As a business owner or marketing executive, you’ve most likely heard about business-to-business (B2B) marketing. Most of us in the niche get multiple messages about B2B marketing, usually on a daily basis.
Based on the type of business and products you wish to sell, following a B2B strategy could be a great option for you. This approach lets you make high-value sales to a smaller range of customers, which could help simplify your operations since you have to deal with fewer entities.
The profit margins in a B2B setting can also be higher, especially since it may have less competition compared to a business-to-consumer environment.
However, B2B marketing also has its own unique challenges. For instance, it can have a longer sales cycle while qualifying leads can be harder.
Before you jump in on a B2B marketing strategy, it’s important that you assess the pros and cons of this approach and see if it meets the goals of your organization.
We’ve prepared for you a guide on B2B marketing that explains what B2B marketing is all about, how it works, how it differs from B2C marketing, what strategies are used in B2B, and its best practices. Continue reading to learn everything you need to know about B2B marketing.
As mentioned above, B2B marketing is the short form of business-to-business marketing. It’s one out of two primary categories in the world of marketing and it has significant differences from its counterpart: business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing.
The technical definition of B2B marketing is the promotion of products and services to other companies. This advertising process typically is done using large volumes of business offerings with large sales cycles while involving several decision-makers. It’s also more complex compared to consumer products.
On the business side, the definition of B2B marketing is the marketing of goods or services to other companies for use in general business operations, resale, or production.
The most straightforward definition of B2B marketing is a business that promotes its offerings to another business.
One of the first steps in B2B marketing is getting other businesses to know that your company exists. It’s also important to get the word out that you have a product or service that can benefit them.
Besides raising brand awareness, B2B marketing increases the interest of other businesses in your brand while nurturing prospects. The goal here is to convert all of them into paying customers. The ideal scenario is that they will develop a harmonious and profitable working relationship with your brand for years to come.
Since the products in a B2B setting are more complex and costly compared to those intended for consumers, it’s vital to develop long-lasting relationships with partners.
A lot of B2B marketers follow traditional strategies, such as hiring a team of sales representatives or going to trade shows, to develop key relationships. When these techniques are combined with the right digital tools, they can continue to market to businesses without necessarily compromising the personal touch that comes with conventional methods.
Consider the scenario below:
A sales representative named James works for a chatbot building company. He connects with Sarah who works at a web design agency and shows interest in what James and his business have to offer.
James adds Sarah to the company database where their marketing team nurtures their relationship in the B2B marketing process. They send resources to Sarah which they believe would be helpful and invite her to attend a special event.
As time goes by, Sarah converts into a customer. The web design agency where Sarah is working starts using the chatbot builder from James’ company to add artificial intelligence functionalities to their digital solutions.
Sarah begins getting the word out to other businesses, which eventually makes her a participant in the B2B marketing process.
In a successful B2B marketing strategy, you can expect an ideal combination of traditional and digital marketing tools being used to help prospects understand what a business can do for them. This could be through providing a solution that can make their processes more efficient or by helping solve one of their pain points.
No matter what benefit you provide, the goal in B2B marketing is to allow businesses to know that you’re around, you have a valuable product, and that companies should convert if they wish to leverage it.
Although the goals in B2B and B2C marketing are similar, the techniques used on both sides vary significantly. These two aren’t the same and shouldn’t be treated as if they’re identical.
Compared to B2B marketing where business offerings are advertised to other businesses, B2C marketing is the act of promoting products or services to people for personal enjoyment, use, or consumption. Nearly any store that you visit in real life offers products that are provided through the B2C marketing scheme.
Apart from in-store purchases, B2C marketing also incorporates high-end purchases such as first-class travel tickets and luxury sports cars. Many B2C entities also provide solutions such as accounting services, training, and consultation.
To further understand how B2B marketing differs from B2C marketing, let’s take a look at the characteristics of each one to compare them easily.
