It has been observed that B2B Marketing targets potential customers in a work environment where many marketers feel obliged to present content in a formal and boring way. Instead, they should be creative and reach an audience with accessible and useful content.
In the B2B world of buying and consumer marketing campaigns focus on facts and figures to convince their target group. Here we expose a number of misconceptions about B2B marketing and prove that on closer inspection it is driven by a much stronger human connection than B2C. Although it is often assumed that B2C marketing is larger than B2B and more visible to most people, corporate marketing is actually about much more than just buying things.
Although many aspects of B2B marketing overlap with B2C, it is a completely different beast from the latter, particularly if your target audience goes beyond the business to the employees of the company. Make sure you are not only delivering the message your customers want, but that they see it as crucial to marketing in the B2B world. Marketing agents can be intimidated by technical terms and concepts, but it is important to remember that B2Bs are people and that people are everything.
Marketing’s goal is not to convert customers but to create brand advocates and run extra business for you, friends and colleagues. The solution you offer businesses affects the customer experience, and you can use this to your advantage through marketing. The ultimate goal in marketing is to build loyal customers who serve as brand advocates, become champions of your brand and share your offerings with others.
Many B2B companies believe that sales and marketing begin when a potential customer submits a request for a quotation. Marketing assumes that customers are stupid and need to be told what to do and that marketing creates more work for sales by making additional efforts to isolate potential customers, a sort of arrogance that seeps into marketing materials. Today, there are numerous marketing techniques that are designed for B2B effectiveness and can achieve lasting positive results.
Social media and B2B marketing go hand in hand today and smart marketers understand the importance of both and work to inform and delight on social channels where their brands and customers are engaged most. Social media gives B2Bs the same or more value as B2C brands: product awareness, lead acquisition, reputation building, customer service and market intelligence. B2B marketers do not need to use social media and if business people do not use social platforms to get to where they are, they will not find serious B2B information.
According to social media marketing experts, B2B consumers are consuming 53% of the total content in 2021 before making a purchase decision. LinkedIn is reported as the most frequently used (94%) and effective social media platform for B2B marketing, as mentioned in a renowned Content Marketing Survey.
In the B2B world, as explained in Geoffrey Moore’s classic book Crossing the Chasm, there is a small segment of the market composed of technologists, people at the forefront of the adoption of new technologies, who are more interested in the product itself, the applications, the code, the electronic components, etc. B2B Marketing is aimed at CEOs and board members and focuses on project managers, IT administrators and other professionals who run small and large departments based on the product or industry.
There is a lot of potential for influencer marketing in the B2B environment. Here you can learn how to fight common myths and misunderstandings and explain B2B marketing in a way that is both interesting as a profession and enjoys the respect that you deserve as a company. B2Bs are not as different as you think, but there are still some myths that might hold you back.
As the B2B marketing landscape moves forward, it may be dusty, boring, but the root of the business is that customers expect content and experiences similar to those offered by B2C efforts. B2B is a unique market, and many of these tactics do not translate well into B2B.
B2C social media marketers are wrestling with ways to incorporate smart automation into their efforts without losing the human touch, and B2B marketers, accustomed to the benefits of automation in other cases, are more inclined to use automation in social media, and are considering personalized touch to support their efforts. Don’t be blind to the fact that social media drives your overall marketing goals, such as reach, visibility, product validation, propensity to buy, and, of course, high-quality lead generation.
