Blog Post

Demand Generation

How Your B2B Marketing Strategy Should Differ From B2C

B2B (Business-To-Business) and B2C (Business-To-Consumer) are two terms that often come up in the growth marketing world. You’re likely already familiar with these terms. 

However, knowing the difference between B2B and B2C and knowing how marketing strategies are different for each is another matter.

Marketing to B2B audiences and marketing to B2C audiences require different approaches, and that’s what this article will delve into. You’ll learn how to build a marketing strategy that makes sense, whether your focus is on B2B or B2C.

Customer Relationships

The first difference in strategies is noticed in how customer relationships are approached. Digital marketing, in general, has a big focus on building relationships with customers, and the way this is approached varies between B2B and B2C strategies. 

While B2C marketing likes to zoom in on personal relationships, B2B marketing is less intimate and has what could be called a "transactional" focus. Building long-term relationships take the spotlight for B2B marketing strategies, and the attention is more sales-oriented in B2C marketing. 

Keep in mind that both require customer services and good lead generation to be fast and effective. A "Speed to Lead" approach is essential.

Branding

B2B marketing takes a very different stance on branding than B2C marketing does. B2B focuses on positioning, whereas B2C is more concerned with messaging.

For B2B, good positioning is what makes you stand out among the competition and attract your audience.  Positioning is about more than branding; it’s about perception. It encompasses various elements — from content marketing to branding and social responsibility.

On the other hand, B2C marketing is concerned with what your target audience thinks about you. What does your company stand for? What does it support? People who feel they can relate to your brand are more likely to buy from you. 

Ad Copy

Marketing strategies also diverge for B2B and B2C when it comes to ad copy. B2B companies need to take a professional approach, while B2C companies have the freedom to be more playful and emotional.

Successful B2B marketing ad copy should stick to terms that their audience is familiar with and avoid being frivolous. B2C ad copy should speak the same language as its target audience.

Audience Targeting

The way B2B companies approach audience targeting is also different from how B2C companies do it. To build effective B2B marketing campaigns, it’s important to find a niche and make that the focal point of all marketing efforts.

B2C marketing is more funnel-focused, and this funnel will consist of awareness, interest, desire, and action. A PLG (product-led growth) funnel can also be quite useful. 

Traditional marketing can come in handy but requires a good understanding of existing customers and proven ways to generate leads. 

Using marketing automation software (like HubSpot) can make audience targeting more effective and less frustrating, especially when trying to stay focused on results rather than the small things that can distract your marketing team. 

Sales Cycle Length 

The sales cycle length for B2B marketing is, in most cases, longer than it is for B2C marketing. This is because the decision and approval process requires multiple signatures, so potential customers might need more encouragement to take the final step and make a purchase.

More lead nurturing is required for B2B companies to get the sales they want, and user experience is an important factor here. If customers don’t get the attention they need, they’re more likely to move away and support other businesses. Customer service is a prime part of the B2B sales funnel. 

The B2C sales cycle often requires less input from salespeople, though this varies widely across industries and audiences. 

Emotional Investment

Generally, B2B marketing is far less emotional than B2C marketing because the customers are more calculating. They are driven by evidence of performance and numbers. B2B marketing, therefore, tends to be more information-focused.

B2C marketing calls for more creativity, entertainment, and emotional investment. Customers are more focused on achieving happiness or satisfaction and make more impulsive decisions.

Paid media campaigns can be useful tools for building emotional investment in both B2B and B2C marketing.

Marketing Channels

B2B companies and B2C companies have different marketing channels to choose from when it comes to their marketing efforts. For B2B marketing to work, the challenges of the audience must be addressed, as well as their needs and relevant interests. For this, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial.

Other channels that are fruitful for B2B include PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, referral marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and social media channels.

B2C companies can use outdoor advertising, influencer marketing, traditional advertising, and digital marketing strategies. Search engines and social media also play a big role, with platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook being some of the most popular and effective for B2C marketing.

B2B, B2C, and Matter Made

Planning a B2C or B2B marketing strategy isn’t easy and shouldn’t be taken lightly. 

A well-defined strategy that has the right approach to branding, customer relationships, and audience targeting can take your company to new heights. 

Why not combine efforts with Matter Made? We have a team of expert marketing professionals who can help you build B2C or B2B marketing strategies that will see you rise above your competition. 

Interested? Let’s talk!

Blog Post

Growth

Demand Generation

Blog Post

How To Leverage Growth Marketing

Traditional marketing is where brands broadcast a one-size-fits-all marketing message describing the product’s features. It is expensive, broad, and doesn’t consider the unique requirements of the customer.

This doesn’t work well for budding businesses that are targeting a particular niche and have a limited marketing budget.

