Business To Business Marketing 101: Intro To B2B

Business-to-business marketing is a whole other animal!

Marketers who come from other marketing disciplines often struggle when they try to market to business organizations. While it’s still marketing, reaching the right type of audience is a little different for this type of marketing. The tips, tricks, and best practices you may have learned in other roles likely won’t transfer over to business-to-business marketing.

Many marketers find themselves flustered and confused by their inability to drive meaningful results when marketing to businesses, despite having years of experience in marketing. It’s not because they’re bad at their jobs; it’s because you need to speak to organizations differently than you would individuals and that can be easier said than done.

Luckily, the experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design compiled their thoughts on what separates business-to-business marketing from other types of marketing.

Read On To Learn More About Business-to-Business Marketing! 

Common Terms in B2B Marketing

Before we dive into how business-to-business marketing is different from other types of marketing, let’s review some common terms. 

• B2B: Business-to-Business marketing, or marketing for an organization whose primary clients are other organizations. Enterprise software, automation equipment, and IT tech are all examples of B2B products.
• B2C: Business-to-consumer marketing, or marketing for a business whose main clients are individuals. Think about your average burger point, jewelry store, or ticket reseller.
• The Buyer’s Journey: The journey every single customer will embark on when purchasing a new product or service. This broadly aligns with the sales cycle. There are multiple definitions, depending on who is defining the term, but generally, awareness, consideration, purchase, and delight are the four key stages of the buyer’s journey and sales cycle.
• Content: Written pieces of work, often displayed on a company’s website. Well-written marketing content is a bedrock of any marketing strategy, but it’s extremely important for B2B organizations. B2B purchasing decision-makers often spend more time researching complex solutions, so well-written content is critical for B2B success.
• Brand Awareness: Brand awareness is a measure of how many potential customers are aware of your brand’s top-level products, services, and messages. Without brand awareness, customers cannot even consider your product or service.
• Creative Fatigue: The decreasing effectiveness of a piece of content or ad asset over time as potential customers see the content in question repeatedly.

B2B Marketing Tip 1: The Sales Cycles Are Longer

Many B2C marketing decisions require hardly any forethought.

If you’re looking for a new pair of shoes on Google, you could conceivably click a Google Ad and purchase a pair online without ever learning about the online provider of those shoes. Likewise, if you see an ad for a new sports drink on Youtube and decide to give that brand a go in the supermarket the next day, your time in the sales cycle was under 24 hours. You went from having no awareness of a brand to becoming a customer within 24 hours! This isn’t uncommon for B2C marketing.

B2B marketing doesn’t work like that. Purchasing a new accounting software, legal partner, or staffing agency takes time. B2B marketing purchases tend to be more intricate and worth a higher dollar amount, so decision-makers tend to spend more time researching and considering solutions to make sure they get it right. This presents several challenges to organizations attempting to sell to another organization.

• Organizations Have More Opportunities To Grow Bored Or Uninterested When Considering Your Solution: Long sales cycles also allow for more time to grow bored or find another solution. You need to be constantly marketing in the meantime to make sure your prospects are engaged.

• Sales Teams Can Waste Critical Time Attempting To Sell Poor Fit: Your sales team is your main evangelist for your brand. Every second of their time is valuable, so ensure they’re talking to the right people. Six months talking to a company that eventually pumps the brakes is a big time suck and a risk of the long B2B sales cycle.

• Your Marketing Materials Might Grow Stale With Time: Your brand messaging and value proposition are going to be in front of your prospect for months, if not years. There’s only so long you can tell your prospect that your app will increase employee retention before that value proposition gets less exciting. The same is true with your case studies, ads, and web content. You’re going to need to mix your marketing materials up to keep your prospect interested over the course of months.

These are challenges, but they’re not insurmountable. B2B marketers just need to be cognizant of the sales cycle length for their product or service. The complexity and length of the sale cycle mean that quick, flashy ads and attention-grabbing specials won’t do the trick. Marketers will need to market differently.

