Effective marketing is hard to get right. Between creative demands, budget limits, and channel decisions marketers have a lot on their plate when developing their strategy.
But the biggest determinant of effective marketing comes down to one thing: your audience.
Marketing is a crucial part of any business. Without it, the likelihood of success drops immensely and you’re just wasting your time.
One way that marketing can be improved for those struggling with getting their message across through promotion or advertisements is by targeting these efforts towards specific buyers in order to make sure they are heard above all else competing out there who may not have an interest in what you do.
Target audiences can vary a lot, with some catering to individual shoppers and other companies. For example, one company might serve an office building while another is just for the people that work there.
Marketing to businesses is much different than marketing to individual consumers, but a whole new type of marketing exists for business-to-business (B2B) marketers.
By the end of this article, you'll have an understanding of how B2B works and what strategies are most effective when it comes to reaching your potential customers in the business world!
What is B2B marketing?
In the world of marketing, B2B stands for business-to-business. This is any promotion or content that targets a company in order to sell products and services to other businesses instead of consumers.
The most common type may be email campaigns targeted at companies who buy different things from each other like office supplies versus foodservice industry items.
HubSpot is a company that focuses on B2B marketing. They have customers, not consumers. So all their efforts are classified as being part of the B2B market category!
B2B vs B2C Marketing
Marketing to businesses is very different from marketing to consumers. Businesses are looking for products and services that will help them be more productive, so their needs can be met in a way they see as cost-effective.
On the other hand, consumers want things that make life easier or better quality of living - but at any price point.
Businesses need information about values (i.e., product features) whereas with consumer goods it's all about branding and instilling brand loyalty early on before competition begins to rise up against you because anything goes when trying to attract customers who have limited budgets compared with business buyers."
B2B marketing targets the needs, interests, and challenges of individuals who are making purchases on behalf of their organization. Here are a few examples of B2B companies:
Coworking is an office space management system that leases out offices for remote teams or freelancers (like WeWork).
An online printing service that will deliver your products to customers, whether it's home goods or fashion accessories and on-demand order fulfilment, warehousing and screen printing company is the largest industry in America - but are you one of those people who still have a closet full of t-shirts?
"The Social Media Marketing company is an amazing place to work if you're looking for a job that offers growth opportunities and great benefits.
B2C marketing targets the needs, interests, and challenges of individual consumers who are making purchases on their behalf.
B2C marketing allows companies to tailor their products and services to a specific customer's needs.
B2C marketers focus on the individual, which is why this type of advertising targets an audience who makes purchases themselves as opposed to businesses that make purchase decisions for others such as in B2B communications.
A few examples of B2C Marketing are companies like Groupon and Amazon because they target individuals looking for deals or new goods respectively while traditional forms of advertisement may address business clients with different interests than those addressed by these more personal advertisements.
- A company that rents or sells office supplies to remote people or self-employees.
- A store that sells t-shirts and other clothing and accessories (like Target)
- An e-commerce store that sells t-shirts including clothing and accessories.
- Online music streaming that sells subscriptions.