With the evolvement of the digital age B2C marketing has dramatically shifted the way consumers receive information engage in and interact with businesses and purchase products and services.
It used to be that the companies themselves would be the marketing approach as far as the who, what, where, when, how, and why.
The goal here was to feed the masses per se and hope that consumers would take the bait.
Now consumers are the driving force behind the content they see and with who they choose to interact. So the goal of B2C companies is to be found.
While several non digital B2C channels are still utilized such as Television, Newspaper and Mailers digital channels such as email Social Media and Search Engine Optimization are becoming increasingly more popular.
Statistics And History Of Marketing
Prior to the 1900s print magazine poster and billboard advertising reforms of B2C marketing radio advertising surfaced.In 1922 at which time approximately 60% of American households owned a radio.
In July of 1941 the first television Ads was broadcasted from Bulova a watch company and aired for 20 seconds prior to a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies.
The 1950s brought about telemarketing which was a more direct approach to reach reaching a customer base.
The Digital age really came to the scene between the 1970s and the 1990s. The mid 90s brought about Search Marketing via search engine keywords and SEO.
Blogging became an information-sharing platform in 1998 for both businesses and individuals followed by pay-per-click in 2000.
And finally Social Media in 2003. It's really quite fascinating to see just how quickly Digital Marketing has evolved over the past three decades.
While B2C and B2B or Business-To-Business Marketing have some analogy's has technically both involved the sale of a product or service their differences may drive various tactics and strategies B2C marketing focuses on the individual.
However, markets tend to be very broad with a large number of prospective buyers on the contrary B2B markets tend to be small and niche and focus on a particular business which often involves multiple people and decision makers like Executive, Managers and Product Users.
Due to this involvement the B2B sales cycle is long drawn-out and carefully calculated process that can last months or even years to complete.
B2C Sales tend to be more spontaneous thus the purchasing process is very quick and easy.
Finally b2b outcomes are more concerned with return on investment. Whereas, B2C outcomes are focused on making life easier and or entertainment and enjoyment.
B2C Content Marketing Channels
When it comes to carrying out marketing strategies marketers can choose from a variety of digital channels these include Email, Social Media, Mobile Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimization via Organic Search pay-per-click display advertising and Affiliate Marketing.1. To Determine Marketing Channels
Determining an effective marketing channel or channels depends on the type of B2C business and the consumer the business needs to first take into account their objectives and the metrics that will be used to monitor progress and results understanding where a customer is at in the customer lifecycle.And it may also play a role in which the marketing channel will generate best outcomes these steps include customer acquisition conversion retention and loyalty.
Advocacy Marketers also need to be aware and focus on channels that customers and competitors are currently using 9 out of 10 consumers expect consistent interactions across all marketing channels.
B2C marketing involves identifying potential buyers turning. These prospects inspires and keeping these buyers coming back for more 51% of Americans prefer to shop online.
Thus justifying a big opportunity for B2C Marketing strategies.
3 top brand actions that can prompt to purchase from in users.
• Include Being Responsive
• Offering Promotions
• Providing Educational Content
The internet and social media along with automation have also allowed marketers and businesses to interact with prospects and/or customers in real time.
For example..
Businesses get an instant notification when someone posts on their Facebook page or leaves a product review. This is also an excellent opportunity for business if someone happens to leave a bad review or describe a bad experience depending on the situation.
A business has the chance to engage the individual make it right and change the individuals feelings toward the product or business web based triggers also add in the personalized touch to the consumer lifecycle in real time.
2. Personalized Marketing Approach
Technology in the Internet have allowed B2C marketing which has a broad target audience to have a personalized marketing approach.This is critical for that emotional response and persuasion to purchase based on where the individual is at in the customer lifecycle.
Using modern analytics marketers are able to track behavioural trends this information on with predictive analytics and the sharing of personal data has allowed marketers to obtain a better understanding of their audience.
And thus can improve upon current strategies and strengthen relationships between business and consumer.
Technology has also made an impact on several B2C Marketing tools product review and word-of-mouth maybe the term be the determining factor that turns a prospect into a customer on the other hand product reviews may also defer customers from purchasing products or services.
46% of Internet users have been positively influenced and 43% have been negatively influenced by product reviews.
3. Unique And High Quality Content
In order to break through the annoying Disruptive, Advertisements that consumers despise marketers need to provide unique High Quality content that catches the customers attention.This includes easy to understand information using engaging articles videos and infographics.
However, Content can only go so far and must involve giving the user and experience.
Customer Loyalty Programs
Customer Loyalty Programs can be a great tool to build customer relationships as part of a B2C marketing strategy.For example..
