The Death of the B2B and B2C Marketing Divide
President and CEO
Baker Communications
If you listen carefully you can hear the sound of a wall as it comes crashing down.
This venerable wall once separated the strategies for marketing to consumers from the strategies for marketing to business and corporate customers. It was once assumed that, because selling to corporate accounts generally involves much larger deals and longer sales cycles, sales and marketing needed to focus on generating leads, building pipeline and growing relationships in order to educate prospects on the products and the company. On the other hand, selling to consumers is more transactional in nature, with shorter sales cycles including a lot of impulse purchases) which is based less on relationships and more on attention-grabbing promotions, entertaining campaigns, emotional hooks, and – above all – loyalty to the brand.
In a nutshell, the common wisdom said that B2B customers made purchases using a different process and for different reasons than B2C customers, so the marketing strategy had to be different. Once upon a time that might have been true, but not anymore.
This old duelling-strategy approach ignored one very important thing that B2B buyers and B2C have in common – they are both buyers. As buyers, we all have a shared set of needs: we want to feel like we are in control of the buying process and we eagerly search out the best information we can find to help us make our buying decisions. In addition, we want the transaction to be as transparent as possible in order to avoid unpleasant surprises after the sale. And we all want to feel like we are getting the best possible value. However, up until recently most buyers could only go so far down that road, because sales organizations controlled the flow of that information. Suddenly, this is no longer the case.
The Internet, with its teeming hosts of social media sites and research tools, has turned the marketing world upside down. This complex and very sophisticated network of consumer interactions has put all buyers – both B2B and B2C – firmly in control of the buying process. All the information buyers need to help them make buying decisions is now instantly available on their computer or mobile devices 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Consider this: it took radio 30 years in order to reach an audience of 50 million listeners, but it only took 9 months for Facebook to reach 100 million users, where they are now busily sharing information, research and experience about your company‘s products and services.
And the walls came tumbling down.
We are now one unified culture of consumers. We all care about relevance, personalization, and good customer experiences and we are willing to pay for it. As consumers, we all now expect to find what we want, when we want it, wherever we want it, whether it is a business purchase or a consumer purchase. Day by day, B2B customers and B2C customers are all adopting the same buying strategies: we go online, we talk to friends, we read reviews, we find information, and we engage the seller if we believe they have what we need. If the seller is not savvy enough to engage us at a high level and meet our expectations, we quickly move on to the next seller.
The biggest area where the wall between B2B and B2C marketing is coming down is the idea of branding. Over the years, companies have invested countless billions of dollars into building and owning their brands. However, in the new world of social media, the consumers have taken control of the brand. They can now make or break your brand overnight with one viral social media post. For this single reason alone, companies must rethink their entire approach to marketing.
Here are some critical things to keep in mind as you attempt to navigate the new world of social media marketing:
- The notion of marketing "business to business" has never been true. You don't market business to business. You market seller to buyer, which basically means person to person. It is a personal connection, which is exactly what today‘s social media culture requires. Therefore, you must make the customer‘s experience with you feel as unique and personal as possible.
- Even corporate buyers are pushing a lot of business out to the web, searching for partners and reading reviews before they make even a preliminary contact with a vendor.
- For this reason, you must provide your customers with easy access to great information. Your website must be simple to understand, easy to use, and it must speak to the needs of the customers.
- Don‘t make the common sales mistake of pushing products, even on your website; customers hate that on a website just as much as they do when you try it on them in person. Your website must quickly and clearly direct them to the things they care about, not the things you want them to care about.
- This leads to the next important tip: make sure you know what your customers care about. Do the kind of research that will help you understand your customers better than they understand themselves, and then address those needs right up front – no gimmicks – just clear value differentiators. Make sure information about these critical issues is prominently displayed on your website.
- You must be immediately responsive. It used to be said that leads that weren‘t followed up in 24 hours were as good as dead. The time is shorter now, because if you don‘t immediately provide some kind of follow-up to any customer contact you receive, they will go to the next competitor they found on their Internet search and do business with them.
This isn‘t to say that the role of the sales team has been reduced to minding the website and taking orders. If anything, the influence of social media in the sales process has elevated the need for a highly skilled sales team. The customer may know a lot of things, but they don‘t know everything; they still need a personal contact who will guide them in building their final solution. Once you connect with a customer, you have a great opportunity to grow the relationship and create extra value. However, this sales team will need a few new skills. They must be gifted in the consultative process – less concerned on pushing products and more focused on meeting needs. They must ask sincere, insightful questions, and then listen carefully while the customer leads the way to uncover their preferred solution. They must be ready to collaborate with the customer to build creative solutions, instead of plowing the same old ground over and over again.
Above all, they must remember that the customer always has a choice, and that choice is now as close as the nearest mouse click.
Action Items
- Is your website configured so that it is simple and easy for your customers to access the information or the help they are looking for?
- Do you have a system in place to follow up all leads in less than 24 hours?
- Are your sales teams thoroughly versed in consultative selling skills rather than simply pushing products?
- Explain how you might reconfigure your website to connect more effectively with customers and help them find the information and help they really care about.
Walter Rogers is the President and CEO of Baker Communications. Baker Communications is a sales training and development company specializing in helping client companies increase their sales and management effectiveness. He can be reached at 713-627-7700.
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