B2B Marketing - Definition, Process & Example

What is B2B Marketing?

B2B marketing is a practice of business organizations, individuals or government institutions through which they sell off their products or services which in turn are resold or used in the manufacturing of another product or facilitate a service or add value to their operations. B2B marketing are the business & sales which happens amongst two business firms. In B2B or business-to-business marketing, the finished goods of one firm can act as the input materials to another.

B2B Marketing Process

The steps to build an effective business-to-business marketing strategy are as follows:

1. Market research for a business product requirement.

2. Evaluate goods demand.

3. Understand competitive landscape & opportunity.

4. Identify potential business buyers.

5. Decide volume & price of selling goods in bulk volume.

6. Maintain relationship with business partners.

7. Exploring opportunities to grow & diversify business.

This is the basic B2B marketing process, which needs to be detailed to ensure effective & efficient business & sales.

Features of B2B Marketing

Some of the key features of business-to-business marketing are:

1. Complex decision making due to the presence of multifaceted and highly knowledgeable customer.

2. B2B marketing has to be more rational compared to consumer marketing.

3. B2B products are more complex.

4. There are limited number of buyers & maintaining personal relationships is of key importance.

5. Behavioral and needs based segmentation is less in number.

6. They are long term buyers.

7. The innovation levels in B2B markets are less as compared to consumer markets.

8. These rely less on packaging and other external appearances.

9. B2B marketing is more demanding to reduce the risks involved in making purchasing decisions for their company.

Important B2B Marketing Channels

Some of the media & marketing channels for promoting business-to-business products & services are mentioned as:

1. Conferences & Trade Shows

2. Sales & field marketing

3. Direct mail

4. Email marketing

5. Field marketing

6. Outbound calling

7. Webinars

B2B Marketing Examples

1. Let us take the example of manufacturing of shirt. It has multiple layers of demand driven by the consumers need to purchasing a shirt.

Cotton -> spinning -> weaving -> tailoring -> distribution -> shirt

Businesses sell cotton to merchants who resell it to the spinners who further sell it to the weavers who again sell it to the cloth manufacturer and so on. Businesses do not buy the products for pure indulgence. They purchase them with the objective of adding value to facilitate the movement of products down the value chain of derived demand till it reaches the end consumer.

2. In automobile manufacturing, the different vehicle components are manufactured by different companies. The different components are engines, wheels, mirrors etc which are manufactured by other companies. Finally, they all sell it to the automobile manufacturer to assemble all the parts. Multiple transactions happen resulting in a large volume. This is a case of B2B marketing between component manufacturers & the automobile manufacturing company.

Hence, this concludes the definition of B2B Marketing along with its overview.

This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

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