Starbucks rewards once signed up members can receive stars for every dollar spent in addition to other perks including a birthday reward ordering ahead capabilities and other member events and offers rewards like these keep customers returning for future purchases based on these incentives.
B2C marketing tactics and strategies will continue to evolve alongside the evolvement of the internet and other informational sharing platforms particularly mobile media.
United State's adults are spending over four hours daily on their mobile devices which is a big increase from previous years.
Nonetheless, Consumer focused strategies should promote brand awareness engaged consumers and simple high-quality captivating content and convert and retain customers.
Clear objectives and metrics should always accompany B2C marketing strategies and campaigns adjustments improvements and new objectives can be set based on outcomes.
Top 7 Lead Generation Strategies For B2C
1. Social Media
There are several leads that are in certain areas some are online some are offline the ones that are online are on Social Media like..Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and Tumblr there are so many.
But for some the clientele is not in on Social Media it depends what your niche is what the age group who you're targeting the older clientele could be.
The ones who are who don't use social media as much maybe they use one platform. But not the rest and the younger platforms might use the other.
The younger leads are going to be used in the different platforms.
There are usually the older ones don't use. So once you need down and you know where exactly who you want to target you may know exactly where to put your effort into.
So for the older crowd, It could be Facebook and LinkedIn.
For the younger crowd, It could be Instagram.
So you have to really know exactly where exact where you want to put your leads in your up towards them.
2. Email List
There are so many ways you can do that your email list can grow and it's called lead magnet.A lead magnet is something that you need to offer in order to get an email for an exchange.
For example..
It could be a checklist that you want to have people to download. But before downloading they need to give you the Email Address, So they can download.
It can be an e-book, it can be entering a contest and so on.
3. YouTube
So YouTube is necessary because a lot doesn't matter what age doesn't matter. You're going YouTube to watch whatever you need to watch by just clicking search.So if you have a YouTube channel most likely you will have subscribers and those subscribers are actually going to listen to you.
So if you are targeting the way you're giving the message the way that they will perceive it as value they're most likely they will follow and will want to hear from you again and again.
Whatever you provide you want that type of loyal listeners loyal audience. So they are going to listen just for you and nobody else but you have background than they hits their peers it hits their interest it hits their want what exactly they want.
You can create a survey there are so many ways, So if you do feel that you're still lost and you don't know exactly where to start or have to map your target your niche.
4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Whether you are B2B or B2C, It doesn't matter.Sales navigator usually targets the ones who are on LinkedIn, This is the only way you can get glean from LinkedIn.
It's just you need to connect for them there is a search that you're actually searching it's a paid platform you need to pay for it. And then once you search you get the Demographics the age group the gender, their roles the companies, the company size and you get all the lists of people who are in your lead generation.
So all you have to do is connect with them chat would then make sure that they see your content in order to build relationships.
You can't sell right away in any leads, You cannot sell right away you have to build the relationship. They need to know you they need to hear from you unfortunately not everybody is active on social media some of them have profiles.
But they just never used it and they never on it they just have a profile but they're never on it.
I would say in any online platform that you're in you are generating your leads. You need to provide great content that hits their purpose.
For example..
You need to hit their fears what are they feeling, what do they want, what are they interests, and when exactly they like in order for you to provide that service that actually reaches to that to that interest that they have.
Otherwise if it's not interesting to them they may not even want to deal with you and then you can the content can be written. It can be video, It can be infographics, It can be an Ads, It can be any valuable information.
5. Blogging With Bloggers.com
If you are in a tight budget and you don't have Time and money to invest. So there is actually a platform called blogger.Blogger.com is a free platform that you can create for yourself a website and it's free you don't have to pay for. If you can create pages you can create graphics, you can create anything that you want you only think that you're gonna have problem with SEO.
In this you need to hire somebody who can do it.
6. Direct Mail
Direct Mail could be a postcard that you're sending to the email list to the mail list.So the mail list you can either rent it from a company or you can buy it.
I don't recommend actually to do that. Because the list that they have could be that it's an almost people already moved out the addresses are no longer relevant and some are not existing anymore.
So I would not really focus on that. But if you know how to get a direct mail the mailing list then you can just Google up some name so go to yellow pages and just find out that way.
Or you can have direct mail done through the email list so if whenever they have the download to download something and they need to put their information such as phone email and address.
7. Newspapers
It depends exactly who is your client tell, If it's 18 years old she's not they are not gonna read any newspapers. If it's an older crowd like 40 years old 50 years old they are gonna win newspapers most likely they do.So if you put an Ads on a newspaper that's costly but it's gonna get you more like relevant leads.
