Everything You Need to Know About B2B Marketing in 2020

What is B2B Marketing?

B2B marketing (or Business-to-business marketing) means selling one company’s product or service to another. Like B2C marketing tactics, which presume the customer is the target, B2B marketing needs to compensate for all the various stakeholders, whether they are corporate decision-makers or simply influencers.

B2B marketing strategies are based on the same underlying concepts as consumer marketing, but are implemented in a particular manner. While consumers select goods based not just on quality but also on popularity, reputation, and other emotional factors, B2B customers make demand and profit-potential decisions themselves.

Difference between B2B and B2C(B2B Vs B2C):

B2B	B2C
· Business to Business	· Business to Customer
· Sell products or services to business	· Sell product or services to customer for personal use.

B2B Marketing:

For B2B marketing, you want to concentrate on the product concept and its characteristics. The buying decision requires little to no personal feeling and you want to concentrate on knowing the customers and how they function within the boundaries of the processes of their organizations. What position do they play? Who counts for them?

B2C Marketing:

You want to concentrate on the advantages of the product when you’re selling to a customer. Their decision is an emotional one. Consumers are also distinctive in that they expect convenience from a number of distribution channels. Consumers are less likely to be interested in a long message about marketing and want you to get straight to the point.

How the company’s B2B Marketers Losing Influence?

Once it comes to gaining B2B leads and clients, B2B marketers face growing obstacles. We also target, for example, a very small portion of a market that needs its goods and services. It means that focus in at the right target takes a lot of time, resulting in higher marketing costs relative to the average B2C business.

Secondly, for B2B businesses the selling period is also longer. The process of turning a B2B lead into a client can sometimes take weeks, even months to complete. Many companies fail to see that this is a common challenge facing several other B2B companies. If marketers cannot generate sales within a short timeframe, their position in revenue production is perceived as something that is merely required as opposed to a position that is vital to the company’s success.

How important is B2B marketing?

B2B’s a different game of the ball. Given that the rules of the game are different here, a particular marketing approach must be extracted. Here are a few reasons why the B2B marketing is so different.

Extended sales cycle:

The selling & procurement process in B2B industry lasts longer (a few months or longer). Therefore the selling of goods and services to prospective B2B clients needs specific approaches and actions.

It depends on what stage of lifecycle the prospects are in at the moment. The more advanced a company is, the better it would be for your marketing campaign.

B2B Marketing talks about different buying emotions

Don’t think there’s no place here to buy emotions because you don’t target’ real people.’ Sure, the prospective customers are corporations, not individuals, but they are owned and run by humans.

So you have to hit the emotions and motivators to win your buyers ‘ confidence.

B2B Marketing has fewer research data points available

While doing business in B2C, you don’t have any analysis data points to measure or forecast a product’s performance or failure. Consequently the risk is high.

In order to get into product research and development at a BB company, it needs huge capital. Even then, there is no assurance that the findings will be correct. Very few B2B companies appreciate that luxury.

B2B marketing is important because of complex products and services

B2B products are complex, and the product features are not always easily visible.

B2B marketing must also be complex, subtle and sophisticated in order to make the content compelling and comprehensible to the consumers.

In addition, here you have small customers, not like B2C where the customer size will reach thousands. Therefore it’s very clear that they’re more difficult to locate.

Examples of B2B marketing

There are several different ways to approach B2B marketing, all of which concentrate on leveraging digital platforms to raise sales and drive revenues.

Account-based Marketing (ABM):

Account-based marketing is a highly oriented sales technique in which an individual prospect or client is handled by a marketing team as their own company. Instead of the industry as a whole, the marketing department will develop content, activities and entire campaigns devoted to the individuals associated with that account.

Inbound Marketing:

Inbound marketing is a technique that uses multiple types of pull marketing-content marketing, forums, conferences, SEO, social media and more-to build awareness of the brand and attract new customers.

SEO:

SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” which is the method of getting traffic on search engines from the “free,” “organic,” “referral” or “social” search results.

Content Marketing:

Content marketing is a strategic marketing strategy designed to develop and deliver useful, appropriate and reliable content to attract and maintain a clearly identified audience— and ultimately to drive successful customer action.

How to create successful B2B marketing campaigns

Target Audience and Situation:

Mapping specific buyer-persons lets you understand better who makes buying decisions and how they make those decisions.

Clear Conversion Goals:

When you understand who your potential buyers are, what they think about, and the steps they take along their buying path, it’s a great opportunity to make sense of what actions you expect them to take as a result of consuming your content.

Deliver unique value:

Bring potential consumers with content to your company site that addresses their most important questions, solves their issues and offers insights into the business they can’t find elsewhere.

Capture qualified leads:

When customers have advanced further down the sales funnel, gated content such as eBooks and white papers will help B2B lead generation in research-based form.

Brand Messaging:

Before you know it yourself, you can’t relay your brand message to the world-that’s just common sense.

The initial step towards contributing to a B2B marketing plan for many B2B firms is to identify and illuminate key messages based on the consumers ‘ brand preferences and need.

Schedule a sales demo/consultation:

Assume you have a strong understanding of your general business model with your professional leads and win them over with the unique value you bring to the table.

Written by Satyajit-Shinde

Satyajit has always had a keen interest in reading and writing. He forayed into the field of writing due to his love for words and the urge to do something different. Intellitech Solutions has given him the chance to gain knowledge about various subjects. He aspires to make each of his written works a piece of art.