What You Need to Know about B2B versus B2C Marketing
When it comes to strategies for your brand/business, content marketing is extremely effective and extremely necessary. The fact is that you won’t get very far without a content marketing strategy. That applies to all businesses, including business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) businesses, although your approach to content marketing will be different 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 put any strategy in place and before you can create goals and milestones for your business. There is actually a preliminary step that you should take before you do anything else, which is that you need to determine and create the persona for your ideal target audience member.
[tweetthis]Your ideal target audience persona should be created to the last detail.[/tweetthis]It is important to understand exactly what a B2B and B2C business are all about and what they need.
B2B: The B2B customer is interested in acquiring a product and/or service that will enhance what that particular business is already offering. It is critical that the choice of product and/or service is an appropriate one. After all, the reputation of that business rests on that particular decision (and similar decisions like that one).
B2C: The B2C customer is looking for products and/or services that will affect that individual positively. The potential consequences of a bad choice are not far-reaching in that case. The only person who will be affected by the choice will be the person who has bought the product and/or service.
What results are you hoping to achieve from your content marketing?
Before you develop any content marketing strategy, you should define exactly what you hope to get from your efforts. You may be hoping to get more leads based on your content marketing. If you have a B2C business, you will need to make sure that everyone is aware of your brand.
You will need to make your best effort to engage those people (or, at least, a large percentage of them). After all, you not only want those people to understand how amazing and valuable your offerings are but you also want them to tell other people about your brand so that they can also become loyal to your brand as well.
Getting into the head of your customer
If you are able to figure out 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. One really effective way to achieve this is with the right keywords and key phrases. If you aren’t sure what those are, you can pinpoint them (or at least get a better sense of them) by looking at what your competitors are writing.
If you have a B2B business, identifying issues that are plaguing your target audience is critical to your success. In fact, not only is identifying the issues important but coming up with a solution to the problems is even more critical to your relationship with the other person. In a B2C situation, you will need to figure out exactly what invokes an emotional reaction in the other person (or business owner).
Identifying your unique selling proposition (USP)
Every business must have a USP. It is what makes other people choose to engage with you and to eventually do business with you and to buy what you are selling. It makes other people understand clearly why they should buy from you instead of other business people. After you have identified your USP, you will want to engage people with it.
If you have a B2B business, you will need to present your solution to the problem to demonstrate to the other person why you are who he or she should buy from. If you have a B2C business, it is important for you to keep in mind that that the other person is not merely interested in valuable, educational information. He or she is also (and probably most) interested in getting something from you that will change his or her life for the better in some way.
Figuring 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 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 to social media channels such as LinkedIn, SlideShare, and YouTube. If you have a B2C business, the popular social networks will probably work most effectively.
Conclusion
There many different types of businesses, some of them B2B and some of them B2C. B2B and B2C business are unique and face unique challenges. It is important to remember that one distinct difference between the two types of businesses is that one is looking for value (on a broad scale) while the other is looking for a human/emtotional connection. In any case, all businesses need to make marketing efforts that bring positive results and that allow those business owners to bring their businesses to the next level.
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