5 Marketing Lessons That B2B Companies Can Learn From B2C

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There’s a massive difference between B2B marketing and B2C marketing, you’d say. And you are probably right. Yes, with B2B, the sales cycle is longer, and the decision-making process is more complex, and the way businesses communicate with their customers is different. But what if, for a moment, we try to ignore those differences and think about what B2B companies can learn from B2C?

Here are 5 B2C marketing techniques B2B companies can benefit from. Are you interested? Jump on board!

1. Keep End-Users in Mind

One of the breakthroughs in B2C over the past few years is the increase of more customer-centric propositions. Like we said, every purchase decision requires an individual. What does that mean for B2B marketing?

Starting with designing a product and ending at creating a campaign to promote that product, your customer should be at the centre of every decision your company makes. Who will buy your product?

A good starting point to becoming more customer-centric is deeper segmentation. If you only have a few segments, you’re already way behind those companies that are personalising at full scale. So we highly recommend researching your existing Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) and defining as many segments as possible.

But it doesn’t stop there. Selling to a purchasing manager seems to be the primary goal, but if you don’t think of the end user apart from the business entity, you’re likely to lose or negatively affect customer retention.

Think of your end-user and how they can benefit from using your product. In your case, an end-user is a specialist; for example a marketer who will use your software to create outreach campaigns, or a sales rep who will use your CRM system to have all your customer information well-organized, updated and easy to access.

Keeping your end-user in mind will help you tailor your products and marketing campaigns in a way that addresses their pain points and improves their work process. In other words, it helps you focus on communicating the personal value your product has for precisely them.

2. Make Your Content Speak to Your Target Audiences

B2C companies have mastered the art of delivering personalised and customised content that speaks to customers emotionally. What’s going on with B2B marketing in terms of content creation? The belief that B2B purchases are not based on emotions, but rational minds, is still strong. Do you think the same?

Well, we don’t. Think about how you decide to buy a product from another company. These questions might help you to analyse your decision-making process as a B2B professional:

What things do you consider when buying?

Do you want to look professional? Do you want your decision to purchase this product to help you move up the career ladder?

Do you want to feel confident that a product will solve your existing problems and make your company’s work processes easier?

Other professionals are no different from you. With this in mind, reconsider your content creation to make it more personal and emotional. Make your content speak to professionals in a way that will give them more faith and more confidence in your brand. That is to say, connect to them emotionally through your content.

A bunch of tips here:

Personalise your messages by including the correct data about a decision-maker (job title and a name, at minimum).

Create content that reflects their pain points and interests. This makes it easy for a customer to notice your message and increases the chances of them buying your products.

Use automation tools like Demand Generation Platform that will help you to deliver a personalised experience to the right person at the right time.

3. Elevate the Customer Experience

Remember the last time you made a purchase as a B2C customer. How was your experience? What did you expect as a B2C customer? Probably an instant reaction to questions, detailed answers, an individual approach, an instant invoice, an easy payment procedure, and the ability to track your order and get it quickly.

Let’s agree that the traditional B2B buying experience can be slow and painful. And the thing is that with a changing B2C customer service paradigm, which is becoming more and more effortless, B2B buyers want the same. Because they are the same people, remember? If you wish for an effortless customer journey as a B2C client, why wouldn’t you want the same with B2B, especially if the work environment is a more stressful one?

Let us give you some tips on improving the customer experience with marketing.

Make customer interactions easier and more frequent by integrating chat bots to your website. Try to automate. Then, stay in touch 24/7. 🙂

Make your website easy to navigate so that each user finds relevant info in seconds.

Work on your CTAs to provide a straightforward message to your prospects. That’s how you’ll make both of your lives easier.

Constantly deliver personalised and useful content with insights and lifehacks so that using your services and products is pleasant and effective.

Track your website and social media statistics and collect the sales triggers to know when customers interest in your product is at its highest and react quickly by running automated outreach campaigns.

These things will make the customer experience smoother and much more exciting, moving your potential client through the sales funnel faster.

4. Interact With Your Customers on Social Media

Is your company present on social media? Well done! However, just “being present” is not enough. Let’s have a look at your content.

Usually, B2B companies use social media networks to share links to their blogs and promotions. Does that sound like you? Old as the Earth, and boring.

Now let’s look at what B2C brands do. They Interact with their audience through questionnaires and quizzes while showcasing happy customer experiences and devotion to the brand. Well, this is exactly what social media were created for, right?

So, work on your social media marketing strategy. Here are a few things to consider:

Get valuable insights from existing and future customers by interacting directly with them. This will help you improve your product, customer journey, and marketing efforts. And more than that, it will show that you care about them.

Demonstrate success stories and case studies that will give your potential customers a good first impression of your brand and help them make a decision to buy.

5. Experiment With Social Media Platforms and Test New Features

Are your social media tactics the same as last year? If your answer is “Yes”, then there’s a chance you’re missing new tools or features that are being introduced constantly on social media. Look at how quickly B2C brands adapt to changes and get the most out of new functionality. Not to be left behind, keep an eye on those transformations, changes, and trends. Your presence should be fresh. Otherwise, it’s pointless.

Not only do platforms introduce new features, new platforms are also popping up. For example, B2C brands are quite successfully entering TikTok, while B2B companies are still too fixated on LinkedIn. Well, it’s pretty understandable.

Not every platform will work for a B2B brand. But don’t get bogged down by what everyone else is using. Think out of the box and see if your potential customers are there. If they are, starting to build a reputation on a new platform with a small budget might be a good idea.

A couple of platforms to consider:

Instagram to show the human side of your company and share behind-the-scenes moments;

Pinterest to share beautifully designed industry infographics and case studies;

YouTube to share educational product feature videos;

TikTok to motivate, educate and go viral with short, engaging videos.

Wrapping it Up

At first sight, it looks like B2B and B2C are two different realities. But once you take a closer look, you’ll find that you can adopt some useful tactics. At the end of the day, the goals are similar — get new leads and turn them into customers.

So if you want to stand apart in the landscape of other companies that are still using traditional B2B techniques, there’s something worth learning from B2C.


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