It’s one of the ingrained rules of marketing, one of the first things you learn as a baby marketer. There are two spheres of marketing: business to business and business to customer, or B2B and B2C, and they are different types of marketing. They have different strategies, different experts, different conferences, different agencies devoted to them.
You’d be forgiven for thinking they were completely separate disciplines.
But they’re not.
Of course, there are some different traditions in each sphere. The target audience can skew more specific, or more broad. The purchase sizes can certainly differ. But the most important thing is the same.
Purchases are made by people, as Scott Anderson pointed out when he was on our show.
UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE IS ALWAYS GOOD MARKETING
There’s an idea that B2C marketing is emotion-based. It’s about cool factor. It’s about security. It’s about image. The accompanying idea is that B2B marketing is about logic. Data. Bottom lines.
The truth is that both are about both. Human beings are emotional. We’re driven by factors we don’t even understand. We want what makes us feel, and look, good. We’re also intelligent. We weigh our decisions and most of us a pretty good at knowing when we’re being tricked or manipulated.
So the key to good marketing of either variety, is as simple, and as difficult, as understanding people. What they want. What they care about. What they feel and the information they need.
And then tell them, honestly, and emotionally.
If you can’t be both honest and emotional at the same time, you’re probably selling the wrong thing.