B2B buyers are people too: how B2B marketing is (and isn't) like B2C

There's a long-standing belief in B2B marketing that our buyers are a different species. Consumers, the theory goes, are emotional, impulsive creatures swayed by catchy jingles and cute animals. Business buyers, on the other hand, are cool, rational decision-makers who carefully weigh up spec sheets, run detailed procurement processes and are entirely immune to a good story.

Anyone who has ever sat on a buying committee knows that's not quite how it works. And the research increasingly agrees. Studies from the IPA, the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and LinkedIn's B2B Institute have found that many of the fundamental rules of B2C effectiveness apply in B2B too, often almost exactly.

But ‘almost’ is doing some important work in that sentence. There are real differences in how businesses buy, and B2B marketers who simply copy and paste the B2C playbook will miss them. So let's look at both: where B2B and B2C are more alike than we think, and where they genuinely differ.

Where B2B and B2C are more alike than you'd think

1. Share of voice drives growth in both

In B2C, it's long been known that brands which spend above their share of market tend to grow, and those that spend below it tend to shrink. Les Binet and Peter Field's analysis of the IPA Databank for the B2B Institute found the same pattern in B2B, and at almost exactly the same rate. For consumer brands, every 10 points of extra share of voice was linked to around 0.6 percentage points of market share growth a year; for B2B brands, the figure was 0.7. In other words, advertising appears to work just as hard in B2B as it does in B2C.

2. Growth comes from new customers, not loyalty

Many B2B businesses assume that with dedicated account managers and well-resourced CRM programmes, growing through loyalty is the smart route. The data says otherwise. In the same IPA analysis, B2B campaigns focused on loyalty achieved, on average, zero very large business effects. Acquisition campaigns averaged 1.0, and reach campaigns, which talk to customers and non-customers together, did best of all at 1.6. Just as in B2C, brands grow mainly by winning more customers, with loyalty following as a side effect.

3. Being thought of first matters, in both worlds

The IPA data shows that B2B campaigns aiming for fame, getting talked about and shared, delivered more than three times as many very large business effects as campaigns with activation goals (2.2 versus 0.7). Being the brand that comes to mind most easily is as powerful in a boardroom as it is in a supermarket aisle. Business buyers, after all, rely on mental shortcuts just like everyone else.

4. Emotion works in B2B too

Perhaps the biggest myth of all is that B2B decisions are purely rational. The IPA data suggests they're only slightly more rational than consumer decisions. Emotional B2B campaigns delivered an average of 1.4 very large business effects, compared with just 0.2 for rational ones, and fame campaigns outperformed rational ones by around 10 times.

Two UK case studies bring this to life. Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles repositioned from selling vans to supporting the people running small businesses, with an empathetic campaign about the realities of running your own firm; econometrics showed a payback of 11:1. BT Business swapped technical jargon for human stories, cutting its cost per acquisition by 17% and delivering a profit ROI of 316%.

5. Most people don't dislike you; they just don't know you

Ehrenberg-Bass research by Professor Jenni Romaniuk found that only around one in ten business buyers actively rejects any given brand: 11% on average in UK business banking and 7% in US business insurance, very similar to the 9% median found across consumer brands. The far bigger barrier is lack of awareness. Even the best-known brands studied had more potential customers who were unaware of them than who rejected them. Sound familiar, B2C marketers?

Where B2B genuinely is different

1. The budget balance tips slightly towards activation

In B2C, Binet and Field have found that marketing efficiency is typically maximised with around 60% of the budget on brand building and 40% on sales activation. In B2B, the IPA data points to a slightly different balance: roughly 46% brand and 54% activation. Rational, product-led messages come a little more to the fore in B2B, but brand building still deserves close to half the investment, far more than many B2B businesses currently give it.

2. Your buyers are rarely in market

Many B2B purchases happen infrequently. As Professor John Dawes points out, corporations switch providers such as their main bank or law firm roughly once every five years. That means only around 20% of business buyers are in the market in any given year, and perhaps 5% in a quarter. Hence his ‘95-5 rule’: at any one time, the vast majority of your potential buyers simply aren't buying.

