B2B and B2C are too often seen as completely separate and distinct modes of business. As consumers become bulk buyers and large companies demand more personalized service, however, business practices are overlapping between the two disciplines more and more. There are quite a few things that B2B marketers could learn from the consumer marketing pros. Here are just a few of the most successful tips.
The Audience as Your Central Focus
It is becoming important to recognize even the largest of companies as a personal partner in the sales process. If your sales process consists of checking off boxes in your CRM, you may soon find yourself supplanted by a company that drills down into the personal information of your former customer. You need individual site hierarchies. You need to understand a company’s capacity to purchase. Most importantly, you must cultivate personal relationships within the company in order to truly qualify a lead and streamline your sales funnel.
Getting More Personal
The more precisely that you know your target market, the more effectively you can target relevant content to qualified leads.Your work in this matter will provide an advantage not only to your company, but also to the prospects you market to. If you personalize your research and connection to customers, they will buy more because they “get” the reasons why you are actually contacting them. Forego the temptation to waste your time marketing to unqualified leads for the sake of playing the percentage game.
Omnichannel Marketing
It may seem counterintuitive to talk about streamlining the sales flow process while expanding the communications platforms upon which the sales funnel takes place. However, giving your prospects a proper choice of how to get in touch with you actually personalizes the experience more for them, giving you a leg up on your competition. You never know how a company may prefer to be contacted – direct mail, phone, social media – so it is best to have all of those stations fully manned and ready to go.
Benefits, Not Features
Features are what your tech staff communicate to your executive staff when the company is looking to generate a genuinely superior product for the marketplace. Once the value has been established, it must be translated to the needs of each individual user. This is where your personalized research into each prospect will truly pay off. Just as you never know how your prospect will prefer to contact you, you never know what feature will truly speak to their needs unless you know them. Benefit descriptions speak directly to the immediate problems that a prospect is facing and gives precise solutions.
There will always be a bit of difference between selling to Sears and Roebuck and selling to Joe Roebuck. However, a good marketer understands the distance between business is closing as technology expands and improves. Take the tips above to heart no matter the scale that you sell on. Every marketer needs to be more flexible in order to keep up with the challenges of the modern business landscape. For best results, bring it all together in a constantly evolving strategy that takes the responses of your target prospects into account at all times.
