What is B2C Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide

Perfecting your B2C marketing approach also means understanding the fundamental differences between B2C and B2B marketing.

B2C marketing aims to convince individual consumers to buy products and services for personal use, based on the benefits they expect to enjoy or their connection to the brand. In contrast, B2B marketing focuses on decision-makers at businesses who prioritize the growth and sustainability of their organizations.

Key differences between B2C and B2B marketing:

• B2C selling targets individual consumers, involves quicker buying decisions, and typically caters to a large, evolving audience with relatively low purchase volumes and spending.
• B2B selling targets organizations involves multiple stakeholders, and features longer decision-making processes, higher purchase volumes, and longer-term relationships.

B2B marketing is more robust, requiring detailed content like brochures, white papers, and case studies to address organizational needs. B2B pricing is often negotiable and customized, while B2C pricing is transparent and consistent. Additionally, B2B marketing focuses on logical appeals and ROI, while B2C messaging emphasizes emotional connections and benefits.

Distinguishing B2C business from B2B business

Dive deeper into these key distinctions and learn how to adapt your marketing efforts for each audience in this insightful guide: B2B vs B2C marketing – Key differences you need to know.

By now, you should have a solid understanding of your B2C business model and how it differs from any B2B activities that you may be responsible for. The next step in effectively promoting your products and services to consumers is building your formal B2C marketing strategy.

Whether you’re starting a new business or trying to take an existing one to the next level, a sound, and well-thought-out B2C marketing strategy is essential to growing your revenue and guiding your decision-making process.

How to create a B2C marketing strategy

A marketing strategy should not only be based on solid research (rather than intuition or experience), but it should also be built through a collaborative process that involves key stakeholders across the business.

Once you’ve committed to engaging the right people and conducting the right kind of investigation, follow these five critical steps to build an effective and flexible B2C marketing strategy.

1. Identify your goals

Setting concrete objectives is the first point on the agenda of a good marketing strategy, and as any college-level marketing student can tell you, targets should always be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound).

Your marketing goals shouldn’t exist in a vacuum; they should be linked to the business’s overall objectives. This is fundamental to getting the support of the higher-ups and to measuring success against the company overall.

For example, if one of your organization’s goals is to increase revenue from existing customers by 30 percent, then the following would be good and bad examples of marketing goals:

Bad marketing goal: Generate 500 new sales-qualified leads through content marketing campaigns and organic acquisition efforts over the course of the year.

Why is this a bad example? Because generating new leads isn’t aligned to the business objective of increasing revenue from existing customers.

Good marketing goal: Launch six new content marketing campaigns and 12 new email campaigns to provide more value to customers, make them aware of supplementary product offers, and increase overall lifetime value by 12 percent.

2. Get to know the competition

Studying the competition is one of the most crucial activities that you can do as a marketer to build a successful strategy.

Investigating other businesses’ weaknesses and strengths, and defining and better understanding the industry overall, is known as competitive analysis. As the U.S. Small Business Administration puts it, “[It’s] key to defining a competitive edge that creates sustainable revenue.”

While there are a number of approaches to conducting a competitive analysis, like Porter’s Five Forces or the Competitor Array, all of these models have one thing in common: They’ve been proven to help businesses perform better.

Understanding others’ behaviors and actions can not only better protect the health of your organization, it can also help you identify potential opportunities that can translate directly to more revenue and a stronger market position.

3. Understand your target audience

Knowing your customers is as important as knowing yourself — your products and services, that is. And this requires some serious market research.

The more you understand who your customers are, the products they buy, and why they buy those products, the more you’ll be able to fine-tune your marketing efforts and create personalized campaigns for them.

For starters, look at existing demographic, income, and trade info from government organizations to begin gathering data. Then work with research professionals to build surveys or conduct interviews and focus groups to get into the nitty-gritty.

You should come away with not just a high-level profile of your customers but insight into their motivations for making purchases as well as their expectations for products and services.

4. Lock in your marketing tactics, programs, and campaigns

Once you’ve set your objectives, drawn up a picture of your competition and the state of the industry, and dug into your target audience, it’s time to outline the tactics, programs, and campaigns that will allow you to execute on all the work you’ve done up until this point.

In a nutshell, marketing tactics are the actual actions you’ll take to achieve your objectives. They may include rolling out a membership program, setting in motion a retargeting campaign, or even organizing a few big events.

The tactics that you choose to move forward with should align with your goals, and they should be based on the customer and competitor data you’ve collected. For instance, perhaps you’ve found that your target audience primarily uses a particular social media channel — or maybe it’s come to light that the your number-one competitor has generated lots of positive press and subsequent sales from a big conference they organized.

