What you need to know about B2B versus B2C marketing
When it comes to strategies for your brand/business, content marketing is both extremely effective and extremely necessary. The fact is, you won’t get very far without a content marketing strategy. That goes for all businesses, including business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) businesses, though your approach to content marketing will differ between the two. It is essential that you understand the differences so that you can market effectively
Embracing your target audience
When it comes to a content marketing strategy (any content marketing strategy), you need to identify and embrace your target audience before you can implement any strategy and before you can create goals and milestones for your business. Actually, there is a preliminary step you need to take before you do anything else, and that is to determine and create the persona for the ideal member of your target audience.
It is important to understand exactly what a B2B and B2C business is and what they need.
B2B: The B2B customer is interested in acquiring a product and/or service that will improve what that particular business already offers. It is essential that the choice of product and/or service is adequate. After all, the reputation of that business is based on that particular decision (and similar decisions like it).
B2C: The B2C customer is looking for products and/or services that will positively affect that individual. The possible consequences of a poor choice are not far-reaching in that case. The only person affected by the choice will be the person who purchased the product and/or service.
What results do you hope to achieve with your content marketing?
Before developing none content marketing strategy, you need to define exactly what you hope to get out of your efforts. You may want to get more leads based on your content marketing. If you’re running a B2C business, you’ll need to make sure everyone knows about your brand.
You’ll need to do your best to engage those people (or at least a large percentage of them). After all, not only do you want those people to understand how awesome and valuable your offerings are, you also want them to tell other people about your brand so they can become loyal to your brand as well.
Get inside your customer’s head
If you are able to realize not that the other person wants to buy your products and/or services but also why that person wants to buy your products and/or services, you will be one step ahead. A really effective way to achieve this is with the right keywords and key phrases. If you’re not sure what they are, you can identify them (or at least get a better idea of them) by looking at what your competitors are writing.
If you’re running a B2B business, identifying the issues affecting your target audience is critical to your success. In fact, not only is it important to identify the problems, but finding a solution to the problems is even more critical to your relationship with the other person. In a B2C situation, you’ll need to figure out exactly what triggers an emotional reaction in the other person (or business owner).
Identification of your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
every business have to have a USP. It is what makes other people choose to engage with you and eventually do business with you and buy what you are selling. It makes it clear to other people why they should buy from you instead of other entrepreneurs. Once you’ve identified your USP, you’ll want to engage people with it.
If you’re running a B2B business, you’ll need to present your solution to the problem to show the other person why you’re the one they should buy from. If you’re running a B2C business, it’s important to keep in mind that the other person isn’t just interested in valuable, educational information. He or she is also (and probably more) interested in getting something from you that will change your life for the better in some way.
Find out exactly where you are going to share your content marketing materials
Determining exactly where you are going to post your content marketing materials is just as important as the quality of your content. If you have a B2B business, your content will be most effective in the form of blogs on your website, as well as syndicating the content on social media channels like LinkedIn, SlideShare, and YouTube. If you have a B2C business, the popular social networks will probably work more effectively.
Conclution
There are many different types of businesses, some of them B2B and some of them B2C. B2B and B2C businesses are unique and unrepeatable challenges. It is important to remember that a clear difference between the two types of business is that one seeks value (on a large scale) while the other seeks human/emotional connection. In any case, all businesses need to make marketing efforts that deliver positive results and enable business owners to take their business to the next level.