Business Markets
Defining Business Marketing
Business marketing includes all activities involved in communicating the value of a business’s products and services to another business.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Define business marketing
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Key Points
- Business marketing is often directed to individuals within an organization, who act on behalf of the needs of the organization.
- Business-to-business marketing involves any products or services a company purchases to resell, use as components in their own products or services, or to support their daily operations.
- Any given business-to-business transaction can involve years of complex marketing efforts, including online and offline promotions.
Key Terms
- white paper: A factual write-up of something, specifically devoid of the appearance of marketing.
- customer relationship management: A widely implemented model for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. Also known by the acronym “CRM. “
- trade show: An exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services, study activities of rivals and examine recent market trends and opportunities.
What is Business Marketing?
Business marketing is the practice of individuals or organizations (i.e., commercial businesses, governments, and institutions) promoting and selling products and/or services to other organizations. These organizations resell or use these products and services to support their operations. Companies that act as suppliers or manufacturers may also integrate other business products into their own product offering to improve performance and functionality. Unlike a consumer, who makes a purchase based on his or her individual needs and desires, businesses appoint individuals who act on behalf of the organization.
B2B Promotional Mix
Like business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, business-to-business (B2B) marketing, or business marketing, relies on product, price, placement, and promotion to competitively position the product offerings, promote the brand, and efficiently use company resources. Similar to consumer marketers, business marketers must create an integrated marketing communications strategy to ensure products and promotional methods complement and support each other.
B2B marketing spans all types of businesses and industries. Because B2B sales tend to be much larger than consumer purchases, business marketers use different channels to reach their target audiences. Industry white papers, trade shows, corporate websites, and webcasts are often used as promotional tactics to build brand awareness and generate leads. A significant portion of B2B brands also employ social media, including podcasts, social networking, and blogging sites, to drive web traffic to their online channels and draw prospective customers to their brand.
Business Marketing: A trade show is a common promotional element in business marketing.
Measuring B2B Marketing Success
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are often used to assess marketing performance in B2B organizations. B2B sales cycles can last more than several months and involve numerous stages before the sale is completed. Therefore, CRM systems help business marketers integrate metrics from different activities to accurately assess how marketing directly contributed to the transaction. For example, labels may be assigned to certain promotional elements (e.g., website, trade show) in the system to indicate where and how prospects converted to customers.