about the product, they look at past performance of the product, reviews from other companies and also rely on referencing.
While both need to be hyper-targeted to see desired results, we must understand who all are involved in the process and what kind of message we should send across at different touchpoints.
Logic and emotion:
While both sets of customers are looking for benefiting from the product in one or other, while B2C customers are looking forward to improving their lives, B2B customers wants to benefit their business and most importantly their bottom line. While emotional or slice of life kind of advertisement works best for B2C, B2B clients are mostly influenced by logic and reasoning. For B2B clients, product features, benefits and how it will help the organization should be the main focus of the marketing communications.
While both categories have similarities and differences, as marketer our job is to study the audience and produce content that entices them either logically or emotionally