B2B Marketing |
B2C Marketing |
The offerings in a B2B scheme are intended to be used by businesses. |
The offerings in a B2C scheme are intended to be used by individual consumers. |
Most B2B purchases come at a high price since they are sold to businesses that have more budget than a regular customer. |
Most B2C purchases are usually less expensive since these only cater to individuals. |
The sales cycle in a B2B marketing approach usually takes a long time and can be quite complex. |
The sales cycle in a B2C marketing approach typically gets resolved quickly with not much thought placed in decisions. |
Several factors are taken into account for B2B purchases such as involving multiple decision-makers and interpersonal relationships with partners. |
Purchasing decisions in B2C marketing tend to be more emotional. They are often based on need or impulse. |
The priority of B2B marketers is to penetrate the busy schedule of professionals from other businesses. |
The priority of B2C marketers is to leverage digital channels to promote their offerings to individual customers. |
Businesses that sell their offerings to other businesses are considered to be using B2B marketing. Although the companies involved in B2B marketing aren’t as diverse compared to B2C, there can still be a wide variety of solutions and industries involved here.
The most common entities that use B2B marketing are:
The companies above are just a few entities that use the B2B strategy. With many industries and resources necessary to develop product offerings, it’s not hard to see the huge scope of B2B businesses.
To connect with potential customers in the B2B space, marketers must use the appropriate channel available to them. The channel that they use often dictates the type of messaging that would best fit the users there.
For instance, your website is a great place to share lengthy and technical content about your product. This is especially true since you can provide downloadable links to the necessary documents there. Twitter, on the other hand, is no place to discuss specifications in-depth.
B2B channels can be broken down into the following groups:
Marketers in the past had to rely only on offline channels, but with the advancements we’ve had in the last few decades, new ways of connecting with one another now exist. Today, we have more channels we can leverage to develop relationships with our target audiences.
Similar to marketing strategies, these channels continue to evolve based on the technology available. For instance, TV commercials were just limited to offline channels but with the advent of streaming platforms like Hulu and Netflix, people can now see these ads on their mobile devices.
The great thing about marketing channels is that you don’t need to focus on just one. B2B marketers can select and use a combination of online and offline channels if they want. They can test the performance of these channels and see which combinations work for them.
Following a multichannel approach is one of the best ways to make the most of a limited marketing budget since it allows you to develop a system that is more powerful than using each part individually.
Offline B2B Marketing Channels |
Online B2B Marketing Channels |
Attending trade shows and meeting industry insiders allow B2B marketers to nurture them as potential customers. |
B2B marketers can use websites to publish blogs, showcase positive reviews, gather customer information, and let businesses know what they offer. |
B2B marketers use direct mail to send items their recipients will appreciate to open doors and start relationships. |
B2B marketers leverage social media platform popularity to answer customer questions, share relevant content, and show company values. |
Print ads help offline B2B marketers reach their target audience by targeting specific trade publications, newspapers, and magazines in a cost-effective way. |
Regular emails allow B2B marketers to stay in touch with their prospects and encourage them to convert into customers. |
Sponsorships provide B2B marketers with the ability to develop personal connections and relationships with their customers |
Digital advertising through banner or pay-per-click ads helps online B2B marketers promote their businesses. |
B2B marketers can work with firms that provide research, consulting, and publicity to increase brand awareness. |
Digital B2B marketers can choose to publish content outside of their own website by using publications, forums, and Q&A sites. |
Selecting the right B2B marketing channel is just the first part of your B2B journey. The next, and probably most important part, is choosing the right marketing strategy to employ.
Running marketing campaigns that lack engagement is a waste of time and money but when you have defined an ideal marketing approach, you can focus your resources for maximum effectiveness.
This is especially important since the sales cycles in B2B can be extremely long and complex. Identifying leads, growing them, and eventually convincing them to invest in your brand can’t all be done overnight. But, with winning B2B marketing strategies, you can have a better time converting prospects into paying customers.