That has a big implication. If you only target people who are ready to buy right now, you're talking to a tiny fraction of your market, and they'll mostly choose brands they already know. B2B advertising has to work largely by building memories that will pay off months or years later, when those buyers finally come back into the market.

3. You're selling to a committee, and to a person

B2C purchases are often made by one person. B2B decisions typically involve a buying committee: senior management, peers, end users and sometimes the customers of the business itself. Romaniuk's work on category entry points highlights that B2B buyers think about purchases from two perspectives: the needs of the business, and their own needs as a professional. That might mean wanting a supplier the board will respect, one that will help them shine and get promoted, or simply one that won't get them fired. It's no coincidence that one of the most famous B2B lines ever was “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".

4. The audience is smaller, so reach looks different

In B2C, mass reach is strongly linked to effectiveness. In B2B, the pool of category buyers may be quite small, so Binet and Field suggest media choices should reflect the make-up of buying committees and their influencers as precisely as possible. They also make an intriguing suggestion: targeting people who aren't in a buying role yet but whose career paths may soon put them there.

5. Not all buying situations are equal

In many consumer categories, the value of a buying situation is mainly about how often it comes up. In B2B, the value of a single order can vary enormously. Romaniuk recommends weighing up buying situations by their commercial value, not just their frequency, because two situations used by the same number of buyers can be worth very different amounts.

So what does this mean for B2B marketers?

• Invest in brand, not just leads. The evidence is clear that brand building drives long-term growth in B2B, just as it does in B2C. Lead generation still matters, and probably deserves a slightly bigger slice than in consumer marketing, but a plan that's all activation and no brand is borrowing from your future.

• Talk to people who aren't buying yet. With most of your market out of the market at any given time, your job is to make sure your brand is familiar and front of mind when they eventually come back in. Reach non-customers, not just your existing client base.

• Link your brand to real buying situations. Think about the moments, needs and pressures that trigger a purchase, for the business and for the individual professional, and build your messaging around them consistently over time.

• Don't be afraid of emotion. You're not selling to procurement software. A message that makes a buyer feel understood, confident or reassured will often stick far longer than a list of features.

• Make a clear promise. Research from LinkedIn's B2B Institute and WARC found that campaigns making an explicit promise to the customer were 60% more likely to report increased market share, and showed up to 48% stronger brand health results. Yet only around 40% of the campaigns studied actually made one. Encouragingly for smaller businesses, the benefit held even for low-budget campaigns.

• Measure over the long term. Brand building pays back over years, not weeks. Yet LinkedIn's research found only 4% of B2B marketers measure impact beyond six months. If you only look at short-term metrics, you'll systematically undervalue the activity that drives growth.

People buy from people

It's worth noting that some of this research is still emerging. Binet and Field are open that their B2B findings are tentative, based on fewer than 50 IPA case studies, and that SMEs and large enterprises may well behave differently. But the direction of travel is consistent across every study: B2B marketing works in far more similar ways to B2C than most B2B marketers believe.

The differences are real, and they matter. Longer buying cycles, committees, smaller audiences and big-ticket deals all shape how B2B marketing should be planned. But underneath them all sits one simple truth that Binet and Field land on themselves: B2B buyers are people, too.

Which, now I think about it, is excellent news. It means the next time someone tells me I need to plough a load more product benefits into my B2B ad copy, I'll have the data to prove them wrong. Politely, of course.

Do you think B2B marketing is more like B2C than we give it credit for? Or are there differences I've missed? I'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you'd like help building a B2B marketing strategy that treats your buyers like the humans they are, I'm always happy to have a no-obligation chat.

Sources: Les Binet and Peter Field, The 5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing (The B2B Institute/IPA); Professor John Dawes, Advertising effectiveness and the 95-5 rule (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute/The B2B Institute); Professor Jenni Romaniuk, Brand Rejection in B2B and Category Entry Points in a B2B World (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute/The B2B Institute); Marketing Week coverage of LinkedIn B2B Institute and WARC research on the promise to the customer (June 2023).