“Blurring of Lines between B2B and B2C”

Social media of B2B and B2c is totally altering the approach of doing business, with “social” being the hot topic. Nowadays consumers are adopting a research-and-validate system of buying. This means that both B2B and B2C organizations must be entirely transparent with their Marketing.

Apart from B2B and B2C, a third strategy exists that often goes unnoticed: People-to-People. Technology and mobile are changing the way we do business. It’s easy to divert from the ever-changing digital ecosystem. It’s significant to stick to the core principal of audiences over algorithms. Delighting customers with experiences that allow them to engage, learn and ultimately augments value to their lives is a marketing technique that spans across definition lines of B2B and B2C.

Moreover the situation demands an ample emphasis on mobile — from apps & websites to emails, text messages and push notifications. Tomorrow’s most effective marketing strategies will have to integrate mobile from the start, not as an addition. People expect genuineness more than ever today. They’re doing their own research on companies before ever contacting them.

This means re calibrating the customary B2B attitude to influence customers in a straighter, personal way than ever before. That will entail real working knowledge of their businesses and their own clienteles.

Digitization

Consumer marketing is leading in the digital space and has set a very high bar for B2B enterprises. Corporate values, brand limitations, and regulatory environments have, for the most part, constrained the innovative, out-of-the-box thinking often found in consumer marketing.

I anticipate that software products are becoming a lot easier to use in businesses and people are taking the products that they use at home to work.

Not to mention, a decade ago most companies were forecasting the arrival of a new golden age of branding. They appointed creative agencies and armies of technologists to insert brands throughout the digital universe. But despite all the hoopla, such efforts have had very little payoff.

Social Media

Social media would permit any company to leapfrog traditional media and forge relationships directly with customers. If we told them great stories and linked with them in real time, our brand would become a hub for a community of consumers. Businesses have capitalized billions pursuing this vision. Yet few brands have created meaningful consumer interest online.

Additionally Brands flourish when they break through in culture. And branding is a set of techniques designed to generate cultural relevance. Digital technologies have not only created potent new social networks but also dramatically altered how culture works. Digital crowds now serve as very effective and productive visionaries of culture—a phenomenon called as crowdculture.

However there are clear signs that B2B marketing is marching up its game in relating lessons learned from its B2C counterparts. The significant marketing developments I see evolving along these blurred B2B-B2C or B2B2C lines are:

Era of Smooth Customer experience

Patym, Amazon and Uber among several others, offer functional, accessible websites that involve customers with extremely tailored experiences.These experiences are based on preference recognition, reward programs, and effortless payments. In other words, they are providing an all-inclusive digital experience that makes a tour to the store almost pointless. The 24/7 on-demand service segment is also growing in popularity as more and more websites offer live chat support. This is what is called “smooth customer experience.” It’s the easy and spontaneous browsing or online shopping experience that you walk away from.

Hubspot

Visual content gets 90% more views and is 40% more shared on social media. Good images have a huge impact on social engagement. Hubspot pays close attention to the science of visuals, contributing their own research and guides on the topic.

Hubspot often gives away the stock photos and creates dynamic social imagery. It makes good use of the cover image sections of the several social sites in which they’re active. A variety of associated visual imagery is rolled out, including cover images, with each new campaign launch.

Keeping it simple

B2B and B2C marketing are often thought of as being pretty mismatched. B2B marketers feel that they do not have room to match the creativity of their consumer-facing colleagues. But the lines between the two are blurring, for example blogs from B2B software providers – speak directly to the one or two people in a company who might use their product, ignoring the rest.

The reason these companies are successful is simple: you never really sell to a business, always to the people who make it up. That’s why you should always build personal rapport initially. That’s why creativity and emotional appeal in B2B marketing can bring great outcomes.

Emotional connections

B2B brands are now concentrating on making it easy brands by story telling. When stories feel timely and applicable to our own lives, we get revolved in even more so and are bound to share the content on the social media

Mesmerizing content merged with social media leads to brand engagement and loyalty. Whether it’s a global campaign to launch ads like Vicks’s “touch of care” or Ariel’s “Share the load”, it’s isn’t about selling products.Furthermore it’s about demonstrating brand value. Google isn’t a search engine. Google is a digital toolset that breaks down time, space, and knowledge barricades to allow meaningful connections and personal growth.

Similarly business decision makers have a bigger personal and professional stake in the decision to purchase. Over recent years as financial resources have gotten more constrained.The stakes have been raised to assure senior management that investment in a new technology or implementing a new campaign is worth the time and resources it demands. Likewise emotional stakes are higher and in turn, emotional connections with B2B brands are in fact greater than B2C brands.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the line isn’t blurring but software in B2B is becoming inclined by B2C products and companies are getting better at making their software user friendly. Bottom line, people want to do business with people and not organizations. B2B firms that get that and can ditch the technical sales jargon stand a much greater chance of creating an emotional connection with potential customers.

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