B2B vs B2C Marketing: What Is The Difference?
Posted on 3rd April 2025

If you’re starting out in your marketing journey, it’s likely you’ve heard the terms B2B and B2C. But what do they mean, and how do they both work? In this blog, we’ll be exploring the differences between B2C & B2B and the platforms best used for both.
What Is B2B Marketing?
B2B Marketing is also known as Business To Business marketing. This is where you’ll be targeting your content and ads towards other businesses or business owners, helping you build relationships and trust. The content you’d produce here would often be more straight-forward and informative, addressing audiences in a more professional manner and showing off your industry knowledge.
What Is B2C Marketing?
B2C Marketing is something we’ll often encounter every day from other businesses. Known as Business To Consumer marketing, this style of content often concerns general people who you’re looking to engage and turn into customers. You’ll need to convince them to purchase your product or service by answering their pain points and offering a solution, directly targeting a specific set of people that you desire to be the main target audience base for your business.
Differences In Target Audience
One of the biggest differences between B2B and B2C is the target audiences. Each marketing type has a niche audience set, which helps you curate a core marketing message and strategy that works for your business and the people you’re looking to reach. B2B marketing’s main focus is on people already in your industry – they’re often people you want to connect with, whether that’s to simply form valuable business relationships or you’re after some kind of partnership or investment opportunity. You’ll be looking for decision-makers, meaning your methods will be much more professional, the lingo you use will be industry-specific and you won’t often be bound by demographics.
B2C Marketing however, is all about targeting based on demographics, such as location, age, gender, income and interests. You’ll be whittling your audience size down to a very specific group of people. Known as your audience persona, you’ll create your ideal customer and target you messaging towards that person – helping to turn them from potential customers to loyal ones. These are the people that will be buying your products and services, so perfecting your targeting, copy, graphics is key to ensuring you engage the right audience and persuade them to trust and purchase from your business.
Differences In Buying
Consumers are more emotionally-led with their purchasing decisions, so explaining to them what benefits your product will bring to their lives after solving the issue they have will help to drive their purchasing decisions even if they aren’t in instant need for the product at that moment in time. This is relatively similar for businesses – they’ll want to know the benefits of buying into your business, and what it’ll do for them. If you’re looking to solve their pain points, you need to clearly define how you’ll do this whilst also displaying what you will require in return for working with them. The funnel for B2B marketing is much longer than B2C marketing, as B2B will often require you to be in contact with more than just one person, or will require the person you are in contact with to communicate with others within their company. B2C marketing means you’re most likely reaching out to one singular person, making their decision to make a purchase a lot faster, speeding up their time in the marketing funnel.
Differences In Relationships
B2C marketing is about retaining relationships – delivering further benefits to consumers after their initial purchase, trying to retain them for a longer period of time rather than just one singular sale. With B2B, you’ll likely be fixed into a longer-term relationship which allows you to build up trust, grow and develop alongside one another. However, where B2C marketers continue to innovate their ideas to provide an excellent service to their customers, B2B marketers can often fall into a transactional way of relationship building – which eliminates that slight personal touch that can make all the difference for consumers when it comes to purchasing.
What Platforms Should I Use For B2B Marketing?
LinkedIn is the ideal place for B2B Marketing. The professional social media platform, LinkedIn has over a billion worldwide users who belong to thousands of industries. You’re pretty much guaranteed to find the people on LinkedIn you’re looking for, and connecting with these people allows you to build beneficial business relationships. Whilst you can try other platforms like Facebook or X for B2B marketing, LinkedIn has positioned itself as the go-to for B2B marketing, and can provide great value to your business if you choose to use this platform.
What Platforms Should I Use For B2C Marketing?
B2C Marketing can work on most social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X or even LinkedIn. Facebooks Ad options provide incredible targeting options that allow you to specifically reach out to the audience you desire, and create highly-optimised campaigns that, when done correctly, can bring great success to your business.
B2B and B2B are both important marketing techniques, and hopefully this blog helps you to understand the differences between both, allowing you to adapt to the right method for your businesses marketing plans.