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B2B marketing: what’s the story? |
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Based on the content of SA’s marketing press, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there is only one type of marketing happening across the country: B2C. Perhaps this is because marketing peeps don’t get the concept of B2B and choose not to play there. Can it be that B2B just isn’t that well understood by a broad enough range of marketers? Or, is it because B2B companies themselves don’t see the value of marketing as a profit-generating function and therefore don’t pay it much attention? That view was endorsed for me a few weeks ago when a highly intelligent MD – with a postgrad degree in marketing, noch al – asked me what B2B meant. Er, well, it means Business-to-Business, as opposed to Business-to-Consumer… There’s also a view among many marketers and agencies that B2B is boring. That it’s somehow more fun, interesting and challenging to be marketing washing powder or fast food rather than autoparts or earthmovers. B2B and B2C: what’s the difference? This type of thinking - that somehow B2C is dead sexy and B2B is dead boring – strikes me as odd. Fact is, business marketing is certainly very different to consumer marketing. For me, there are two Big Differences that make B2B much more fun, interesting and challenging than B2C. The first Big Difference comes from this pretty accurate generalisation: B2C deals with frequent, low-price purchases; high volumes; simple products; and rapid sales cycles. For the vast majority of our purchases, when you and I buy things there’s not a lot at stake and we don’t give it much thought. A recent minibook, B2B Marketing for Dummies sums this up very neatly: “You don’t bring in a consultant to help you choose the right toothpaste; you make a decision in seconds and go for it - I’m backing crystals over stripes and blast the consequences! Consumer marketing experts contend with that level of customer involvement in a world full of fast-moving consumer goods and we wish them well.” In complete contrast, B2B generally deals with infrequent, high-price purchases; low volumes; complex products; and long sales cycles. A global car manufacturer doesn’t say ‘These brakes from StopQuik are really neat – we’ll buy ‘em for every car we make.’ (Well, hang on, maybe Toyota did…) If you’re buying four earthmovers at R25m a piece, you’ll go through a much more involved process than, say, when buying your next car. And there will be many more people involved in the decision making process. The second Big Difference: the fact that many more people will influence the buying decision. In B2B, end-users - the people who buy and use your products - are only one part of an overall market that may contain many different elements: distributors and wholesalers; solution-providers; specialist consultancies or professions; support and service providers; financial analysts; commentators in the media; standards boards and statutory regulators; industry associations; user-groups; and the general public. Because the B2B marketing function is targeting companies as opposed to individual consumers, there are also different influences within an end-user’s organisation, each with their own distinct requirements that need to be fulfilled by your products and services. In B2B, each components of the overall market is an audience for marketing’s messages. The diversity of the audiences means that you can’t have catchy, one-size-fits-all brand messages. ‘Brighter than bright’ may work for BriteRite washing powder in supermarkets, but ‘Just dig it’ won’t help you sell earthmovers in the world of mining or civil engineering. B2B brands have to work harder, accomplish more than B2C brands A B2B brand has to build positive perceptions across the full range of audiences who influence business buying decisions. This is a complex task. You need a clear understanding of the market’s composition and you need to create and deliver messages that are relevant to each audience in the market. At the same time, the brand has to be cohesive, it has to have unity. Even though there needs to be a variety of relevant messages, they need to be perceived as part of a single brand. To do this, B2B marketers typically create a few core brand messages that concisely highlight the key features of their products and services. A product or service has a fixed set of features. Until the product or service is altered, the feature-set stays the same – and so do the core brand messages. But what does change are the outcomes produced by the features for different audiences. B2B marketers look at how these features translate into outcomes that are relevant for each audience within the market. Influencing market perceptions: relevance, relevance, relevance Having defined the market’s audiences, B2B marketers need to ask some questions in the market:
Relevance is crucial because it builds credibility and confidence. And relevance is all about outcomes - the outcomes that are produced for each component of the market: what does this brand do for me? For example, high levels of reliability that cut your earthmovers’ downtime is a message for a sales director at a road-builder - we can do the job quicker and at a lower cost than our competitors. But reliability is also a message for the road-builder’s FD - lower cost-of-ownership and higher ROI (return on investment). Earthmovers with low carbon emissions might not be a compelling message for the operations director, but will sit really well with the environmental media and the consultants conducting an environmental impact study on that proposed new superhighway. And so it goes on: matching messages to audiences by creating the right message for the right people. B2B marketers: much closer to the market? For me, this is another of the big attractions of B2B: there is a real need - and practical opportunity - for on-going contact with people from different audiences within the market. Discovering how they benefit from a product or service is real hands on, person-person-stuff and it gives B2B marketing a breadth of appeal that is perhaps absent from B2C. Next article: Branding: the profit-pumping heart of B2B marketing Ranked as One of the Top B2B Blogs on the Net, Mark Eardley’s marketing blog is at www.eardley.co.za |
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