The following are some of the most popular B2B marketing strategies used today:
In inbound marketing, marketers carry out a strategy that attracts a target audience, pinpoints potential leads, and converts them into customers. This is done through the use of helpful and relevant content, search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, social media marketing, and more.
A major aspect of inbound marketing is content marketing together with SEO performed on the content itself. SEO is all about increasing the rankings of a website on search engines so that your content will show up when people search for them.
Keywords are crucial in search engine optimization since these are the terms and phrases that people use on Google when looking for something. When you can maximize your keyword strategy, you can improve the SEO and overall traffic to your website.
These are the most common inbound marketing strategies B2B marketers should know:
Although content marketing is a sub-category of inbound marketing, the approach is so extensive that it deserves its own place in this list.
Content marketing is all about creating and sharing valuable material with a target audience to stimulate their interest in the products or services of a company. This could be in the form of written content, such as with blogs or ebooks, or leveraging video on a YouTube channel.
Compared to other B2B marketing strategies, content marketing doesn’t force itself upon people. It instead emphasizes providing them with materials and resources that they’d want to engage with. Oftentimes this is used to answer important questions or by helping solve common pain points.
Many successful B2B brands have turned into vital resource centers for both their prospects and customers. When this happens, it continues to raise brand awareness since prospects will learn about the company through the content and resources it supplies.
Furthermore, content marketing also builds trust in the brand as people interact with it. Although it can be tempting to publish content that talks about your product or brand, it shouldn’t be the only thing to focus on. Instead, you want to provide your readers with content that can help them overcome their problems.
Many people consider content marketing to be one of the newer trends in the marketing world, but the approach has been around for quite some time already. One of the most famous examples of a company that used content marketing was John Deere when they started publishing a magazine for farmers back in 1895.
Content marketing continues to grow in popularity over the years, allowing businesses to research and find the information they need easier than ever before. That’s why B2B marketers should engage in this process the right way to win their trust and their business.
B2B marketers can look into publishing the following types of content:
B2B marketers can leverage marketing automation platforms to help automate many of their activities, allowing them to work on other important matters. Rather than carry out tasks individually each day, marketing automation will help do many of these things for you.
Although setting up marketing automation can be overwhelming at first, the results that you can get out of it are worth the effort. Once these systems are in place, they can continue to run and operate automatically. These platforms also let marketers create touchpoints that grow with your prospect database.
Besides helping B2B marketers maximize their time, marketing automation systems also contribute to providing a better customer experience. All of the touchpoints prospects and customers have with your brand will be more personalized according to their actions.
These are the most commonly used types of marketing automation methods:
Account-based marketing, simply called ABM, is a well-known approach that B2B companies use when promoting to enterprises. The goal of ABM is to focus on marketing to single companies that can provide them higher revenue than selling to just about any business.
The first step in account-based marketing is to choose high-level target accounts and identify key decision-makers at those companies. Marketing efforts are then carried out to engage these individuals with the goal of building interpersonal relationships that could turn them into prospects.
The research part of ABM takes significant time and effort to do, especially when identifying which businesses and contacts to prioritize. When executed well, however, the time and effort poured into the strategy is well worth it.
Simply landing just a few of these key accounts can lead to major impacts on your company’s revenue generation.
Here are the following methods of carrying out account-based marketing:
With quite a few strategies of B2B marketing, it’s essential that marketers follow the best practices to ensure that the approach they take is the best choice for their goals.
The most crucial best practices in B2B marketing include:
When setting up your own B2B marketing strategy, there are some core steps you need to follow to ensure success. You should:
B2B marketing can provide businesses with a higher profit margin, especially since they have less competition compared to the B2C approach. However, B2B does have its own set of challenges that are unique to it.
Fortunately, there are techniques and methods that you can follow to ensure that you create the best B2B marketing strategy for your business.
By following the tips provided in this guide, you should be on your way to having a better understanding of how you can use B2B marketing to meet your business goals.