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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

 

You need to ask yourself which platform your audience is most likely to be on. This will help you decide which one you should use if you want the best chance of making your social media marketing a success. If you want to target a younger demographic, Instagram and TikTok may be the way to go. If you’re looking for other businesses, use LinkedIn. You may find older audiences on Facebook. Knowing which platform you’re going to use will also help you when it comes to creating content, e.g TikTok is video based, Instagram is image based. 

 

Now, lets look at the different types of targeting. 

One of the first things you need to think of is your audience demographics. This includes their age, gender, income, education and more, and creates an initial idea of who your ideal customer or audience member is. For example, you may have a luxury, makeup brand that you need to target. Therefore, you may want to select women, earning over £30,000 a year, in full-time employment and between the ages of 25 and 50. With this information, you can the begin to create a content plan that speaks directly to your chosen audience – you wouldn’t use Gen Z or Gen Alpha references or lingo if you’re targeting generations who are older as they won’t resonate with your message. Having a basic understanding of your audience demographics will then help you to form a bigger picture of the people you want to be interacting with and purchasing from your business. 

Geographical targeting is based on where your audience member lives. You need to think of the area your business is located in, or if you’re solely online where you ship to. This is particularly important if you’re running ads, as it allows you to select the location your audience is based in so your ad can be displayed to the right people. If you live in the UK and ship to the UK, then you’d make your targeting only aimed at those in the United Kingdom. If you also ship to Ireland, then you’d include that in your Geographic targeting. If you are a physical store based in Derby looking for visitors, you may only select Derby or Derbyshire as a location, or branch out a little further and include surrounding areas in the region like Leicester and Nottingham. When it comes to Facebook Ads, you can also change the radius around the area you’ve selected, allowing you to be a bit more specific if you want to target only a certain area of the city or county you’ve initially selected. 

Interest-Based Targeting is exactly what it says it is – targeting users based on their interests, hobbies and activities. As per our example, if your beauty brand is only using natural products, you may target those interested in natural or vegan products. You can also target interests like beauty, makeup or skincare too. Whatever your business is, you should know what your audience could be interested in so that you can define them further and figure out your messaging. Ads can also be delivered to those who interact with content similar to your own. Again, sticking with our example, if you have an audience who often watches beauty content, follows influencers in this field and frequently purchases makeup items, if you are running ad’s, you can target them to be shown to these audience members based off their online activity. 

Targeting is one of the most important aspects of marketing, forming the foundations that you’ll build your marketing plans on. Before you begin creating content, start by discovering who your audience is and decide what aspects you need to target to bring in the most engagement.