Sell to anyone, make money!
As the line between business and consumer becomes increasingly blurred, more and more startups are questioning whether they should target B2B or B2C with their new products. A number of forward-thinking companies have been implementing unique new product strategies that can serve both goals at once.
Welcome to the era of B2X
B2X is simply a flexible approach to customers. It won’t be restricted by who you provide the product to; it requires you to develop products and come up with sales strategies that are suitable for many different requirements and users.
And it has been developing at a dizzying speed, especially in the time when society has to be separated because of the pandemic. We can find a relative example of this acceleration in the spread of the Zoom platform.
We used Zoom before it became as popular as it is today
Before the pandemic, Zoom was a video conferencing app known for its ability to offer a free, unobtrusive version in the browser. It doesn’t require you to download, be technically gifted, or deal with any hassle. With just a Zoom link, you can schedule a meeting in seconds with anyone in the world.
The epidemic, social distancing has pushed Zoom to become one of the best solutions for every company. It is also the standard for a new B2C market, specifically suitable for audiences with personal and recreational needs.
Zoom’s B2B-focused partners (e.g. Microsoft Teams and WebEx) have raced to improve their competitiveness in the B2B world, due to the fact that Zoom has always avoided or rarely mentioned it. to important business concepts such as security and privacy. But it’s too late: The competition between safety and immediacy has won, and Zoom has become “hegemonic”, especially in the B2C and C2C worlds.
In other words, we don’t put too much emphasis on security, we use Band-Aid. We don’t search the Internet, we use Google. We don’t use video-conference for a meeting, we use Zoom.
It can be seen as a big win, well deserved.
Many startups misidentify target customers
In my experience, almost all startups miss their target market at least once or a lot of times. They may misinterpret the demographics, use the wrong audience, or even try to solve the wrong problem. In some extreme cases, we might miss the difference between B2B and B2C altogether.
Recently, I received several questions from a founder who needed to make decisions about the future of their product. They initially approached the market as a B2B service, but they didn’t see much traction in such a slow-moving industry.
However, they received a lot of SEO-powered consumer traffic: people who wanted the same product in a consumer-friendly category and those consumers couldn’t. Find another B2C company that can fill all of those needs. So the founder of this B2B company put together an MVP of the B2C version, and it looks a lot more appealing.
The question this founder asked me was: How should they sell their product?
● B2B long-term sales cycle with high profit margin?
● Or is B2C closer, selling quickly but with lower profit margins?
But when I look at the core of the products and their packaging, the only question I have is: Why make a choice? Instead, why not use both? Or anything in between, is it possible to reconcile them?
Those are often the choices of software companies in a moment: offer a free or low-cost version for personal use and a professional version for businesses with business purposes. This allows startups to attract domestic consumers, while also benefiting from B2B sales.
Advantages of B2X
This founder’s workaround is pretty cool, but it’s not as rare as it used to be. I have been working for what I call a B2X company. At our core, we can serve consumers, businesses, and even, we have a bit of B2B2C in it.
Our B2B business is strategic and has certain pros and cons: longer sales cycle, but larger and repeatable sales with high margins, average customer ratio is also significantly improved.
Of course, B2C is also a broad and important goal, with sales cycles being shorter and customers likely to be fleeting and in need of multifaceted support.
B2B2C is probably the best of both worlds, but of course, it can also be the worst choice. Because it only works when the product is specifically designed for the B2B2C market. Otherwise, B2B2C is just one of the good options for bulk sales and marketing partnerships.
To succeed with B2X, blur the lines between business and consumer
The barriers to starting a B2C company were overcome very quickly. And barriers for decision-makers in the B2B world have also narrowed as digital reach expands.
In fact, B2C can be a starting point for B2B. An employee using the free or low-cost version bragged to their co-workers. Suddenly, that product became an important part of the company, as purchases and visits grew.
That’s exactly what Slack did.
Now, we can see a ton of startups launching B2X products from the get-go. They were developed using similar strategies to create super-flexible MVPs that rotate early in the product lifecycle.
And then the question arises: Why stop product rotation? Why not grow by pivoting to new markets and expand horizontally (same problem but different industry) and vertical (same problem, same industry) by grabbing a foothold that and then scale the organization?
It’s a sustainable way to grow, especially when it’s applied to the product in the first place.
For example, Zoom has just tested running ads on its free consumer product. It’s an old solution to a new problem. This broke the B2X model and split the product into 2 branches B2C and B2B.
That separation can have some effect on both markets, alienating consumers on the one hand and devaluing products for business customers on the other. It will be a better solution if you continue to stick with the B2X strategy.
at Blogtuan.info – Source: cafebiz.vn – Read the original article here
