The difference between B2B and B2C in marketing strategies

Perhaps you are very familiar with B2B and B2C business types, but you may not be familiar with B2B and B2C marketing strategies. B2B (Business-to-Business) marketing focuses on logical process driving, while B2C (Business to Consumer) marketing focuses on emotional driving. Although there are significant differences between B2B and B2C search marketing, there will be some overlap between them. Understanding these differences is vital to corporate marketing, and it is also helpful in formulating efficient marketing strategies for the company.

Here are five

I. Customer Relationship

B2B: Build personal relationships

B2C: Establish a trading relationship

1. B2B: Build personal relationships

B2B marketing focuses on building personal relationships that enable the long-term business. Therefore, the establishment of relations in B2B marketing, especially in the entire purchase cycle of customers, is critical. Because it allows you to understand the business behavior and ethics that you think in your heart, this ability to build relationships with your audience can differentiate you from your competitors and create a personal brand.

The primary task of the B2B business is to generate potential customers. Repeated recommendation of the business is very important. The development of these personal relationships is a key factor in whether the business can be achieved.

When doing search marketing, you will be asked to put bad reviews on Google during public relations. Under normal circumstances, we would like to avoid bad reviews. According to G2Crowd statistics, 94% of customers will read product reviews, and 72% of B2B Buyers said that bad reviews could help them understand the product more deeply.

Some people may wonder, can bad reviews have a positive effect? The answer is yes!

When a website has only good reviews, it may make customers feel that the reviews are fake and have low credibility. Therefore, by responding to positive and negative reviews, the business direction can be adjusted accordingly. You can also prove to those reviewers who are willing to buy the product that you are a real person who can meet customer needs and opinions.

2. B2C: Establish transaction relationship

The goal of B2C marketing is to guide consumers to pay attention to products and promote sales. To achieve this, customers need to have a perfect shopping experience and service experience. B2C companies value efficiency and therefore minimize the time it takes to understand their customers, which ultimately leads to a very transactional relationship.

The B2C marketing strategy focuses on selling products, and most of the time, they provide high-quality products at the fastest speed. Unlike B2B business reviews, B2C reviews require high-quality praise. As a search marketer, when promoting public relations, offering discounts to reviewers can effectively increase the number of reviews.

The most effective strategy for receiving B2C reviews is through email marketing or remarketing, using store credits or personalized discount codes.

After the customer purchases or receives the product, you can send an email or pop-up window to the customer to ask about their shopping experience. The main slogan of the email or window is, “If you submit your feedback to us, you will get a discount of XX in the next purchase!” It can increase their future experience by providing customers with additional value, and even cultivate a brand from it, Image ambassador.

(II) Brand building

B2B: Focus on interpersonal relationships

B2C: Mainly convey information

1. B2B: Focus on interpersonal relationships

Brand building is a part of B2B marketing, but compared with B2C, it comes more from the establishment of interpersonal relationships. According to B2B International, the brand-building consists of the consistency of products and services and delivery.

In terms of B2B search marketing, if you can describe your position in the market and have your personality, this will help increase brand awareness and promote the generation of potential customers.

In terms of relationship development, B2B marketing must be able to observe market characteristics keenly. If the brand strategy can be adjusted for the audience, it will significantly help increase brand awareness and increase the potential customer base.

2. B2C: Mainly convey information

B2C brand marketing is essential because it enables marketers to deliver information accurately, would allow customers to build loyalty, quickly build credibility, establish emotional connections with customers, and motivate them to buy products. This is also the primary task of B2C marketing.

Why? Because of the relationship between the customer and the company has minimal interaction, B2C brands must create long-term memories and enjoyable customer experience to ensure that customers can buy again.

To achieve this goal, providing reliable information and creating ad copy that resonates with your customers is critical to your success.

(III) Decision-making process

B2B: Keep open communication

B2C: simplify the decision-making process

1. B2B: Keep open communication

The decision-making process is another place where you can appeal to corporate emotional and rational decisions. In the B2B decision-making process, to ensure that it is beneficial to both parties, communication between enterprises is more open. In this communication process, you can compare the company’s favorable aspects with your competitors, so that you can effectively be one step ahead.

Image: https://uploader.shimo.im/f/UvEB10hxMbmwv2LS.jpeg

In the decision-making process, B2B customers must evaluate the individual needs of the company or team. These needs can be divided into rational and emotional motivations.

Rational motives are those that drive the financial mind. For example, they will think: Will this be a good investment for us? Emotional motivations are those that trigger their emotional connection with the company or workers. For example, they might think: Do I have to fire a person or group of people? Will we have to reduce employee benefits because we lose money?

In most cases, these two motivations are sufficient to influence their decision-making.

