Definition: Consumer marketing involves the promotion of goods or services to individuals for personal consumption.Have you encountered a brand advertisement or promotional email for consumer products or services? If so, you’ve experienced the essence of consumer marketing!Consumer marketing offers the opportunity to engage a wider customer base and stimulate purchases. Unsure of how to initiate your strategy? You’ve arrived at the perfect destination!This article delves into:
What constitutes consumer marketing?
Distinguishing consumer marketing (B2C) from business-to-business (B2B) marketing.
Four effective consumer marketing strategies to implement.
While here, subscribe to our free newsletter, Revenue Weekly, and join the 200,000 marketers who receive top-tier marketing insights directly in their inboxes.Consumer marketing, or business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, entails promoting products to individual consumers for personal use. It aims to attract new customers to try a company’s offerings and maintain existing customers’ satisfaction and loyalty to the brand.Consumer marketing involves advertising products directly to individual consumers. Conversely, business-to-business (B2B) marketing targets products and services to other businesses.Let’s examine the differences between consumer marketing and B2B marketing:B2C marketing addresses consumers who will use the products and make the purchase decisions:
Audience: B2C marketing targets individual consumers who will utilize the products.
Messages: Consumer marketing employs clear, emotive language that resonates with customers, prompting them to make purchases.
Customer relationship: B2C marketing emphasizes creating a seamless customer experience in every transaction to foster loyalty.
Buying cycle: The B2C buying cycle is typically shorter, as consumers make their purchase decisions independently without requiring approval.
Here’s a case of consumer marketing from PetSmart, where subscribers received a coupon via email. PetSmart uses straightforward language (“15% savings”) and communicates directly with an individual customer who will make the purchase decision.B2B marketing targets a group of individuals within an organization who will purchase products or services for business use:
Audience: B2B marketing targets a group of individuals within an organization, including product users and decision-makers who will approve the budget for the purchase.
Messages: B2B marketing showcases a business’s expertise, educates its audience, and provides detailed, data-driven information. It convinces businesses to purchase by demonstrating how products or services are the best solutions for a company’s challenges.
Customer relationship: B2B marketing focuses on demonstrating value and building personal relationships with businesses to establish long-term customer loyalty. Personal connections can differentiate a B2B business from competitors and generate glowing testimonials from customers.
Buying cycle: B2B marketing generally has a longer buying cycle than B2C due to the involvement of more individuals in the purchase decision.
Here’s a B2B marketing example from Global Sources, where the company shares an ebook with a new user to educate them about the latest industry trends and demonstrate its expertise.Seeking inspiration for consumer marketing? Explore these four successful strategies, along with real-world examples:
Collect and analyze customer data
Segment your audience
Implement personalization
Develop a social media strategy
Let’s examine each one:Acquiring customer data is a crucial consumer marketing approach, as it allows for a deeper understanding of customers and the delivery of personalized messages that drive conversions.Here’s how to begin collecting and analyzing customer data:Conduct market research to learn more about your customersUnderstanding your customers’ needs is a pivotal step in consumer marketing, and market research is a valuable tool for achieving this. Market research can help you gather your customers’ demographic information and understand their values, purchasing behaviors, and attitudes towards brands.Market research can guide you in developing products and services that meet your customers’ needs. This strategy also illuminates your customers’ pain points, allowing you to tailor your marketing messages to drive purchases.For instance, let’s say you own a pet supply store offering a variety of pet food options for dogs and cats. You conduct a survey to learn more about your customers’ needs.The results indicate that your customers desire pet toys and accessories, and they would appreciate the option to have their orders delivered. Adapting your offerings to better meet these needs may be beneficial.
Gather and manage customer data using a marketing technology (martech) stackCustomer data platforms (CDPs) and customer relationship management (CRM) software are just a few of the martech tools you can use to gather and manage data about your customers.A CDP can provide you with a customer database that stores and unifies real-time customer data. It can create individual profiles for each user, detailing what users purchased, which marketing channels they interacted with, which pages they visited on your website, and more.A CRM, on the other hand, stores your customers’ and prospects’ valuable information like name and contact information. By doing so, a CRM enables your sales and marketing teams to stay connected with them. You can send personalized messages to your customers or nurture your prospects to convince them to convert.These martech tools, such as MarketingCloudFX, can help you manage and store first-party data you collect about your customers. This can assist you in analyzing valuable information, such as identifying which pages and marketing channels helped convert site visitors into customers.Segmenting your audience offers numerous benefits. It allows you to:
Communicate more effectively with customers and prospects
Identify the best channels for reaching your customers
Effectively nurture customers at various stages of the buyer’s funnel
Identify the persona segments you should focus on with your time, budget, and resources
Once you’ve added your first-party data to a CRM, you can create segments based on data points most valuable to your business.For consumer marketing, consider grouping contacts based on:
Engagement levels with your product or business
Product feature usage
Engagement with marketing channels
Customer location, if your business operates multiple stores or locations
Identify segments of highly satisfied customers who would refer your business to family and friends? Consider implementing a loyalty program for these segments to maintain their engagement with your business.
Let’s examine an example of consumer marketing from Ironman. Its newsletter subscribers are segmented based on their interest in races and what they chose to receive. Members who expressed interest in races in North America receive updates about events in the region.Personalized marketing enhances the customer experience. Consumers appreciate brands that go the extra mile to view them as individuals, understand their needs, and tailor marketing messages and unique customer journeys to them.This is why 77% of people choose, recommend, or even pay for brands that offer personalized marketing experiences. Personalization is a consumer marketing strategy that can differentiate you from the competition.In our earlier example of the pet supplies shop, you can reach out to your customers and newsletter subscribers with customized emails based on their pet ownership journey. Tools like EmailMarketingFX can assist you in personalizing emails, addressing each recipient by their first name and sending newsletters tailored to different segments.
