B2B marketing refers to ‘Business To Business' Marketing

This is applicable to businesses that offer a product or service to another business or organisation.

For example, an accountant who works with businesses or a company that produces software for businesses. 

Since it is businesses marketing themselves to other businesses, there are often different methods of marketing that are more effective than B2C marketing strategies. 

Simply put, the overall goal of B2B Marketing is to develop effective strategies that make another business or organisation choose your business product/service over your competitors. 

Advantages of B2B Marketing:

Must-Have Online Presence:

Most B2B businesses do not have a dedicated storefront like a shop as high-street sales are not the ideal target audience.

Instead, they usually operate from an office or warehouse which means an online presence is essential to communicate with other businesses, typically in the form of a high-performance website.

Huge Market Potential:

If your business provides an essential product or service that is used daily within a wide range of industries, there will be no shortage in the potential for reaching new clients with B2B Marketing.

Therefore you’re not limited to the wide range of audience you are able to target with your marketing materials. 

Increased Exposure & Increased Protifable Revenue:

If the marketing is done correctly, your business exposure will be significantly increased which also increases the number of opportunities to sell and make higher profits, particularly because the value of sales and services within the B2B space is often very high.

Disadvantages of B2B Marketing:

Less Active Audience:

It is harder to actively target the correct audience using paid social media strategies as the correct marketing materials would need to land in front of the business decision-makers, not gatekeepers or technicians  

Challenging To Receive Feedback:

Since the quantity of customers is lower with B2B marketing, it can be challenging to get a great number of client reviews and even then, business owners are usually very busy. 

Complex Journey:

The buying journey for B2B marketing is often far more complex than B2C Marketing journeys therefore it would make it harder to create a strategy that involves an automatic journey navigating the client through the buying cycle.

This is a tricky question to answer as some businesses would argue that network marketing is worthwhile, whereas other businesses would suggest it is a waste of time. 

So instead of us diving into weather or not they are worthwhile, here are some of the pros and cons and you can decide for yourself if they will have a positive impact on your business or not.

PROS

Developing Relationships/Partnerships:

By attending networking events and connecting with other businesses, you have the potential to develop partnerships, some of which could be life-changing for your business. 

Increasing Business Awareness:

Attendance at networking events will help to increase your business awareness with the other businesses that are attending the events even if the standard number of people attending is usually less than 20.

Even if they don’t turn into a lead immediately, they may consider your business in the future or recommend your business if they know someone looking for your product/service.

Helping You Learn:

B2B marketing in the form of network events can be a great place to learn from other B2B companies.

You may be able to install general business strategies and marketing methods into your own business.

CONS

Repetitive Events:

Network marketing events are perceived to be very repetitive with the large percentage of the businesses visiting being the same ones each time, making it difficult to make new connections. 

Seeing the same faces every single week more resembles a social catch-up rather than a networking event with specific goals in mind.

Time Consuming:

To attend a networking event, it’s required for an individual to take time out of their daily responsibilities to travel and attend the event.

If you are regularly attending these networking events, it becomes time-consuming. 

Let's say you attend 1 event each week that's a total of 7 full working days lost unless you're bringing in new opportunities.

Low ROI:

It’s not guaranteed that you will generate any leads from attending a networking event, and if you do it’s usually only one or two which means there’s little ROI from attending the events if no lead is generated. 

If you’re debating whether or not B2B Network marketing is worthwhile because you’ve never tried it before, our best advice would be to try it out at least once so that you can formulate your own opinions. 

You may attend an event a find huge value in connecting with others, you may not connect with anyone who is likely to turn into a lead but you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it out!