As long as we understand the differences, there’s a lot that consumer marketing can teach us in business marketing.
There is a lot more written about consumer marketing than about business marketing. Far too much, probably. For those of us involved solely in the business side, it’s tempting to use this as a nice way of writing off much of the literature as being irrelevant.
However, we shouldn’t. There’s a lot to be learned from consumer marketing. At the end of the process, we’re still selling to people.
It’s true that the motivations can be different. Consumers arguably prize value for money over all else; business buyers want a reliable product or service that minimises the risk of them losing their job. Many people think consumers are slaves to brands, but are they more so than business buyers? Everyone working in technology will have come across the old ‘Nobody gets fired for buying IBM’ phrase. There’s a lot of truth in it.
As long as we understand the differences, there’s a lot that consumer marketing can teach us in business marketing. Not least because there’s so much more to choose from, and consequently the best material probably gives us more food for thought. Next time that an interesting article about marketing crosses our path, we should resolve not to dismiss it when we realise it’s about cornflakes.