14 Examples of Business-to-Business Marketing

John Spacey, March 18, 2018

Business-to-business marketing is the process of selling goods to other businesses. This has several unique characteristics as compared to business-to-consumer marketing as it tends to rely more heavily on personal relationships. The following are common examples of business-to-business marketing.

Branding

Establishing brand recognition, brand awareness and brand image amongst your target market.

Promotion

A business-to-business target market may be relatively small such that promotion efforts might be focused on a few thousand industry insiders. This requires highly targeted marketing such as digital marketing and industry publications.

Leads

The output of promotion is usually a set of leads that are qualified and contacted by sales or presales.

Public Relations

Establishing and leveraging relationships within an industry. For example, if your customers are solar panel manufacturers you might establish close relationships with industry publications, thought leaders and well-known individuals in the industry.

Personal Sales

Sales driven by personal relationships. It is common for business-to-business salespeople to spend their entire careers establishing connections in an industry. A salesperson who knows most of your target market can be extremely valuable to your firm.

Direct Marketing

The other common method of reaching a B2B target market is direct marketing such as digital ads, mail, email or cold calling.

Camping

Generally speaking, it is important for business-to-business sales team to be physically close to the customer. For example, if your customers are banks in a central financial district your sales team will be more effective working from the same district, even if it is a small satellite office. This strategy is known as camping.

Showrooms

Showrooms are physical locations designed to show your products and services to customers and the media. They are an attractive alternative to an office to get close to the customer.

Industry Events

Another common way to connect to a target market is by attending events such as industry conferences.

Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence is an common element of business-to-business sales. A firm might have less than a thousand customers in their target market, so knowing much about them can be important. It is common for a competitive intelligence firm to be focused on a single industry such that have current information about leads, requests for proposal, deals and prices.

Partners

As relationships are central to business-to-business sales it is common to sell through a network of partners who have relationships with a particular target market. For example, if a German firm is looking to sell in Japan they may be more successful selling through local value added resellers.

Customer Loyalty

Customer lifetime value can be quite high in business-to-business sales, particularly for business services that generate recurring revenue. As such, firms may pay close attention to customer satisfaction. For example, sales people may be expected to keep on top of any problems customers are experiencing with a service to do anything within reason to avoid losing the account. This may require close coordination with customer service and quality assurance teams.

Negotiation

High value business-to-business sales typically involve negotiation of terms and prices. In some cases, a large account may demand customized products and services in order to close a deal.

Lead Users

A lead user is a customer that helps you to develop new products, services, features and functions. In the context of business-to-business marketing, this is often done to keep a large account satisfied and engaged with your services.