I'm often asked how business-to-business (B2B) marketing is different than business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing. Although you are still selling a product or a service to a person the marketing is difference for B2B and B2C. The purchase motivation is different and they have different needs when it comes to the information that they need in order to make the decision to purchase. The differences between these markets run deep and they are important.
When we take time to understand what is needed we have a better chance of closing the deal with a B2B or a B2C market. It's when we ignore the differences that we fail to provide the information and the support to turn a prospective consumer into a customer.
A consumer purchases on emotion and a business purchases on logic. Let me show you the difference in marketing to a B2C market vs. a B2B market.
Your Turn: What differences have you found in marketing to a B2C vs. a B2B market?
While I certainly agree that the B2B marketing is more complex and requires a more logical approach, I don’t think it’s a completely ‘logical’ sale. You may present the facts and features of your product or service, but ultimately, the decision maker is a person. A person still buys based on emotion. In the B2B market, they just require more data to justify their decision than the B2C market. The key is discovering their pain, whether it’s a pain that the whole organization or their team feels. And ensuring they understand how your product or service will relieve them of that pain.
Deb, while I understand your point – look at it like this:
A B2B individual is going to purchase on logic not emotion – so your solution to the pain must be logical – how does it save the company time, money or resources? They aren’t going to go to the “higher ups” and say I bought it because it made me feel good
I’ve worked on both equally in my career and it’s not so cut and dry.
Say you’re evaluating a SaaS. You’ve narrowed it down to three solutions that pretty much do the same thing. Who do you choose? Probably the one that makes you FEEL the most comfortable using. That’s called an emotion and it can make a real difference, especially among similar products and services. Trust can be gained through logical arguments, but trust is emotional and can be addressed from an emotional proposition. The main point here is that most decisions are made from making comparisons. Who stands out is often the one playing to your intellect and heart.
I’ve seen sales made with some awful presentations that stated opinions as facts and had no shred of logic to them. They looked logical, but if you were to start picking them apart, you’d realize there’s nothing of substance there. Yet they worked and were not logical.
I have also seen higher ups ignore logical arguments in favor of gut opinion. They will say things like, “there’s just something about it that doesn’t feel right”, if you even get that much out of them.
What about fear. Fear isn’t logical, but you can make all kinds of logical arguments to stir it up. If I propose a solution and follow it up with saying, if you use our competitor you risk blah, blah, blah. Isn’t that both logical and emotional.
The head and the heart work together to make decisions. Marketing, no matter what kind, should proposition logical arguments wrapped up in emotional packages.
John, thanks for your comments. You have to get in the door before you can make them feel warm and fuzzy, remember this about marketing to them – and getting in front of them so that you can make them “feel” warm and fuzzy, but you’ve still got to sell them on logic
B2C marketing is lot easier than B2B marketing. B2C is to mass-market and B2B is to focused segment. In B2C you can play around with the emotions of people. While in B2B lot of logic and reasoning is evolved and rational decisions are taken. And the point of interaction or the decision maker in B2B is not easy to contact. B2C is single step process whereas B2B is multi stages process. B2C marketing campaigns are shorter in duration/nature and need to gain the customer’s interest immediately. B2B is more of relationship, knowledge and awareness building and the life cycle is generally longer than B2C.
John you almost had me there about mixing logic with emotion, but I still go for the motion that B2B buys solely on logic because profit in itself is the result of logic. A business would not survive without calculated decision making and risk taking.These decisions are solely from a logical perspective.
Laura, I’ve been involved in many discussions as to the differences between selling B2B and B2C. While many of the points in your article I agree with, when you wrote “A consumer purchases on emotion and a business purchases on logic,” I disagree.
The great buyers I’ve known and worked with, other than reordering, buying something new is a gut feeling. Great buying comes from having a lot of knowledge about both what one has been buying and what one has not been buying and, for the latter, why. Non-buying is a logical decision that can be explained to others at their level of what logic is. The factors that go into making a wise decision to buy, be in buying in a B2B or B2C situation are the same except that in B2C, the customer is looking for one thing to fill a need; in B2B the buyer is looking for several things to fill several needs.
There are, of course,some variations in B2B situations depending on the industry and at what level of the distribution system between raw material to the end-user before it gets to the B2C level. What those in B2B marketers need to understand is not so much how their customer uses what what the seller sells, but how this affects the B2C customers or those who interface with the B2C customers.
The observations above are from my extensive experience both selling to and selling from in both B2B and B2C situations.
Alan, think of it this way a B2B is looking to fulfill a logical need – save time, money or resource where many of the needs of consumers are more based on needs that can trigger an emotion – hope that helps clear it up for you
Thanks for posting.
Stanley, I don’t agree with your statement that “profit in itself is a result of logic” or anywhere near a logical perspective. I’ve worked in the “for profit sector” for 22 years and the non-profit sector for 6 years. The non-profit sector is built far more on logic, especially a more humane side of logical thinking. Profits are made on just about any decision that generates money, regardless of how much that end product may hurt society. I’ve also worked in both the B2B market and B2B market, and can say it is not “logical” to label either type of marketing more based on logic or emotion. People are a mix of both breeds in any market segment.