B2B Marketing Tip 2: The Number Of Touchpoints Is Much Higher

It is highly unlikely a consumer needs to consult with another decision-maker before making a purchase in the B2C world. This isn’t true with certain high-dollar items, but generally, most consumers don’t need to talk to their partner or family to buy a new protein powder or shirt.

In contrast, business buying committees can be as large as fifteen or twenty in the B2B world. Consider a company looking to find a new staffing agency. HR will have a say in the process, of course, but it’s also likely that the hiring managers of the most impacted departments or teams will also be included.

Legal will naturally review terms and conditions as well and the business owner or C-Suite team will ultimately need to approve the decision. Finding how to reach those members of the buying committee is a perennial problem for business-to-business marketers.

B2B Marketing Tip 3: Marketing To An Organization Is Much More Consultative

B2C marketing is usually very transactional. Take the example of a local restaurant trying to get past customers to come in for a limited-time dinner special. Writing an email extolling the benefits of that dinner isn’t particularly time-consuming or difficult. You need to find a way to entice the customer to open the email, read the content, and come to the restaurant, but what you’re marketing is pretty straightforward. Who doesn’t love deals on food?

Now imagine writing that email, but to promote a law firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions between interstate companies. This service isn’t as simple as a new “Fish N Chips Dinner For $7.99.”  Your prospect is going to research solutions extensively and will likely come with a lot of questions. They can’t decide to try your staffing agency on a whim as a restaurant-goer could in our B2C solution mentioned earlier. The selling process for B2B organizations is a lot less “pushy,” since the solution provided is so complex. Since the sales cycle is so long, sellers are likely to spend more time qualifying the leads they speak to, researching the potential client’s business, and educating the potential lead on their solutions.

A transactional sale to drive some revenue isn’t a good call for a B2B client. If you entice a past customer to try your new fish and chips special and they don’t care for the dinner after visiting, no real damage has been done. Closing a legal business services deal with misaligned expectations on billing and point of contact may cost the law firm countless unbilled hours.

Smart B2B sellers know this and are constantly stepping into the role of trusted advisor when meeting with prospects. They aren’t trying to sing the praises of new deals and preferred pricing; they’re educating prospects on problems in their industry, asking clarifying questions, and determining if their solution is a good fit for the client’s unique needs.

Likewise, B2B marketing should focus on answering questions, demonstrating expertise in a subject, and summarizing technically-complex processes for the layperson. Now, this is all good advice for B2C marketing as well! You’ll just find yourself doing more consultative marketing for B2B organizations than praise-singing.

B2B Marketing Tip 4: B2B Marketing Relies Mostly On Data, Not Emotion

B2C marketing is often driven by the feelings of the customer. After all, who really needs a $1,000 watch, locally-sourced top-tier wine, or a big, greasy hamburger? If consumers were 100% rational creatures, no one would ever purchase any of the aforementioned items. That’s totally fine; we all need a splurge purchase now and again!

But it’s worth highlighting because the tactics that might work for a B2C organization likely won’t work for a B2B organization. Limited time releases, preferred pricing, and funny ads alone won’t convince an executive team that your law firm or IT software is the best solution for their problems. You’ll need to demonstrate via data why you’re uniquely suited to be their partner.

This does not, however, mean that your marketing materials need to be drab, soulless, and uninspiring. On the contrary, you need to showcase a professional and polished brand message when marketing to organizations. Your branding is critically important; it will just be focused on different channels than if you were a B2C marketer.

Begin Your B2B Marketing Journey With JSL

B2B marketing is a wise tactic for any business, but it needs to be done right. There are multiple ways a poorly implemented B2B marketing strategy could destroy your progress as a brand.

Turn to a trusted B2B marketing agency for your B2B needs. We’re proud Forbes council members for a reason! 

Ready To Begin Your B2B Journey? Call Today!