By drawing on existing information, you can outline the marketing tactics you think will work best, keeping in mind that these are flexible and should be regularly evaluated and adjusted according to the results of your efforts.

5. Pinpoint your resource needs

Good marketers know that you have to spend money to make money, but the best in the business understand how to build budgets rooted in real numbers and operational costs.

Outlining your resource needs from a financial perspective — but also from a personnel and technology stack perspective — is key to successfully creating and implementing your marketing strategy.

To do this, work backward from your marketing goals and tactics, identifying how much you’ll need to invest in each channel, both from a monetary and manpower point of view, to hit your objectives.

Factor in any additional operational costs, like software critical to your sales funnel, third-party vendors essential to shouldering the workload, and even travel expenses.

Keep in mind that plenty of technology options can automate many of your workflows and scale your marketing efforts without having to add staff.

Take a look at these outstanding B2C marketing examples to get started building your own brilliant effort.

1. REI’s “Expert Advice” section for a great example of B2C SEO marketing

Everyone knows that content is king when it comes to SEO and B2C marketing, but when you’ve got a lot of competitors in your category, like REI does, it’s even more challenging to stand out and rank highly in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

To drive traffic for the very competitive keyword category of camping and outdoor activities, REI added an Expert Advice section on their website, which features over 500 keyword-rich targeted articles aimed at ranking for mid-tail and long-tail terms.

These terms are specific search queries that tend to have a lower search volume (i.e., “how to waterproof a tent” and “what kind of bike should I get”). They also tend to be easier to rank for because they don’t have as much competition. In addition, they help to build category context for Google, which makes it easier to rank for more competitive, higher volume short-tail terms, like “camping” and “fitness.”

REI’s SEO approach brings 600,000 visitors to this section of their site on a monthly basis, all of which they can then convert from interested readers to buyers.

2. Airbnb for tip-top B2C marketing personalization

An increasingly important aspect of B2C marketing is personalization, which allows companies to target their audience more accurately and create custom messaging that leads to greater engagement as a reward for relevance.

Effective personalization relies on data, so the more information you can get about your customers and their interests and previous behavior, the better able you’ll be to create campaigns and assets that will resonate with them and motivate them to make a purchase.

Airbnb uses a pretty simple form of personalization in their marketing emails by leveraging user contact details, home location, and behavior on the main website. The end product is an email that addresses users by name and suggests they take a trip to the most popular getaway destinations from the city where they live.

Readers who receive this kind of communication will be more likely to engage because they feel like it directly applies to them.

3. Fashion Nova for a five-star example of a B2C ambassador program

Fashion Nova is one of the fastest growing apparel companies in the world. They’ve never had a fashion show or run an ad in a single magazine, yet they’re as widely searched for online as Louis Vuitton and Chanel.

The company’s marketing has mainly been on Instagram, where brand ambassadors and social media starlets, like Katerina Themis and @XTYDime, have created buzz through digital word of mouth using the hashtags #NovaSquad and #NovaBabe.

The organization has a formal program that calls on customers and ambassadors alike to post photos of themselves wearing their Fashion Nova items and tag the brand with the appropriate hashtag. This creates excitement for new inventory and embodies the inclusivity that’s part of the company’s brand message. Fashion Nova then reposts these posts, giving their advocates an opportunity to gain more exposure and validation for their own accounts.

Gen Z and Millennial audiences, which the teen clothing brand targets, are less likely to trust traditional advertising and more likely to look for “real” endorsements from their peers and trusted influencers. Accordingly, Fashion Nova was able to reach potential customers where and how they want to be reached, and today, they have over 16 million followers on Instagram.

4. Waze for awesome B2C content marketing

Compelling content doesn’t have to live on your website or leverage SEO best practices to acquire new customers. Another form of content marketing enables B2C professionals to create engaging assets and then partner with a trusted source that can spread the word to their audience and increase your reach while building brand awareness.

Waze did exactly this when they worked with the New York Times to create a piece of sponsored content about interesting driving trends. The piece was also interactive; it included quiz questions where people could test their knowledge on current trends.

You don’t have to partner with a major outlet to accomplish this goal — consider local organizations that align with your mission, and think about where you could reach the right audience using the data you have on your industry.

5. Ikea for B2C social media

Everyone knows about Ikea at this point, but not many can say that they have the entire catalog memorized by heart. When Ikea found a woman who had done exactly that, they partnered with her to create a Facebook Live event, which ended up attracting thousands of views from people who wanted to test her knowledge.

Ikea got to re-introduce their entire catalog to their social audience, and by taking advantage of user-generated content, they got social proof that their product was universally beloved.

6. Sephora for a super B2C marketing strategy that leveraged a loyalty program

A good loyalty program can help break barriers to entry for customers if, say, the cost is too high or the product isn’t considered essential. It can also motivate additional purchases.

