Monthly Archives: November 2014

Don’t look for what isn’t there. You won’t find it!

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B2B v B2C

B2B v B2C

So, my team and I are merrily rocking along the road to implementing our digital transformation strategy…swatting aside the ney-sayers, pessimists, doubters and layers of bureaucracy, with the full knowledge that my digital strategy is the only suitable strategy for the business.

However, there is one thing that puzzles me, and simply put it is whether there is any difference between a B2C and B2B purchaser. The reason I really want to understand this is because I don’t just want the strategy to work for now, but to adapt and work in 2, 3 and 4 years from now. To ensure this I feel I really need to understand whether I’m articulating a strategy for a specific B2B target, or whether in the very near future there really will just be a person with money to buy something and the channels used, experience expected and content consumed will be the same!

Why does this matter? Well I feel that if there really is a B2B buyer and their behaviour and approach to digital channels is different from that of you and I as a general consumer, then I need to ensure I’m continually feeling for that engagement. Staying abreast of the channels used and even the type of content required. However, if there is more of a merge of the two and a creation of a B2P (Business To Person), then I really need to just follow the latest trends in digital channels and adoption, “videos are in…then lets do videos!”. I like easy, and the latter sounds easier!

My personal belief is that we’re already moving to the B2P world. I really felt mid last year that the B2B consumer suddenly became more like a B2C one, leveraging and trusting more and more content online, and engaging the different and new digital channels as they did so. Will it stay that way. Is the type of product being marketed online going to be the only differentiator between a B2B and a B2C?

 

It’s not what you think, but what ‘they’ think!

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I recently stumbled across a great McKinsey report from 2013 that highlighted what top global B2B companies stated as impactful to their brand theme versus what their customer felt contributed to brand strength. Below is an extract of one of the tables in the report.

Brand strength

You’ll notice in the table that there’s an interesting trend in both graphs, namely on the left column (what B2B’s think was important) is almost completely opposite to that on the right (what customers found contributed to brand strength)!

I’m not sure I’m surprised by this, but it is a reminder that the sometimes corporate over-arching direction and/or messages – “…we’re he market leader”, “…we operate globally…” although may satiate the appetite of the CEO’s of the customers, do little to convince the purchasing power in the customers organisations the value of that vendor. However, engaging candidly and with transparency, delivering on time and having domain expertise does significantly contribute to brand engagement and probably (not stated) loyalty!

It’s a reminder that we all have opinions and views that play heavily on the definition and execution of our strategies, but the need to sense check what we think they want is actually what ‘they‘ want.