B2B, or business-to-business marketing, covers every activity and process involved in marketing and distributing a product or a service to another business. Marketing aimed at the end consumer is called B2C, business-to-consumer; B2B means marketing aimed at other companies.

The main aim of B2B marketing is to make other companies aware of your brand and of what your products or services are worth, and to turn them into your customers.

B2B differs from B2C in a lot of ways. One of the differences that stands out most is that the buying process in B2B is usually longer than it is in B2C. Companies also tend to research and examine a good deal more before they buy a B2B product or service.

Among the reasons that buying process runs long: in larger organizations more than one decision making body gets involved, and procurement departments run detailed evaluations. That affects your marketing strategy, and ours as the people running your advertising, because you have to talk to different decision makers in different ways. Keep in mind too that what a procurement department expects can vary from one sector to the next.

3 Golden Rules for B2B:

  1. Build strong relationships with your customers. In business, personal relationships and trust count for a great deal.
  2. Put your references and your success stories out in front. References and credibility are what convince a buyer.
  3. Make choosing your product or service easy. Explain your solutions plainly, especially the ones aimed at small and medium sized businesses.

10 Things That Matter in B2B Marketing:

  1. Work out your target audience and your sector segments (manufacturing, textiles, automotive, tourism, whichever sectors are strong in your market)
  2. Analyze the competitive landscape
  3. Set clear KPIs (sales targets in your own currency, number of leads and so on)
  4. Strengthen your digital tracking and conversion setup
  5. Run a multichannel strategy (trade fairs, digital marketing, industry events)
  6. Stay visible at every stage of the customer journey
  7. Target using behavioral data
  8. Share what you know and what you have lived through in your sector on your own blog
  9. Let your people strengthen your corporate reputation and stay active on social networks (be where the business world actually is, LinkedIn above all)
  10. Build a marketing budget that is realistic and ambitious at the same time (plan it yearly)
B2B marketing illustration

B2B may look harder than B2C, but at Türk SEM we actually think it is easier. The marketing process you follow is simply different, and; the balance between ad spend and revenue usually comes out far better than it does in B2C.