Do B2B businesses require marketing or just bunch of sales people will do?
Marketing is core to the businesses. But how much?
Let’s start with some simplifications. B2B means business to business and B2C means business to customer.
As far as I understand Marketing, It is the way of making people aware of your product then passing them through multiple funnels and finally persuading them to buy your product.
B2B companies deal with other businesses. They sell their products to other companies, generally that happens in large volumes. On the other hand, B2C companies have to persuade individual customers to buy their products. B2B companies can have a salesman to persuade another business to their products and if he succeeds, you’re going to have possibly enough volume to take care of the basic needs. You can have multiple sales people doing multiple deals at a time that might give you enough volume to run your business. Every B2B company knows the volume that they can handle hence they know when to stop approaching further clients.
Now, coming to B2C, It is almost impossible to send individual sales person to customers to buy your product. Imagine selling phones via sending sales people house to house. In B2C companies, we will need a brand image and solid marketing plan that not only persuades people to buy your current products but also to develop trust for further ones that we produce.
I’m not saying B2B doesn’t need marketing. Of course, they will have to run marketing campaigns every now and then but B2C needs it more. You will never see a company manufacturing seat belts or headlights doing ads but you will see car ads. Marketing has two elements that who you are targeting and then what do you want from them? If you do seat belts ads, then target customer and the purpose both are probably not well thought of. But even a B2B company who has vision to get into B2C sector, wants to have brand image and share their story, Marketing is the way. For startups, things are way different as they survive on buzz.
What do you think? Do share your views.
