I Had the opportunity to attend another class with guest speaker, Alex Kim, B2B Marketing Strategist from BrainRider. He is also a GBC graduate; I was eager to know how his career journey turned out.
B2B Marketing is defined as the marketing for products and services directed at a business or organization rather than individual consumers.
Relatively easy to understand as B2B stands for Business to Business. However, how does marketing aspect differ? I would like to simply put, imagine scaling it up. More decision makers and stakeholders are involved and the sale cycle is longer (more money involved).
There are other points as well as Alex mentioned:
- Companies know their audience (their audience already exists)
- Relationship driven marketing (focus on long term)
- Content is more informational (what can you “make me look good”)
- Want to Demonstrate organizational benefit as well as individual
- Identifying cross-sell/upsell opportunities
With bigger programs and campaigns, you surely expect a bigger team as well. With long term programs also provide a chance to learn, grow, and improve. The focus is on quality rather than quantity also means you can have more time to think and push your material at its 100%. Alex has also mentioned “smaller pond, bigger fish”, which I really like hearing, He mentions the B2B competition is smaller than B2C, you can raise your standing and smaller pool for clients to choose from.
At this point he had mentioned that they have turned down business. How can you reject business? Is that not throwing money out the window?
Don’t bite more than you can chew
However, you do not want to overload your company, over commit just because the business is coming. Over staffing for this would only backfire if the company ever has slow seasons. If you were to hire more, Alex mentioned the culture is important, hiring 1 at a time and take them into the culture is better for the company.
B2B Buyer Journey - Step by Step:
1. What is something that influences the company/personal life that causes frustration.
2. What is the cause? Is there a solution?
3. Narrow down the best options of solutions.
4. Shop around and create a list of a few
5. Select the best
6. Purchase
How MarTech drives the digital buyer journey (simply put):
The most common company hub is the website. A visitor lands on it and we can track their information and activity while on the site however we can not identify them. When the visitor fills out a form, we can nurture and track the prospect because we will now know who they are. Once they are ready to talk to sales, they become a lead and go through CRM.
I am once again intrigued by another informative session. B2B marketing was something I never though about, with a track record of Hospitality which essentially relays on B2C business. It is interesting to understand B2B functionality. If the opportunity ever arise, it does feel like a challenge and a different pace and a challenge is something I always strive for.
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