What’s The Difference Between A Duck

This was a popular joke when I was at school.

Talking of school, there were several subjects as I recall, where teachers would occasionally set homework along the lines of ‘Compare and contrast A and B’.

Little Love For The English Language

Back then I was a sports loving scientist and budding Engineer, and had little love for the subtleties of the English language and its greatest exponents.

I truly wondered what the point was of searching out and recording the similarities and differences between Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, between solitary tree-dwelling leaf-eaters and pack-hunting carnivores of the plains, or between Shakespeare’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and their Tom Stoppard caricatures.

With age and hopefully maturity, I can now see the technique has some commendable sides to it.

What, If Anything, Separates B2B And B2C?

On the business front, there are frequent alternative opinions on the differences between Business to Business (B2B) Marketing and Business to Consumer (B2C) Marketing. When you understand the differences and similarities, it can help enormously with your own marketing, even if you are in only one of these fields yourself.

The fundamental issue is, I guess, are they the same? Some say the process is that a client or customer has a problem and needs a solution, you can solve that sort of problem, you let that prospect know you exist, that you can supply a solution and why yours is better than other suppliers’ solutions, and then they buy. They’re all people after all.

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Others say B2B and B2C are completely different. Can selling a McDonald’s burger really be the same as selling a vast, enterprise-wide ‘system’ to a global corporation for squillions of pounds?

Ten Possible Differences

To help you decide for yourself, here are ten comments about the characteristics of B2B and B2C Selling and Marketing.

  1. Business buyers will generally buy to solve a problem. Consumers will generally buy to satisfy a desire.
  2. Business buying decisions generally take far longer than consumer buying decisions
  3. Business products and services are generally higher priced than consumer products and services
  4. Business decision makers generally require much more information about you and your product than consumer decision makers
  5. Consumers generally look for products; business buyers are often looking for expertise
  6. Consumer decisions generally involve one person. In business there may be several decision makers, possibly in several layers.
  7. Consumers are more likely to re-evaluate their suppliers every time they make a repeat purchase. Treated well, a business customer can become a customer for life.
  8. Consumer purchasing is noted for its lack of red tape!
  9. It doesn’t usually take long to train a new consumer salesperson. In business, recruiters are often looking for fully trained salespeople with a proven track record.
  10. In a B2C market, you might be trying to get everyone on the planet to buy your product or service. In B2B your target niche is probably quite small.

It’s Your Decision

So, it’s up to you to decide. But I do think it’s far more important to be concentrating on selling the right product or service and on getting great at Marketing. To this end, let me offer you a few more thoughts

  • Find out who is responsible for making the final decision
  • Discover what’s motivating the buyer to buy
  • Test different ways of reaching your ideal clients. Creating a database of people who can and will buy what you have to sell is a mightily powerful first step in Marketing.
  • Be persistent
  • Educate your buyers. You can’t ever supply too much information, especially when there’s a high price tag.
  • Overcome common concerns in your promotional material. Don’t let them wait until the sales conversation.
  • The first sale is vital but the real money comes from the follow on sales, upsells, add-ons and repeat purchases
  • Measure everything so you know the RoI of everything. Forget brand awareness in isolation.
  • As you focus on ideal clients, actively discourage those who won’t or can’t buy.
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Don’t get too tied up in academic debates. Put the energy into getting better at direct response marketing instead.

P.S. The punch-line to the joke at the beginning is, of course, that one of its legs is both the same. Well it seemed hilarious when I was a teenager!

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