Let’s find out the main concepts of this industry that will allow you to discover the specifics of B2B sector as a whole.
Definition: B2B Marketing
Business for Business (B2B) is a marketing activity of the company, focused on receiving benefits from the provision of services, selling goods to other companies where the object is a product, service, and subjects are organizations interacting in the market field. B2B is a field of activity where organizations act as vendors and buyers. In a general sense, the definition of B2B corresponds to any company activity aimed at customers who are firms.
B2B Marketing Strategies
When forming a strategy, it is important to take into account that B2B has a number of significant differences from B2C (business to customer), to which the authors of books, articles in social networks are oriented.
The B2B marketing plan is always developed taking into account the following specific features of the industry:
- A product or service. In marketing for consumers, there is an emotional component. People are interested in products because of the emotions that they cause. With B2B customers, buyers are professionals who care about the quality of products, their savings, and advantages.
- Target market. Many B2B sellers can focus on very niche industries that reflect special needs. Despite the fact that it can make marketing easier, it also requires a high level of knowledge.
- Pricing. Enterprises, as a rule, are more concerned with value and profit than consumers. However, they can also be more willing to pay as long as marketers in B2B do an excellent job, convincing them that the product, quality and customer service will be useful.
- Promotion. B2B marketers should be experts not only in marketing and advertising but also experts in their field. As soon as this happens, they will learn about the best ways to enter the market of this area, whether it is blogs, magazines, exhibitions or word of mouth. B2B marketing campaign very rarely uses traditional media, such as television and radio advertising.
Main B2B marketing techniques include content, event, and digital marketing.
- Content Marketing is the dissemination of such content, through which a potential customer will pay attention to the offer of the company and with some probability become its actual client. The content, in this case, can be absolutely any format: text, graphics, audio or video. And the channels and ways of its distribution are very different, and their number is limited only by the imagination of the marketer and common sense.
- Event Marketing is still one of the most common marketing tools, although its impact on sales in the B2B sector is quite insignificant. But this tool is sufficiently effective to interact with the target audience. It is also popular to hold own events that a company can hold for its target audience. Own event (regardless of its format and number of participants) is an opportunity to expand the list of potential customers and the possibility of individual communication and development of B2B marketing ideas.
- Direct Marketing is a form of advertising that denies any information transmission channels, except directed directly at the end user. In other words, when a commercial or non-profit organization addresses directly to the consumer as an individual, bypassing intermediaries, it is direct marketing. Direct marketing services include mailing lists, SMS sending, interactive sites, customer databases, promotional letters, targeted advertising.
- Individuality and complexity. These obvious and simple marketing tools can only benefit when they are tailored to the client's individual characteristics and integrated marketing approach, that is, when the tools are linked together within the company's unified business strategy and implemented in accordance with the plan.
How Large Is the B2B Industry
Answering this question, it is necessary to understand about which country or even the city we are talking about. The size of this industry can vary significantly in different countries and even cities, depending on the geographical location, natural resources, the level of business development and the economy as a whole.
B2B Marketing Examples
B2B marketing ideas are usually focused on four major target categories:
- Companies that use their products, such as construction companies that buy steel sheets for construction;
- Government agencies are the largest target audience of B2B marketing;
- Institutions such as hospitals and schools;
- Companies that resell goods to consumers, for example, brokers and wholesalers.
Thus, it is possible to talk about the following B2B marketing examples. These can be narrow-profile publications, professional journals, journalistic materials on various areas of the economy aimed at professionals and professional interests. Online trading platforms, business Internet portals, websites of B2B market participants, communities organized by companies are resources that we can designate as a B2B sector. In the sphere of trade, there are wholesale trading companies with extensive warehouses. In this segment, only enterprises and organizations operate. By purchasing a particular product, the customer can use it to produce, sell services to the public or meet his own needs.