Are B2B and B2C really that different?

I often wonder if we’d be more successful at B2B marketing if we thought of it more like B2C. In the end, we’re selling to people, not businesses. People make the decisions, based on a mix of personal interests, professional aspirations, politics, etc.

Yes, there’s value for the business and the end-customers in a B2B decision. But that’s still driven by personalities, individual needs, human translations of a business concept or potential outcome.

And it goes both ways. Nobody likes to get an email from a company. We’d prefer to get an email from a person AT that company. Open rates in emails between the two instances prove this again and again. But in so many cases, we still pretend that a building is selling something to another building. Doesn’t always work too well that way.

The business pays the bill, but it’s people who buy.