[Transcript] Episode 1- B2B vs B2C Marketing

[INTRO]

B2b vs B2c 0:00. 2s Hello and welcome to the Marketing Woman podcast. I’m your host Anusha Kannan and it is great to have you here. Are you looking to move into marketing or want to learn marketing from the scratch? We discuss all things marketing, analytics, business, personal branding, and much more in a way any layman can understand. If you’re new here, make sure to follow along and get on that email list by visiting tmw.anushakanan.com. And now let’s dive in.

[Episode 1]

[LET’S CATCH UP]

 Before we get into this week’s episode, I’m going to share what I’ve been learning this week and the past couple of weeks. Two to three weeks ago I had a reading on consumer marketing. It talked about siloed organizations and it was very interesting to me to see that organizations with different departments, they don’t really spend a lot of time trying to understand how they could work together, especially with hierarchy. I mean, for example, if the marketing manager does not communicate the right campaign message or the intention behind the campaign, it can be very stressful for salespeople or anyone who is customer-facing because there is a loss of data. There is a lot that could go wrong there and. 1s My father who was talking about like, siloed organizations. And it made me think that what if what’s taught as a module in marketing class is known to someone who is not anywhere near the marketing field? It just means that he has experience working with transparent organizations. And to think about it, I mean, of course, that’s how he can always call me out when I give him excuses as to why I didn’t do something. But my takeaway is transparency within the company and the ability to access necessary data should not be a difficult culture or system to adapt and implement. 1s

[JUMPING INTO THE EPISODE] 

 Anyways, all right, now, jumping into this week’s topic in this episode, we’re going to be talking about two important distinctions in the world of marketing, b to B versus B to C. If you’re new to marketing or just starting out your business or something, it can be very confusing to understand the difference between these two. And honestly, when people ask me if I wanted to work for A, B to B or B to C, I felt very dumb and I thought I didn’t know something I was supposed to know, but it’s not the case. I used to be an engineering student and I didn’t know much about business. And I mean, it would have been really helpful to have a podcast like this to help me out when I started out as a marketer. But anyways, I’m here and we’ll talk about it. We’ll go through sections and let’s begin with section one. Let’s talk about what b two. B and B to C is B. Two b is business to business, whereas B to C is business to consumer. 1s B two B is where companies sell products or services to other businesses. And B two C is where companies sell products or services directly to individual consumers or customers. I mean, in retrospect they’re both selling to people but the target audiences are different. B two B sells products or services to people that are called stakeholders in an organization, people with decision making titles, whereas B to C companies are selling to people like companies are selling to people like you and I. This difference is not big, but also very vital to note because technically you have different marketing approaches 1s in the future. I think there’s a lot that’s going to change with that and we’ll talk about that in the future episodes. But let’s just move into section two talking about the key differences between B two B and B to C marketing. Three things to keep in mind, persona, purchasing process, and decision makers. Now, don’t get intimidated, I’m going to explain that. So let’s talk about persona. When I say persona, I mean customer demographics. So B two B companies typically have a very smaller, more niche audience than B two C companies and they tend to have very specific needs and requirements. So the marketing messaging needs to be personalized and tailored to that audience. BTC, again, also has specific customers but they’re sometimes a very like a gray area. For example, if I buy a shoe, I’m likely to buy a pair of socks. But it’s not a given. It’s not a definite thing. I can decide not to buy them, or it could happen either way, and there’s a 50 50 chance there. And that gives B to C marketers plenty of room to move the messaging around. Moving on to two purchasing process it’s pretty easy to explain, but a lot harder in reality. For example, if I wanted to purchase a project management tool for my business, it typically has to go for at least three to four rounds of consultation and approvals before making the decision to purchase. Whereas with B to C it normally does not require much time. I mean, unless you have really strict parents. And three is decision makers. Like I mentioned previously, b two B purchasing process is long and therefore involves a lot of decision makers and requires their approval. For example, you may be asked a thousand questions and I’m exaggerating don’t mind that. It usually has questions around finances, systems, and alternatives like why can’t you find something else? Why do we have to get this and not the other one? And what’s the return on investment, et cetera? Whereas with B to C, purchase U1 decisions are usually made by individual consumers who have more freedom to make purchase decisions based on personal preferences and needs and parents who are really nice like mine. 1s And let’s move on to section three with that. So what do I mean by different marketing strategies for B two B and B two C companies? B two B companies have they often focus on building relationships with other businesses and positioning themselves as thought leaders in their industry and using account based marketing to target specific accounts or organizations. On the other hand, B two C companies focus on branding emotional appeal in creating a sense of urgency to encourage impulse purchases. The brand that comes to mind is supreme that they I mean any great shoe brand, if you think of I’m not a shoe person, I don’t know a lot about it, but anyways, they have like this, they do drops and they’re like if you don’t get it by this time you’re going to miss out. Those kinds of things b two C companies do and they also tend to use more like mass market channels like social media, television and advertising to reach a wider audience. Moving on to section four, let’s talk about an example because it’s really confusing if we don’t really have something to refer for. B two B. My favorite B two B company right now has to be Chili Piper, one of my favorite B two B companies, and they provide features like appointment scheduling and routing and lead distribution, et cetera. Basically, they help other B two B companies with their sales process and customer engagement. They had a very successful marketing campaign called SaaS GDM Software as a service Go to market and they again aim to help with other help other BDB companies with sales process and GDM strategy, which is go to market. This campaign featured many industry experts, guides and webinar series. They also used email marketing, social media ads, and partnership with industry influencers on LinkedIn. This was a very successful campaign and it helped them position themselves as thought leaders in the industry, which is one of my favorite examples to talk about B two B marketing and for B to C. Let’s talk about Rihanna for a second here. Okay, fenty beauty comes to mind. It was founded by Rihanna and the way she promoted a Fenty Beauty during the Super Bowl performance, that’s B to C and when she used a product from the brand, it really created a ton of buzz around her brand. And they also have great marketing strategies such as the Fenty Game Day Face Off on social media in 2021, and where they encourage customers to share photos of their game day makeup looks using the hashtag Fenty Game Day. This campaign was a great example of how Fenty Beauty leveraged social media to engage with their customers and promote their brand. While they didn’t run a commercial during the Super Bowl, they still found a way to participate in the event and connect with their audience. Let’s move on to section five, which is the conclusion. So B two B and B to C marketing approaches are very different, and they require different strategies and tactics. But at the end of the day, you’re still dealing with people. And both B two B and B two C companies should focus on building relationships with other people and use thought leadership to position themselves as experts. 

[OUTRO]

And that’s all for today. I hope you found it useful. Please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or email me at tmw@anushakanan.com. Follow me on LinkedIn to never miss my journey. I’ll see you in the next episode. Peace.