B2B Small Businesses
B2B refers to business to business or one commercial business selling products or services to another business in comparison to B2C (business to consumer).
Small businesses span a wide range of categories and target audiences. To help keep this blog easy to find highlights, articles, and stories about a particular type of small business we have created segment overviews which define the type of business they are and the type of customers and industries they work within.
B2B Posts
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What Defines a B2B Small Businesses?
B2B refers to business to business or one commercial business selling products or services to another business in comparison to B2C (business to consumer) which would be focusing on sales to the general buyer. Some examples of B2B businesses would include commercial water treatment companies, industrial supply firms, and consulting companies. Their products and services are more in alignment with the needs of other industrial and commercial customers.
By the way, the classification of a small business is not a negative, the Federal government refers to small businesses as having between 1-500 employees. They also account for 47% of all US employees or 99% of all the businesses in America fall into this category.
What Challenges do They Face?
In today’s marketplace B2B is a very complex and competitive environment, From foreign competition to finding skilled employees, the difficulties have increased dramatically. One area is in marketing strategies for new products or getting their message out to other businesses. Most traditional avenues of marketing are not really designed for B2B customers and prospects. Television and radio are heavily weighted to the consumer market and the once famous attending trade shows is not having the reach and impact like it did 20 years ago. Digital marketing is also difficult because many products share the same keyword targets as consumer items and therefore tend to take a back seat to big consumer brands, even social media tends to focus on consumer rather than industrial.
This is why we wanted to create a blog to highlight these businesses to help them have a platform to talk in their own voice to a community of other B2B businesses and even help with lead generation. We encourage visitors who work for a small business to take the time to see what companies have been highlighted and to consider contacting them if they are applicable to your business.
Benefits They Offer
After working as a business consultant in the area for over 25 years, small businesses definitely offer many benefits over national corporations or chains. Customer service is at the top of the list because being a small company there is more attention to taking a more personal approach and less levels of management that can sometimes stifle customer service.
More flexible, many corporations have created policies and procedures to standardize their products and services to be easily managed or reduce complications whereas the small company has more room to tailor their products or services to a customer’s needs.
Integrity, whereas a major corporation is large enough to loose thousands of customers if they don’t like their products, to a small business owner its customers are its life blood that is why there is more focus on customer satisfaction, quality and building relationships than most larger entities.