B2B Marketing vs B2C Marketing: 3 key differences

If you’re a marketing person especially have interacted in the digital marketing space, I am sure you must have heard of B2B marketing and B2C marketing. What you might not be much clear about is B2B marketing vs B2C marketing and the differences between those.

In this B2B marketing vs B2C marketing post, we are going to talk in detail about those. Also, we will learn about 5 key differences between B2B marketing vs B2C marketing.

Before we proceed with the differences between B2B and B2C, let’s understand what are these.

What is B2B Marketing

B2B stands for business-to-business! B2B is any kind of marketing that is intended for a business/organization. The company that sells a product or service to other companies uses B2B marketing strategies. Some of the examples of B2B marketing include-

  • A SaaS company offering its product/service to the enterprise like SAP HANA
  • Real estate companies like JLL which offer real estate services to the builders/societies those are another organization and many more...

What is B2C Marketing

B2C stands for business-to-customer!

B2C is any kind of marketing that is intended for an individual customer and not the enterprise. And so, all the marketing activities in B2C are optimized considering the individuals’ needs. This can be targeted based on the customer’s interest, geolocation, age groups, and more. Some of the examples of B2C marketing are-

  • A pharma company like GSK selling medicine for individuals
  • A real-estate company like 99acres renting flats to individuals
  • A music site like Spotify selling individual subscriptions and many more…

The interesting insight between B2B and B2C marketing is, the market size of B2B marketing is now almost 2x times of B2C. And so, you will find many emerging companies that now focuses on B2B space. Here is a report on online sales data of B2B vs B2C in 2020 by Fostec.com.

B2B Marketing vs B2C Marketing: Key differences to know

Now as you know what is B2B marketing and B2C marketing, let’s understand the differences between those. We are going to talk about B2B marketing vs B2C marketing based on various KPIs as below-

#1 Customer Relationship

B2B: B2B more focuses on the personal relationship with the buyer. Usually, there will be someone from the customer organization as a point of contact. And the salesperson usually creates a strong relationship with that person to get the deal or to renew the deal. Usually, the deals in the B2B segment are for the long term usually half-yearly or yearly. And so, at least during the renewal, these partnerships should be strong.

B2C: In the case of a B2C relationship, a transactional relationship is more important. Again as your end-user is an individual customer and so you need to create a flow for the sales campaigns. The process should be very smooth so that the conversion can be improved.

No matter whether you’re targetting B2B marketing or B2C marketing, you need to focus on the online reviews. As per the report by the northwestern university, nearly 95% of customers check online reviews before making a purchase and so you should focus on the reviews as well.

#2 Decision Making Process

B2B: In this case, proper communication should be key to decision making. As in the case of B2B, there will be a proper stakeholder who will be making the decision and so transparent communication can work better. While making the presentation make sure you have done the competition analysis better and you have some USPs over your competitors.

B2C: In this case, simplicity works. Make sure the decision-making process is as simple as possible so that your potential customer is not confused and should not take more time for the sale.

#3 Targeting Audience

B2B: In the case of the B2B market, most of your target audience lies in a specific niche and you should do the research very carefully. Even if you’re selling office supplies, it will be a specific market where you will be doing the business. For example, if you’re a CA-based office supplier then you might be looking for customers around that area.

B2C: Here the audience targeting completely differs from what we have in the case of B2B. In the case of B2C, the target audience is varied across multiple geographic and so needs to be targetted accordingly. In the case of B2C, you may create a funnel and focus on it. This might give you a better result. You may create multiple sales funnel for multiple locations as well.

Conclusion

This was all about B2B marketing vs B2C marketing and the three major differences between those. As we saw, the way customers are being targeted in B2B is completely different from B2C and so depending on your business, you should follow accordingly.

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