Enter growth marketing

Growth marketing focuses on sending personalized customer-centric messages to the target audience explaining how the product will give them the value they are looking for.

In this article, you’ll learn what makes growth marketing unique, its strategy and characteristics, and how you can leverage it.

Growth Marketing Vs. Regular Marketing

Growth marketing attracts prospects, keeps them hooked, and turns them into loyal buyers. With techniques such as content marketing and lead nurturing, customers are nudged through the funnel until they make a purchase. 

Various marketing channels are auto-optimized through the latest tools and data-backed processes for sustainable growth. The primary advantage of growth marketing is that it nurtures customer relationships and increases your average customer lifetime value.

Traditional marketing approaches include ideation of marketing operations, publishing the ad copy and design, implementing Call-To-Actions (CTAs), outlining the ad spend for the campaign, and so on. 

All these efforts follow a traditional “set it and forget it” strategy. This strategy is great for increasing brand awareness by focusing on the top of the sales funnel.

The image below highlights the difference between traditional and growth marketing.

Source: Mondial Trends. A graphic showing the differences between traditional and growth marketing.

What a Growth Marketing Strategy Includes

Market Penetration

Growth marketers exclusively focus on the niche where you offer products/services or look for potential customers in your competitors' niche to penetrate the market better.

This growth hacking technique pushes brands to look for differentiators. Here, growth marketers answer two specific questions:

  1. What sets you apart from your competition?
  2. What are the specific areas you are better than your rivals?

Strategic Collaborations and Partnerships

Growth marketing teams facilitate rapid growth by finding and teaming up with other brands that offer products your target audience uses — for instance, telecom providers partnering with smartphone manufacturers.

Apart from keeping customer acquisition costs low, this strategy could get you lots of new customers and result in sustainable growth. Sometimes, you might have to create new products or services to form a partnership.

Market Development

This strategy involves running growth marketing campaigns where you advertise the products or services to new markets to facilitate demand generation. It is done in two ways:

  1. Targeting new niches and buyer personas.
  2. Moving to new geographic regions.

Product Development

Your product development growth strategy has to be tailored to your brand’s specific needs. To attain rapid growth, you should diversify your marketing efforts to find creative solutions in the following ways:

  • Product Updates. Build on what you have (this is also great for customer retention). 
  • New Products. A great way to enter new markets and target different user personas.

Characteristics of a Growth Marketing Strategy

Data-driven

Before growth marketers invest in a new marketing tactic aiming for rapid growth, the idea has to be backed by data. As growth marketing tactics involve taking risks, intuitions and “do this because competitors are too” have no place.

Read: “How to Create a Successful Growth Marketing Strategy.”

Product Focused

Your business needs to consistently improve its product to remain competitive in the market. Whether it is adding more features or functionalities, your product needs to evolve with the changing needs of your target audience. 

Growth marketing facilitates this by collecting data that can guide this product development and keep your target audience updated about the values you offer.

Limited fear of failure

Apart from being data-driven, the high success rate of growth marketing can be attributed to the diversification of efforts. With multiple marketing strategies at play at once, the best growth marketers keep a close eye on the numbers and scale up the efforts that have the highest marketing ROI.

Storytelling

Considering our endless appetites for stories, growth marketers use a story where a person with similar problems to the target audience gets their problem solved with their product. This makes the brand’s message more realistic and relatable, motivating more prospects to make a purchase.

Retargeting

Retargeting reminds your website visitors, prospects, leads, and customers about the value your product offers. This also keeps the customer acquisition costs low.

Should You Hire a Growth Hacker or Outsource Growth Marketing to an Agency?

Having an in-house growth marketer has the following pros:

  1. They will be familiar with your product and processes completely.
  2. 100% dedication towards your brand growth.
  3. You can gain a lot of insights into your industry.

However, it is challenging for the following reasons:

  1. It's expensive to hire new professionals, get new tools, and set up new growth marketing strategies.
  2. After some time, they could run out of ideas by falling into a "creative rut".
  3. You still have to pay your growth marketing team even if you pause your strategy. 

Growing brands with a limited budget risk a lot in this scenario.

In these instances, outsourcing growth marketing to an established agency such as Matter Made is ideal because:

  1. You get experienced, accountable professionals.
  2. It’s cost-efficient; pay until you are leveraging their services.
  3. You will be kept in the loop at every stage through timely reports.
  4. You can reinvest the saved resources elsewhere.
  5. You get expertise from successful growth marketers. 

Growth Hacking, Demand Generation, and Matter Made

Matter Made has helped product-led companies like Dropbox and Loom achieve hypergrowth through demand generation, product-led growth, and bespoke growth strategies

Our seasoned marketing team can help your brand achieve similar results.

Interested in knowing what a growth marketing strategy brings to the table for your brand? Let’s talk.

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