B2C Content Creation Plan
A plan that is conceptualised designed and formulated by a business for a customer to promote business offerings a plant that is conceptualised and that is designed and formulated to target.
The end user to target the customer by a business to promote its business offerings. That is precisely what content marketing plan for B2C is.
The content that is billed is completely focused on targeting the customers with an objective to create Awareness, Generate Traffic and Drive Conversions.
5 Basic Guidelines For Content Marketing
1. Brand Awareness
You need to actually create the brand guidelines as far as your brand products are concerned.What is the company, How the company is doing, What are the web assets that are available, The website the landing pages the logo and the content that you want to Flint and where you want to actually create.
The content the entire guidelines have to be created identify targeted customers the demography and the geography.
You actually have the complete product available right now and you actually create the Awareness increase, The Visibility of your products.
And when you want to increase the visibility of the person create the Awareness you actually need to identify who are your customers, where are they located and their locations and the Geography the both have to be identified along with the Demography.
2. Content Marketing Goals and Objectives
what are the goals and objectives of your content marketing plan, What do you want to achieve, what are the deadlines that you are setting, what are the leads that you want to achieve in a certain period of time, what are the conversion that you are looking how the content is to be focused along with the guidelines.Mentioned the objectives have to be clearly formulated in your content marketing plan when you are with the content strategies and the topics.
What is the kind of content that you want to create and how actually you need to actually reach out to the intended audience your end users the customers.
And how you actually want to engage with them, what are the topic that you want to create if the topic should be completely focused on the end user in the customer and related to the kind of product that you are offering.
3. Content Editorial Calendar
You actually need to create a complete comprehensive editorial calendar built on which you actually go on disseminating across multiple channels.What content that you want to create, what are the topics that you need to create, when you want to publish the content on Social Media, when you want to publish on the website the landing and the blocks and how you actually going to track the content marketing success all these things have to be formulated.
And you need to create a content marketing capital plan. Without the content guidelines without the content calendar, you cannot actually go on randomly posting content on multiple channels creating.
A Content Calendar is essential for a marketing success content marketing success.
4. Media Channels
What are the media channels that you want to target you may be having a website or blog or landing pages social media the podcasting and the email campaigns all these media channels need to be targeted consistently across long time.So that you can generate the kind of traffic that need to be generated the traffic will bring you leads and leads into the customers.
5. Analytics
Analytics is the Backbone of the entire content marketing strategy. Entire content marketing plan without the analytics you cannot think of actually going on launching a content marketing campaign.The analytics will provide you the insightful information that is needed for you to understand.
I know how your content marketing plan is working across many multiple media channels. The kind of traffic coming, where they are coming from, what are the keywords that are being used, how the organic traffic is coming, how the paid advertising companies traffic is coming, how many leads are happening how many conversions are happening.
The kind of campaign that you are running and the success rate of your campaign so that you can go on tweaking enhancing and improving for continuous improvement has to be consistent based on the analytical reports.
The analytics reports basically have to be two types-
One is of course the Web Analytics. And Second is the Social Media Analytics.
And when you analyze the reports, You go on continuous improvement that leads you to more and more customers and more conversions.
2 Common B2C Content Marketing Strategies
1. Identifying The Targeted Customer
The first and foremost point where you need to actually know who are your customers and where they are located the topics that you want to build around the content that you are creating content creation once the content is created.You actually need to disseminate the content across multiple channels and what are those channels the website the blog the Social Media the emails podcasting infographics you can do a lot of media multimedia channels.
2. Engagement
You create the content and once you disseminate the content, It has to release the organic leads, the paid leads that goes to do the leads and the conversion that may happen.The Engagement process comes after you create and publish the content then track analytics the content is published you are creating an Awareness.
You have new targeted multi media at multi channels across multiple platforms then you actually need to track the analytics both the web analytics and the social media analytics then goes on the continuous improvement.
Final Thoughts
Once you actually publish the content the foremost point that you need to remember is, once you publish the content the content is available across Websites Landing Pages, Blogs, Social Media, Podcasting and Email.You are actually consistently pushing across the content that is created through the content calendar when that is done you are going to engage with the users. You actually trying to target the users when that is happening both these aspects have to be tracked completely it has to be tracked through the web.
It has to be tracked through social media so that you know how your content marketing plan is working and what are the areas that you need to work on the issues the concerns.
The challenges that may have in terms of the engagement unless and until you actually track the analytical report you will not be going in for the continuous improvement.
It has to be consistent it is not just once you created the content is available you are pushing the content and you are not doing any changes continuous improvements is very important to drive more and more conversions.
