B2B means Business to Business.   It is a term commonly used to explain electronic commerce transactions between businesseses.  Business and individual Consumers would be B2C and Business between Government, would be B2G.

It’s not a rigid acronym however.  It can be used as an adjective to describe the activity, like marketing or sales and ecommerce between two businesses.

For simplicity’s sake, in this blog we will be discussing the B2B of Marketing Communications

In B2B Marketing Communications businesses use different tactics beyond direct sales in promoting their products or services.

Supporting the Marketers Sales Efforts and increasing profit is the main reason for B2B Marketing.

B2B Marketing Communications include serveral target markets in the Public Relations Community.  Things like, advertising, public relations, direct mail, trade show support, branding as well as interactive services such as designing websites and providing search engine optimization, all provide the necessary tactics to promote the B2B principals.

The Business Marketing Association organization serves B2B Marketing Professionals.  It provides certification programs, research services, conferences, industry awards and training programs.

The Methods used to utilize the B2B concept is catagorized in a structured manner beginning with the Positioning Statement.  This statement clarifies what you do, how you do it and demonstrates how you can do it better than your competitiors.

Developing your messages is essential in conveying your strong points of what you do and the benefits it provides to your customers.  A second message may illustrate supporting arguments, facts or figures.

Building a Campaign Plan  You are building an investment and a comprehensive plan to target your resources and where the best returns will be delivered; and you will provide the infrastructure to support each state of the marketing process.

Briefing an Agency  - It is important to provide a brief for an agency.  You need to emphasize what your focus is, what is important to your campaign, and have it serve as a checklist of the important facts.  This brief would contain:

• Your Objectives
• Target Market
• Target Audience
• Product
• Campaign Description
• Product Positioning
• Graphical Considerations
• Corporate Guidelines and any other Supporting Documents.

Measuring Results – When the results of the campaign are measured, the true value is indicative of tying the marketing campaign back to business results.  Measure the objectives against the impact and demonstrate it either by Cost per Acquisition, Cost per Lead or changes in customer perception.

Then decide, is this to “B or not to B?”  And go from there!  Happy “B2B” to those of you reading this!  Feel free to send this article, Blog2Blog.