How is Decision Making Different Between B2C and B2B Buyers?

The Stark Difference Between B2C and B2B Advertising Blog Series

In general, most advances in advertising start in the B2C space.

Certainly when you look at programmatic advertising, B2C was the first adopter of the technology to deliver and serve ads. This means B2B programmatic advertisers are in an ideal situation to learn from the B2C advertisers that came before them.

While you as a B2B marketer might not want to ‘teach the world to sing,’ it is short sighted to dismiss emotion.
 

In our whitepaper, The Stark Difference Between B2C and B2B Advertising, written in conjunction with Oracle Data Cloud, we explore and compare B2C vs. B2B buyers across a variety of dimensions. While today we’re focusing on buying dynamics and emotional impacts, you can get the full download below.

 

Here is the fundamental question. How is decision making different between B2C and B2B buyers? Let’s look at this in two ways. First, what are the implications of selling to a company versus an individual? Second, how do emotions factor into making a purchase?

In B2C marketing, individuals are the target audience. In B2B marketing, accounts are the target, and any given account consists of many individuals. Adding to the complexity of B2B marketing, those many individuals within the account have differing goals and motivations. For example, if you are selling HR software to a company, there might be a buying committee that includes HR, Finance and IT. Here there are multiple targets that might need multiple messages and, potentially, different channel approaches. This table outlines the differences in buying dynamics between consumers and businesses.

oracle b2b b2c

When it comes to emotion and buying, we have all been B2C targets of campaigns that have swayed us. While you as a B2B marketer might not want to “teach the world to sing,” it is short sighted to dismiss emotion. B2C buying emotions might be different. But they are just as important to consider when creating a B2B campaign. Here are some examples: 

otacle b2b b2c table

Would you like a deeper dive into The Stark Difference Between B2C and B2B Advertising? Get all the details here, including the special Oracle Data Cloud section “Engage Accounts Over Long Sales Cycles to Increase Conversion.”