As a B2B marketer, knowing your audience can help you choose decisions that apply to your customers. By establishing an emotional connection between the two parties and sending clear and specific messages, you can be one step ahead of your peers.

2. B2C: simplify the decision-making process

In the B2C decision-making process, you need to maximize ROI through a professional marketing funnel. At the top of the marketing funnel, B2C marketers must create influential advertisements to make consumers demand products.

Once consumers have determined their needs, they will have an in-depth understanding of the products they want to buy. Unlike the B2B business, consumers will have more flexibility to view specific products.

As a marketer, you need to continuously attract consumers and provide what users want by simplifying the decision-making process. Customers will compare you with competitors before deciding to buy your product.

When doing Google search marketing, you must determine the keywords that consumers will search for similar products and analyze the ranking of these keywords. The higher the ranking, the more likely you are to bring customers to the website. When evaluating conversion channels, three sets of keywords can be tracked to attract their attention.

For example, if a customer wants to learn more about electric bicycles, they might search for the long tail of the keyword “electric bicycle,” such as “what is an electric bicycle.”

Once a customer understands some necessary information about electric bicycles, they may want to know a trustworthy and high-quality electric bicycle brand. Therefore, they will search for “the best electric bike” next.

Once potential customers have searched and browsed the major brands, they can determine the specific brand they want to buy. Therefore, they will search for “xx brand electric bicycles.”

B2C search marketing needs to ensure that the conversion part of funnel marketing is covered and positioned by blogs, core pages, and product pages to have a more significant potential to attract potential customers.

It must be noted that the final checkout process must be simple to operate. Once payment is blocked, the customer will be lost. It is necessary to reduce the links of funnel marketing, minimize the complexity of the process, and achieve the desired conversion as much as possible.

(IV) Audience positioning

B2B: Find your market position

B2C: Follow the channel

1. B2B: Find your market position

B2B companies usually play a role in market positioning, so you need to understand the statistics of the audience. To attract them effectively, you must compile and analyze accurate data.

Your data can have many forms, including qualitative and quantitative. Some effective data collection strategies are implemented through Google Analytics and keyword research. However, the best way to determine your audience is to log in to the Google search engine and evaluate the search results for keywords.

By browsing the SERP and looking at the user’s intentions for specific keywords, you can infer what the user is searching for. By combining the conclusions of SERP analysis with the data analysis of keyword research and Google Analytics, you can understand the target audience.

Using these data, ads synthesized for specific keywords and user characteristics can successfully build potential customer development strategies.

The development of potential customers is the primary goal of B2B marketers. Therefore, building a list of potential customers and a highly integrated remarketing and possible customer development marketing funnel is extremely important for attracting the best potential customers.

2. B2C: follow channels

Unlike the B2B business, B2C business operates in a broader market, with more dispersed target groups. Search marketers need to pay attention to the marketing funnel when acquiring customers.

Starting from the top of the funnel, try to intensify efforts to promote emotional and product-driven advertising to attract high-quality customers. By analyzing the potential customer data at the top of the tube, create a list of potential customers for remarketing, and increase sales.

Another vital audience targeting strategy emphasized by B2C is to implement efficient CRO tactics. Writing attractive copy, creating high-quality and easy-to-land pages for navigation, and performing simple but effective conversion channels can all improve the sales of B2C businesses.

(V) Advertising copy

B2B: technical terms

B2C: Write emotional ads

1. B2B: professional terminology

B2B companies are more likely to want to buy services or products from experts. Therefore, to attract target audiences, they must show their professionalism.

For example, when selling software worth $50,000, the B2B business does not need to write flashy copywriting. Instead, copywriting should focus on allowing customers to transfer emotional factors from decision-making and build trust.

The person in charge of the company responsible for making purchasing decisions buys software to improve the overall performance of the business. Although there may be personal driving factors, they need to eliminate their emotions in the decision-making process and consider the positive and negative effects of purchase.

2. B2C: Write emotional ads

Unlike B2B businesses, B2C companies must use relevant slogans that can attract customers to click on ads. By using more “direct” language, customers can better understand the product, instead of using industry terms that customers have difficulty understanding.

B2C advertising copy should be able to arouse consumers’ emotions. For example, when buying a $200 bicycle, people will spend less time deciding when compared to a company that buys $50,000 in software. People who buy bikes want a good buying experience, so the copy’s content should arouse customer joy and excitement. You must write strategically because advertising copy can determine the success or failure of an advertisement.

Summary: B2B and B2C marketing strategies

Whether you are advertising for your own business or providing marketing services to customers, you must understand the main differences between B2B and B2C marketing. Knowing these fundamental differences, you can take advantage of specific strategies that apply to B2B or B2C businesses. With an in-depth understanding of B2B and B2C marketing strategies, you can easily use them to increase potential customers and revenue for your business.