Makeup company Sephora, which has around 17 million members in their Beauty Insider rewards program, keeps customers coming back for their high-priced makeup because their loyalty points system makes it accessible.

Like a traditional model, buyers earn points for each purchase, but they can use them in a number of different ways, whether it’s redeeming points for limited edition products and exclusive events like in-store tutorials, or using points additional seasonal discounts and free shipping. The Sephora loyalty program is also tiered, granting more and better freebies to those who spend more, which further incentivizes customers to keep shopping.

Having different ways to use points gives customers access to good deals without devaluing the Sephora products, which is a real win-win!

7. Best Buy for an excellent B2C marketing retargeting strategy

When it comes to online shopping, the checkout cart is probably the worst place for marketers because that’s where most conversions die. About 88 percent of purchases are abandoned at the final stage of the purchasing process, so this might actually be the most important for remarketing.

Best Buy does this quite simply by retargeting shoppers who have abandoned carts with a gentle nudge in the form of ads asking them if they’re ready to check out. Consider whether email, social media, or your website are the right platform for this end-of-funnel remarketing, and use your organization’s unique voice and character to give that nudge.

Choosing the most effective marketing channels for your business depends on your goals, your audience, and your budget, but the four listed below have proven time and again to be the areas that can give you the most bang for your buck.

Paid search: Leverage PPC, or SEM, and display ad marketing

Paid search, often referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) or search engine marketing (SEM), involves paying for advertisements on search engines like Google and Bing.

This form of B2C marketing is measurable and, if optimized correctly, can be especially lucrative and effective.

In paid search, marketers bid on keywords relevant to their business to win the opportunity to display their text-based advertisements on the associated search engine results pages (SERPs). The cost of each keyword depends on variables like bidding strategy, Google’s Quality Score, and competition for that particular keyword.

To maximize your investment, conduct keyword research to find relevant keywords, create clickable ads and effective landing pages, and track metrics carefully to ensure ROI. Another form of paid search is display advertising, which places banner advertisements on websites. These visual and dynamic promotions require engaging ads and careful performance monitoring to refine strategies.

SEO: Overview of content marketing and organic acquisition

The counterpart to paid search marketing is search engine optimization (SEO), which is the art of creating content pages on your website that rank as high as possible in the SERPs for a given keyword.

The best part of this particular channel is that it’s absolutely free, gratis, no cost!

However, to implement this effectively, you need to understand the many ins and outs of Google’s ranking algorithm, which dictates where your web pages appear in the SERPs for a given keyword.

Those who take the time to understand how to create quality content that aligns with both on-page and off-page ranking factors will enjoy huge ROI and great success in new customer acquisition.

This effort forms one part of content marketing, which is the process of building and distributing content to strategically promote a brand, drive acquisition, encourage conversion, and increase loyalty among potential and existing customers.

B2C email marketing: What it is and the one way you should always use it

Email marketing is the act of using email as a channel to promote services, build relationships, and create brand awareness.

Like SEO, email marketing can be especially useful for small businesses with slim budgets because it can be absolutely free. On the flip side, if you do have money to put behind it, there are ways to leverage this outlet (e.g., purchasing email lists) to get greater returns.

Regardless of what you have to spend, email is a channel that all businesses should use to keep their customers informed, from simply providing fundamental transactional information to alerting potential and committed customers to new product or service developments.

Social media marketing: A strategy that works

Social media marketing involves using platforms like Facebook and Instagram to enhance promotional efforts.

With free and paid options, it’s an essential part of a marketing plan. Nearly 3.5 billion people use social media daily, spending about 2.5 hours engaging with content.

At a minimum, maintain a basic digital presence on platforms relevant to your audience. To maximize value, align social media goals with marketing objectives, create engaging content, track results, and optimize strategies.

Advocate for your brand with affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing involves partnerships with publications, brands, or influencers who promote your products or services. Most partnerships are performance-based, paying affiliates commissions for actions like clicks or purchases.

This method of marketing places much of the responsibility of promotion on the affiliates, giving them more carte blanche to promote your products to their audience in the ways that they know will be most successful.

To succeed, research affiliates relevant to your audience, track performance metrics, and protect your brand identity by monitoring affiliate messaging. Unpaid partnerships, such as influencer mentions or content exchanges, can also boost engagement discreetly.

This may take the form of social media influencers who agree to mention or promote your product in exchange for some sort of cross-promotion or perk. Alternatively, it may take the form of a content exchange, where you provide the affiliate with some sort of valuable content that they can use to boost their audience engagement and traffic while more discreetly educating users about your product or service — even encouraging them to visit your website or make a purchase.