Business To Business Marketing: Its Significance To Your Business

Many articles will have been written on this subject over time and this is one of them! I am only laying down a few thoughts and observations here, not offering guidance. Evereyone’s perception of marketing practises differ, even though there are a great deal of tried and tested methods.

The relationship existing between two businesses in which no end consumers are involved is called “business to business marketing”. It is more known as B2B and is nothing new in the industry, although with the gigantic rise of technological advancement, the marketing type has come to embrace the changes as well.

Before the term business to business or B2B became popular, the relationship happening between these enterprises were largely known as capital goods or industry goods marketing. These names distinguish the B2B marketing to other type of marketing, the B2C, or business to consumer.

The difference and similarity of B2B and B2C

It is in contrast to the business to consumer marketing, in which existing relationships happen between business and end consumers. The business has direct contact with the consumers to encourage them to make their purchase decisions favorable to the company and be loyal through the years. B2B marketing does not deal with consumers although they are the end-users who will consume the service or product it markets.

The complicated process of B2B makes its different with B2C. Many people are involved in the decision making process in B2B, making the whole method quite complex and protracted… If one is not really knowledgeable about it, it can be difficult undertaking the methods required of business to business marketing.

In the case of B2C, only one person is involved in creating the final decision, or when a special package is being offered, only one person makes the decision resulting to fast buying decisions. There is another major difference existing between the B2B and B2C and this is in terms of the buying decisions. While in B2C the purchasing decision of the consumers is more based on wants, or even on impulse, the business does its buying decision based on its needs.

There are also some similarities existing between the two. For both marketing types, competition is increasing while a decrease in the resources is occurring. Because of this, most small businesses suffer from the loss of market share. In conjunction with this, there is also a falling profit margin. This has resulted in a greater demand for marketing data, specifically for these two business marketing types and small business marketing.

The significance of business to business marketing

Creating an excellent product or service and having a competitive process and the best technology available, is not enough to keep growing in the competitive world of today’s business. Strategizing itself through the use of B2B marketing is important as it helps identify, locate, quantify, segment, and target the customers who are considered really significant in the growth of the business.

By using business to business marketing techniques, it will become easier for the business to achieve its goals. It allows you to concentrate on the performance by each marketing channel involved. The marketing channels, which may include service partners, retailers, reseller networks, and distributors, can be monitored and evaluated so that those that perform weakly may be eliminated and those that produce desirable results may best be focused on.