The Differences Between B-to-B and CPG

Marketing is basically advertising, right? Statements like this have frustrated anyone who works in business-to-business marketing. The fact is, when most people think of marketing they think of the 4Ps (product, pricing, promotion and placement), catchy jingles and pretty pictures. And by most people I don’t mean your neighbor. I mean your colleagues. Perhaps your boss.

Why is this so? For two reasons. First, because marketing processes that today seem sacrosanct and almost akin to natural laws grew from consumer package goods (CPGs). And for good reason. CPG has been very successful at marketing its products. Secondly, most people, regardless of their profession, have had a great deal of personal experience with CPG marketing. It’s what we see countless times every day.

Why is this a problem? As any B-to-B marketer knows, marketing to businesses has different challenges and goals. What works for package goods won’t help what they're selling. Inherently B-to-B marketers face unique buyer mindsets and selling obstacles. Here’s five examples:

Complexity
B-to-B offerings are typically complex. They blend products and services, often meet multiple needs for multiple audiences, and are intended to solve strategic and/or operationally complicated issues. This means that just explaining the offerings is frequently the toughest communication challenge.

Relevance is a bigger challenge than awareness
Awareness is the holy grail of traditional consumer marketing – they want us to think of their product first when rolling down the supermarket aisle. This is not necessarily true b-to-b companies where there are often fewer fungible offerings, and relevance is typically a far greater challenge. Business customers need to understand exactly why your offering is more relevant than a competitor’s and how it will improve their business.

Field and/or channel driven sales
Most B-to-B offerings are sold either through field sales, a distributor/reseller channel or both, which means marketing must influence rather than mandate. Again, in CPG, marketers have a high degree of control over the packaging and retail presentation of their offering. For many B-to-B offerings, the sales and/or distribution chain ultimately dictates how marketing messages are delivered.

Must appeal rationally rather than emotionally
While much of traditional marketing has been focused on creating an emotional appeal to the target audience, at the end of the day businesses must (at least attempt) to justify expenditures in relationship to business goals and give business buyers a “reason to believe” that they can use to sell up in their organizations.

Pitch Marketing
Let’s face it. A lot of B-to-B marketing happens in a conference room. For many marketers managing multi-million dollar products, this means the PowerPoint presentation is their most important channel.

All this means two things for B-to-B marketers. They need to first clearly identify for themselves and, perhaps more challengingly, their colleagues the unique marketing obstacles of their business. Secondly, the need build a new toolbox that meets those challenges and in the process be willingly to drop the familiar but often useless practices of traditional marketing.

Thomas Ordahl is a partner with New York-based strategic branding firm Group 1066.