Understanding Your Customers’ Purchase Path: B2B vs. B2C

November 15, 2017

by Virtucom Group Team

Imagine that you’re sitting at home, browsing the web for a new pair of running shoes. You feel relaxed as you envision hitting the gym in them for the first time. Now, switch gears: you’re at the office and you’ve been tasked with hiring a new janitorial service for the building. You’re probably taking notes as you compare the options, preparing to report back to your team - where you’ll discuss, deliberate and ultimately make a decision.

While both scenarios represent the buyer’s journey, the first depicts that of a B2C customer and the second that of a B2B customer. In order to understand the most effective way to target your audience and generate leads, it’s helpful to think from their perspective. As you can see, they both move through the same marketing funnel stages, but it’s what they do during those stages that makes them vastly different.

When thinking about your inbound marketing strategy, the more you know about your target audience, the better. So while you might have a firm grasp on the fundamentals of the purchase path, it’s also important to distinguish between the nuances that make the B2B customer and the B2C customer unique. This is especially true if your company sells to both types.

Marketing Copy For The B2C Buyer’s Journey

B2C customers are largely motivated by their emotions and personal desires, so your team should tailor its digital marketing strategy with lifestyle-based content. When they’re shopping, consumers want to feel relaxed and confident with their decision, not pressured or confused.  This means that most of them won’t want to study the user manual, but they might appreciate high-quality photos, marketing copy with a conversational tone and detailed product benefits.

In the awareness stage, they aren’t necessarily seeking a specific solution to a problem and they’re usually not looking to develop a relationship with your brand. They’re generally trying to identify and learn more about challenges or opportunities that they may have. So when you’re marketing a product to a B2C customer, try to keep the focus on the product and how it can address a buyer’s pain points.

In the middle section of the digital marketing funnel - the consideration stage - a customer might begin to weigh the pros and cons and ask themselves whether certain products fulfill their needs. By creating thorough buyer personas and understanding your target audience, you and your marketing team can anticipate what they might like and need from your product. And when you top it off with convincing lifestyle copy, you can guide them into the final stage of their journey.

Marketing Copy For The B2B Buyer’s Journey

A B2B customer is rarely a single customer. You’re selling to an entire team and company of people, any or all of whom might have input in the purchasing process. While they certainly want to know the value of your product or service, they’re far more interested in the facts, stats and data. They want to be absolutely certain that your product is the best fit for their specific needs.

So in the B2B awareness stage, a single advertisement or conversation may not be enough to drive them along in the funnel. It’s important to educate them on how they could improve operations. In case they don’t know that your service or company exists, time spent in the awareness stage is typically devoted to building trust.

The B2B consideration stage is what truly sets their journey apart from the B2C customer because they often require much more nurturing. According to HubSpot, “67% of B2B marketers say they see at least a 10% increase in sales opportunities through lead nurturing, with 15% seeing opportunities increase by 30% or more.”

But while you’re nurturing a B2B buyer, chances are, your competitors are, too. They want to vet out their options completely and collect all the facts. With that said, it’s important to make plenty of resources available to them, including whitepapers and demonstrations. You might have to hold meetings and conference calls to answer any questions they have and position yourself to appeal to all of their needs.

For B2B consumers, the decision stage is constantly ongoing. Just because you selected a specific janitorial service to use, doesn’t mean you’ll be satisfied with them in the long run. The purchase will always be in review, and so it’s especially important to delight your B2B customers and to continue to delight them long after the initial purchase.

Length of the Buyer’s Journey

In general, the B2B buyer’s journey will be much longer than the B2C buyer’s journey. While the shoe shopper can find, consider and purchase a pair all in one sitting, the office manager has to research and bounce ideas back and forth with their colleagues. This is partly because a pair of shoes can be easily returned or exchanged if the customer isn’t satisfied, but a B2B purchase will likely have far-reaching consequences.

For example, say you’ve selected a janitorial crew to service your office. They seem great at first, but eventually you notice they’re falling short of your expectations. They aren’t thoroughly cleaning the property, which causes your employees to get sick and your clients to develop a poor impression of the space, and in turn, your brand. You can replace the cleaning crew, but the ill employees and unimpressed clients are not as easy to fix. This is why B2B customers spend so much time considering their options, because there’s simply more at stake in many cases.

Which Purchase Path Do Your Customers Take?

When developing a digital marketing strategy for your company, it’s important to consider – and leverage – these differences in order to get the most effective results. If you can understand who your potential customers are, where they fall within the digital marketing funnel and what they’re doing and thinking during that stage, you can create segmented content for each stage of the buyer’s journey. And as HubSpot points out, “Segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue.” So keep breaking down your audience and you’ll be well on your way to generating more leads.

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About Virtucom Group

Consistent business blogging yields results – more clicks, more subscribers and – ultimately – more conversions. Whether you’re writing an automotive blog, an accounting blog, a healthcare blog or a home renovation blog, blogging for business and content development are useful for any industry. Follow the content writers at the Virtucom Group blog as they share digital marketing tips and discuss website content writing services that can optimize your business blog.

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