“At the end of the day, it’s all about value delivered to the customer.” That’s how my marketing club meeting ended last month. Today, marketing goes far beyond “the performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producers to consumers.” That’s how it was described by the American Marketing Association in 1935.
Now, the AMA defines it as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
Through the years, marketing has been divided into B2B and B2C. And there’s a reason for it. We act differently when choosing a software vendor (partner, in fact) for the next five years to support digital transformation projects than we do when choosing sneakers to support our exercise.
Anyhow, there is much more we, as B2B marketers, can learn from B2C to create special bonds with our customers and help them make their business more sustainable and efficient.
Typically B2B services are hard to communicate. There are so many services we provide and industries we serve. This leads to generalization or hard-to-understand concepts and deeply professional words. It creates barriers for customers. The harder it is to understand what we are talking about, the fewer chances we have to make a deal. So, let’s make our language simple. A good litmus test could be an elevator speech to a friend of yours who is not a part of the industry you work in.
A Frictionless Experience
A frictionless and transparent checkout process is the key to success for any consumer business today. Customers want to have full control of the process and be sure of any additional charges that may occur.
Read more: Four Things B2B Marketing Can Learn From B2C
