B2B Marketing

B2B or business-to-business marketing focuses on sales of products or services from one business to another, such as manufacturers marketing new products to distributors or software companies marketing enterprise resource planning applications to corporations. Although B2B marketing shares some basic principles with marketing to consumers, such as the 4Ps, the execution of the B2B strategies diverges from B2C marketing in a number of ways.

Target Market

Target markets in B2B marketing are much smaller than in consumer-oriented marketing and typically measured in the thousands. Businesses in the target market often cater to a niche market that inherently limits growth. The small nature of the target market leaves a far smaller margin for error in several areas, including:

Branding

Alignment

Product quality

Failure to brand your business on factors that target market businesses care about, such as expertise and honesty, can damage sales. B2B customers need to know that your product can meet their specific needs. Alignment is the process you use to demonstrate that your product meets their needs by developing expertise in your customers’ industry, creating content that speaks to that industry and offering customization of products after the sale. If a product fails to perform as described, it can irreparably damage your reputation in your entire target market and effectively put you out of business.

Sales Cycle

The sales cycle in B2B marketing is much longer than the sales cycle in B2C. The majority of B2B sales take more than a month and sales take up to a year. There is a correlation between deal size and sales cycle length. More expensive products or services and ones that touch multiple areas of the business typically requir...

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B2B marketing must address a different psychological mindset than B2C marketing. B2C marketing is largely emotion-driven and paints a picture of a better, richer life for the consumer. B2B buyers tend to be more analytical. They are, or course, interested in the benefits, but facts matter to them. B2B marketing must be able to answer questions related to scalability, integration, ROI and deployment, not just try to sell a picture of happy productive employees.

B2B marketing provides you with a way to open up new, often highly lucrative markets, but it creates challenges. The typical features of B2C marketing, such as mass media advertising, emotional appeals and target markets of millions of consumers, don’t apply. You must demonstrate more stringent alignment with customer needs, market in fewer communication channels, and cope with much longer sales cycles.