Industrial marketing, or B2B marketing, is the branch of sales and communications that specialize in giving services and goods to businesses, instead to the individual customers. As industrial marketing involves the big orders and the long term relations between the client and producer, process from the first pitch and close of sale often is complex than this process between the business and private customer. Whereas B2C sales may focus more on one-to-one interactions between both the parties, businesses usually are made from many individuals. Before product appears on other store’s shelves, two businesses should reach the deal that can involve manufacture, buy, and shipping of products.
Who uses the industrial marketing?
Lots of companies create & market their products, which have very little or no application on level of an individual customer, so their clients will only be other businesses. The company who makes the large scale machinery, for instance, is unlikely or not able to sell this machinery to the private individuals as these customers are not likely to afford this or will not need any equipment of this size. Machinery will has to be sold only to other business that has both the need and resources for producing big quantities of their product, like mass-market factory that has to create a million units of same toy every year. The industrial marketing is the intricate process, which occurs at different stages. It will involve a wide range of the marketing strategies, like:
- Personalized presentations to management staff of the potential clients
- Informational web sites with the language directed for other businesses
- Videos online displaying sales and products staff
- Product samples that will demonstrate confidence in quality of product
Lots of consumer product firms develop the marketing divisions only for the B2B clients. The furniture manufacturers do this, by opening up the chairs, tables, or couches to the businesses who want them for the corporate offices. This generally happens when manufacturer’s business expands to the large scale to accommodate the larger orders. The service providers occasionally expand to the industrial clients for taking benefit of lucrative contracts. The legal practice that specializes in the contract law, for example, can expand their scope by representing only individuals for helping the businesses to develop their contracts.
Process of Industrial marketing
First step for developing the industrial marketing program is same as developing other type of the marketing plan: first identify your customer. Producer should know what types of businesses will benefit from any product. It creates the focus and foundation for rest of your marketing plan.
Then, the producer has to modify their introduction to the prospective clients. Although old-fashioned, but face-to-face connectivity is alive and in b2b world, it’s very important to have the strong presence online.