B2B is contemporary shorthand for a longtime sales practice called business-to-business while B2C represents business-to-consumer. In essence, B2B deals primarily with other businesses, not the general public, and B2C provides products and services directly to the end user. The initial step in establishing marketing strategies for both B2B and B2C is somewhat similar. You have to identify first who your target customer is then figure out why this particular customer needs to hear your message. From there, the marketing activities diverge.

Below is the summary of the key differences between B2B marketing and B2C marketing. Your marketing plan has to take account and consider these differences to ensure you are developing the right types of activities intended for your particular market.

B2C – Businesses that Sell to Consumers

• Product driven
• Maximize the value of the transaction
• Large target market
• Single step buying process, shorter sales cycle
• Brand identity created through repetition and imagery
• Merchandising and point of purchase activities
• Emotional buying decision based on status, desire, or price

The B2C category has expanded greatly in the late 1990s with the growth of public access to the Internet. It largely equates to electronic retailing and its main objective is to aggressively convince prospective buyers to shop. B2C companies employ different  marketing campaigns for publicizing their goods and services. This would include coupons, vouchers, email blasts, banner ads, limited edition offers and the likes to entice their target market to buy. These campaigns are much shorter in duration thus the urgent need to secure the customer’s interest very quickly. The path to purchase must be short and simple – just a few clicks from email receipt to order confirmation. Any more than a couple of clicks and the customer is likely to abandon the shopping cart. The call to action must be obvious and the offer enticing. As such, email campaigns often highlight special deals and discount that can be used both online and in store. They can also be informative especially if the aim is to build the brand and enhance customer loyalty. Loyalty is an important aspect in B2C marketing. This proved very true for companies like Amazon, Best Buy, and Staples. They combine good customer service and education on their product and services thus their customers keep coming back.

B2B – Businesses that Sell to Businesses

• Relationship driven
• Maximize the value of the relationship
• Small, focused target market
• Multi-step buying process, longer sales cycle
• Brand identity created on personal relationship
• Educational and awareness building activities
• Rational buying decision based on business value

The sales cycle in the B2B world is often much longer and more complex. It mainly maximizes on the value of relationships. A B2B company needs to focus on maintaining communication and building relationships. Marketing activities involving lead generation that can be nurtured during the sales cycle can be used to attain this goal. B2B features a multi-step buying process that needs more than one person to decide on the purchase thus B2B companies employ marketing to educate its target audience. Take for example in an email campaign, your objective is to drive prospects to your site to learn about your products and services. B2B newsletters therefore must be direct and professional and should encourage the audience to bite into your call to action. The content must be straight to the point, should have contact information for offline communications and the landing pages are easy to navigate and utilize. It must contain information on features, benefits, and possibly pricing. In the B2B sales cycle, email campaign is usually the first step towards a series of integrated touch campaign that may include telemarketing, direct mail, and personal follow-up by sales representatives who will thoroughly discuss business details and move the prospect on the next step of the sales cycle. In B2B, “content is king” for marketing paraphernalia. Media coverage of your products and services also helps in delivering your message across your target audience.

But of course the real test is taking one of these ideas and applying it to your own business. I think I’m going to take this one to heart and I’ll tell you more in a future post, but in the meantime, check this out…

I was first introduced to Ivan Levison by Software Publisher Magazine where Ivan was a regular contributor. If you’re like me, all it takes is a good idea every now and then to make it worth your while reading a magazine article or a newsletter and Ivan usually delivers.

Well he no longer writes for Software Business (the new title) but I have been getting his newsletter for going on 10 years now and I still open them with high expectations.

July, 2010

In my small town, the post office parking lot has just three crummy spaces.

Next door to it is a bank that has a big parking lot. Naturally, everyone who needs to visit the post office parks at the bank.

Because of all the extra cars parking on their property, you’d expect the bank to put up this kind of a warning sign at the entrance to its lot:

Parking For Bank Patrons Only!

All other vehicles will be towed
at owner’s expense.

But someone at the bank knew how to think outside the box. They didn’t settle for the obvious. Instead of being the town meanies, they put up this sign where everyone could see it:

Union Bank of California
Welcomes Post Office Patrons!

If you’re not banking with us, come on in
and see why we’re a great place to bank . . .
as well as very convenient!

What we have here is an example of guerrilla marketing at its best. The bank took a problem and, using a kind of marketing jujitsu, turned it into a plus. The funny, subversive sign says to potential customers that “we’re the kind of bright, responsive people you want to bank with.”

Examples of turning lemons into lemonade, like the one I’ve mentioned above, are all around us and are always instructive.

Remember the old Avis rent-a-car advertising campaign?

Years ago, Hertz was the market leader. Avis was in a distant second place. So their terrific ad agency came up with a campaign theme that acknowledged their second-place status and turned it into a virtue. The headline of one of their classic ads reads:

Avis is only No. 2
in rent-a-cars.
So why go with us?

