It’s hard to make generalisations in B2B marketing but creative thinking always needs to be the order of the day.
Anyone whose products are primarily (or exclusively) sold through distributors or other third parties is at one end of a ‘B2B2B’ or ‘B2B2C’ marketing chain. It’s difficult to generalise in discussion, because it can take so many forms. If you’re a breakfast cereal manufacturer, are you selling to shops, or are you selling to to Mr and Mrs Miggins? When it comes to promotion, there’s a whole new level of complexity beyond what the textbooks tell us.
One of our clients is in the automotive sector. They’re a great example of having to keep two markets satisfied – the distributors (who could sell other manufacturers’ products, and indeed some do), and the end users. Close collaboration with the distributors is essential, and the reason we’re involved is that they identified search marketing as one item where they could offer an economy of scale to distributors.
The manufacturers have always run their own national search marketing campaigns aimed directly at the end user. These are all about branding and special promotions. Any direct enquiries received are passed straight on to the local distributors. The manufacturers were aware that many of the distributors had search marketing campaigns supporting the products too, but they couldn’t be sure of what was running at any one time. In addition, they were aware that these distributor campaigns for their products would be small, and therefore wouldn’t generate the sort of data needed to be efficient.
What they did was to offer the distributors a centrally-run but regionally-targeted search marketing campaign, splitting the costs. The ads looked like they were from the distributor and sent prospects to the distributors’ websites, but kept the messages consistent nationally. The combined campaign was big enough for the manufacturers to be able to get it professionally run, while knowing that all of the distributors were advertising their products. The distributors were effectively outsourcing their search advertising and getting a discount too.
Of course, this is just one example. In other cases, the distributors might be national chains, and bigger than the manufacturer. Any similar joint arrangement can easily end up being the other way around! The permutations of these situations means that it’s hard to make generalisations, and is another reason why B2B marketing can be far more complex than direct to consumer marketing. But creative and collaborative thinking between the manufacturers and the distribution chain always needs to be the order of the day.