Guest Blog: Why B2B and B2C Principles Align In An Integrated Marketing Strategy

By: Sophie Tunnah

Sure, there’s a lot of differences across businesses in the b2b landscape when compared to the b2c industries, but in my view, many of these differences are held within proposition, consumer behaviour, and data signaling. 

Whether you’re a b2b marketing specialist or hold your experience within one or many b2c industries, the principles that sit behind marketing strategy and campaign planning remain consistent. 

Why do I hold such a strong belief in this? Mostly because I’ve been fortunate to hold roles that are b2c focused, however wrapped in amongst them was a b2b proposition offering that required marketing attention. 

I believe that the key to success lies not in changing the core strategy, but in adapting it to the unique behaviours and expectations of your target audience, as well as leveraging data effectively. And let’s be honest, this is true when flexing capabilities from one business to another, not just the differences of b2b and b2c. 

In this post, I’m going to explore how you can consider the adaptations that are most important and can enhance your marketing efforts.

Understanding the Business: The Foundation of Marketing

Without this in depth, your ability to succeed is significantly reduced. Understanding the business’ proposition, competitors, market and trends are the foundations to creating a strong strategy that’s clear and relatable to the right audience at the right time. 

• Objectives: what is the business trying to achieve and why? 
• Strategic focuses: identifying key areas of emphasis, such as product or services releases, operational changes, or market share shifts
• Competitors: understanding the competitive landscape, along with the similarities and differences, as well as who leads and who challenges within the market
• Macro environment: good ‘ole PESTLE type analysis to identify opportunities that could support the business objectives, and being aware of external factors that could impede success

This builds a strong foundation of knowledge, it guides the development of campaign metrics, and ensures that marketing campaigns are measurable and aligned with business outcomes.

The Four Pillar Strategic Approach 

I have always remained consistent to four core pillars to create effective marketing strategies.

1. Proposition: it’s crucial to be clear on how your offering provides value and ease to your customers. I’ve always been favourable to working through a value proposition canvas to aid clarity around individual customer (/persona) gropups and the proposition, and even on occasion, I’ve seen how this exposes disparity between where a business believes they add value and where a customer is seeking a different value. Your product or service offering should address a specific need or problem to each customer group, and this value proposition needs to be clearly communicated, so…
2. Communication: the goal is to optimise how your message reaches your target audience; does it resonate? Effective communication is not only about finding the right words, but about finding the right channels, formats, and placements, and using a language and tone that your target customer group can relate to.
3. Target market: identifying your ideal customer and understanding their needs is paramount. In turn, this allows you to tailor your marketing messages and activities to the people who are most likely to engage with your brand in a way that drives towards the desired action. It’s worth considering layers to the view that you create of your target market, maybe on a scale of propensity, and while this adds complexity, it also adds flexibility to push and pull different marketing levers within campaigns.
4. Measurement: please define success and what that looks like at both an overall level as well as within each area of your campaign plan. This allows you to track the effectiveness of your campaigns and using a data-driven approach, you can make decisions to directly improve your results.

Adapting to Audience Behaviours and Expectations

While the core principles remain the same, the way you apply them can differ significantly between b2b and b2c businesses audiences. 

Here are some of the key adaptations that I’ve considered with campaigns:

• Targeting criteria: b2c often focuses on demographics, locations, interests, and affinities, whereas b2b targets organisational roles, industry sectors, and decision-making processes
• Media consumption: b2c may rely more on social media, mass advertising, and trends. Whereas b2b often leverages professional networks, industry publications, and events
• Goals and pains: b2c customers are typically driven by personal achievements and motivators, whereas b2b decisions are influenced by organisational objectives, influence and business performance points

Additionally, the customer journey remains consistent – it’s one funnel but will see different paths. Neither will be as lined as a visual representation would make it seem, but it is worth considering that the duration and complexities of the stages can vary significantly, as well as the customer’s purpose within each.

Typically, b2b journeys often involve multiple stakeholders and longer decision-making processes, while b2c transactions are typically faster and more personal.

Data – The Key Differentiator

Data usage is where b2b and b2c marketing strategies diverge most significantly. Here, there does need to be a different approach and strong acceptance of what the purpose, action and capability of what & how data can signal.

I’ve identified seven areas that I see the biggest differences across data and how it can play a different role for b2b and b2c businesses.

1. Focus: b2c data tends to focus on behavioural and personal insights, while b2b data emphasises organisational and industry-level information
2. Volume: b2c data is often reasonably granular and at a customer-level, whereas b2b data can be multi-layered and have a need to be more assumptive
3. Application: b2c data is often used for experience-driven campaigns, while b2b data supports long-term relationship building as a priority
4. Targeting: b2c targets individual decision-makers, whereas b2b targets decision-maker influencers which can follow multiple layers within an organisation
5. Enrichment: b2c is capable of gaining enrichment from channels such as social media and featuring user-generated content, while b2b uses benchmarking opportunities and industry standards as a way to enrich offering
6. Privacy: b2c requires personal opt-in consent, whereas b2b often relies much more on legitimate interest in a business’ proposition
7. Trust: b2c emphasises e-commerce security, while b2b focuses on certification and validation

While the core principles of marketing remain consistent across b2b and b2c sectors in my view, a business’ ability to adapt to audience behaviours, their expectations, and the way in which businesses need to use data are at the centre of a successful marketing campaign. By starting with a deep understanding of your business and the surrounding market, and adapting your strategy to these sector differences, you’ll be able to plan, build and activate effective marketing campaigns that resonate with your target audience and drive meaningful results.

Top tips from me:

• Potential customers can be in two modes – “business” mode and “personal” mode so understanding and differentiating when to target and show your messaging is key.
• Evaluate your customers’ needs and pains, and strategically match your propositions’ alleviators and gain creators to them. It’s OK to have gaps within this mapping.
• Listen to the data to understand the full story – how your prospects are behaving, how they are engaging, what they are responding to, and consider multiple conversion points within your journey.
• Don’t copy your competitors. Understand why they are active in a given space, and then consider how that space aligns with your objectives, audience and messaging.
• Enjoy building a relationship with your prospective customers – don’t just expect a conversion. Relationships are one the biggest differentiators of customer expectation between b2b and b2c.

By: Sophie Tunnah

Founder & Director @ Literally Marketing

https://literallymarketing.co.uk/