We try harder.

The body copy explains that “we can’t take you for granted” and that when you’re No. 2, “you just can’t afford dirty ashtrays. Or half-empty gas tanks.”

Another ad in the campaign used the headline:

When you’re only No. 2
you try harder.
Or else.

Instead of being ashamed of their second-place status, Avis proudly (and humorously) proclaimed it and used it to explain why they try so hard to provide great service and value.

So what does this have to do with YOUR marketing efforts?

Plenty. It shows how you can take a problem and use it to your advantage. As the saying goes: “If all you have is lemons, make lemonade.”

Is your company’s “lemon” the fact that you’re tiny? No problem. Your “lemonade” is that you provide unbeatable, personal service.

Is your company’s product back-ordered so that you can’t deliver promptly? No sweat. The crush of orders is proof of tremendous product acceptance and
popularity.

Is your software product lacking a load of hot features? Nothing to worry about. Your software is perfect for people who want to get up-and-running quickly without having to wade through thick manuals.

You get the idea.

The take-away message this month? It always pays to think outside of the box and look for new ways to turn problems or challenges into moneymaking opportunities.

And there are LOTS of them!

(click image to enlarge)

Take a look at this one I’ve just received. Now if I didn’t spot it as a good example of “what not to wear”, I would have immediately deep-sixed it (along with the other half-ton of spam I get) for one simple reason – there’s nothing to read! And I see this quite often with organizations making the shift from print to web media – they try to re-purpose their content rather than re-create it. The result is they send nothing but image and for people like me, it’s total blind. And btw, even after I enabled images, I still couldn’t see enough of it in the Outlook preview pane to know what it was about.

So note to self… be sure to add text to all of your mass emails. Otherwise you are putting undo pressure on your ability to write a highly seductive email subject line.

The Challenge:

• There are a hundred different email solutions out there to choose from.
• They all claim some level of integration with various CRM systems.
• But how do you find the best one for your situation?

Here are some suggestions on finding the right solution without pulling your hair out…

The barrier to entry for creating an email solution appears to be as impenetrable as wet cheesecloth these days with new players popping up every day. And although they all have simple 2.0 looking websites, finding out what they really do is a bit of a challenge. So here are some suggestions, with more to come, as we continue to work through this with several clients.

The Holy Grail – Tight CRM Integration

If you think about it, why don’t CRM systems provide all of this natively? Well maybe they will and they’re just waiting for the dust to settle. Or maybe the market is just too small. Or maybe none of them will do a good job of this until one of them really does. But in the meantime, here’s what to look for…

1. Initial integration – you’re probably starting with a list so you will need some way to get your existing emails into the product. That’s the easy part although some email services require double-opt in (to protect their spam reputation) and therefore are more difficult. For example, Feedblaster will not allow import for that reason.
2. Ongoing integration – here you’re really looking for synchronization and there are several areas to look at:
   • Signups - does your web form interact with the email solution or your CRM and how do they synch.
   • Optout - perhaps you can live with just maintaining these within the email solution but then you need to only send through the emailer.
   • Delivery, open and clickthru history – most solutions do not sync this so you need to go back to the emailer to see it. This is actually the major loss when you shift from your CRM’s inboard email campaign management to an external tool.

Blog and Social Media Integration

It usually goes like this… Much of the world is not yet following Blog posts but everyone gets email so should I spend my time blogging or writing newsletter articles? And I’d kinda like to check out this Twitter thing I keep hearing about but who has the time for it. And all of it seems like a lot of redundant effort. So isn’t there some way I can just create a Blog post and have it automatically go out in my next email newsletter and generate a Tweet?

Well there is at least one solution we’ve found so far. The latest system we’ve been looking at closely is the mal-named newcomer – MailChimp. And while I’m not looking forward to becoming a Chimper or whatever the moniker ends up at, it is a very impressive solution that is gaining a lot of momentum. Part of the reason is that it already supports this integration. (The only downside: CRM integration is still pretty limited.)

Deliverability – Without It, You Got Nuttin

That is, if your email doesn’t end up in their mailbox, who cares about anything else. If you haven’t dug into this yet, “Reputation Management” is now a big factor in making it to your target inboxes. And what that means is that major ISP’s are now grading emails based on the reputation of the sender. And what governs that reputation? Spam reports, primarily. And so what that means is you now more than ever, need to conform to the CAN-SPAM act and moreover you need an email delivery provider that manages to that as well.

Although high end players like ExactTarget have done this for a while, you’re still in the dark with most of the other players like VerticleResponse and ConstantContact. But here again, the monkey pops up claiming 97% deliverability for MailChimp emails. Not sure where that number comes from but it was enough to get our interest.

So That’s Us – What About You?

Please feel free to chime in with your stories. We’ll continue to keep you posted on our travels in this area and maybe even put a whitepaper together at some point but let us know what you’re finding. And if you don’t agree with anything we’ve said, let us know that too.