- (Article to be completed with the testimony of a consumer marketing director)
Many of the marketing practices of the general public are not relevant in technology because the worlds involved are so different. However, it is too easy to dismiss the issue by saying “it’s not our world” because some of these practices, which are sometimes the source of brilliant successes and enviable financial results in B2C, can be profitably adapted to the technology world.
For example, without going into detail, it is clear that some of the principles that guided Apple’s success and turned it into an amazing “cash machine” are relevant even in the technological world: product strategy, development of services, combination of hardware and software, creation of a “product ecosystem”, image management, communication strategy, etc.
This is of course only a small part of the technological problem, but it can be instructive.
Knowing B2C marketing practices
It is therefore always useful to know the best practices of B2C marketing in order to explore adaptable and transposable techniques in technology, although of course, beyond some common principles, markets have very different structures and the consumer is not the B2B/B2G technology customer.
Some B2C practices can clearly be used to good effect and improve the performance of high-tech B2B B2G as some of these practices are ‘areas of excellence’ that technology can draw on to improve its marketing effectiveness.
Let’s take a quick look at the current marketing techniques, practices and concerns of B2C marketing.
What are the fundamental practices of B2C marketing?
- B2C marketing is fundamentally interested in the consumer, his psychology, his individual or collective decision-making processes, and the various phenomena of influence on his decisions
- It is therefore committed to studying and understanding both the major societal movements and all the mechanisms of decision and influence, particularly those induced in recent years by social media
- As B2C differentiation is driven as much by image as by the product itself, image and communication issues are central.
- B2C marketing is therefore very interested in all ways of communicating with the consumer and influencing him directly or indirectly.
- As a result, a large part of B2C marketing budgets are therefore devoted to image, communication and influence actions, these different elements often being entrusted to agencies
- All points of contact and transaction with the consumer are the object of studies and actions, whether they are physical or virtual places
B2C: some areas of excellence and current themes
Some areas of excellence in B2C marketing
- the study and understanding of markets made up of millions of consumers
- data processing for both market understanding and marketing action
- digital marketing
- image and communication management
- brand portfolio management
- product or product concept testing
- high prices based on both product and image
Some current issues in B2C marketing
- After the importance of digital, “influence phenomena” and the role of social media were taken into account about ten years ago, these themes are still very present in B2C marketing. They are also spreading in adapted forms in B2B and high-tech B2B
- B2C marketing is very interested in everything that can optimise and improve the ROI of marketing and communication expenditure, which is massive: website optimisation, natural and paid SEO, databases, ROI of advertising expenditure (Return On Ads Spend or ROAS), advertising attribution scores, etc.
- It is also interested in
- all new communication spaces, such as the possible future of Metavers
- all technologies likely to enrich contact with the consumer and the “customer experience”, such as virtual reality
- ways of reconciling detailed knowledge of the consumer with data privacy/RGPD
- the collection and processing of data in order to use it to gain a better understanding of both the consumer and the evolution of markets. In particular, the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to better “talk” to the abundant data is a promising subject.
