Peculiarities of Promotion in B2B and B2C

?Leysan Zigangirova, group 1409, Marketing Department Relative importance of promotional tools in consumer and industrial market. Figure 4. 1 shows proportion of promotional tools in b2c and b2b market. It’s evident, that advertising is on the first place in promoting consumer goods. Producers of these goods try to cover mass audience and advertising is an optimum variant. Almost all the population is in touch with media, including TV, radio and newspapers, or can see billboards or advertising placards, so the information about product or service can easily achieve them. Of course, here comes the question why personal selling is not so popular here. First of all, it’s because of narrow cover. Personal selling is aimed to each customer, so it’s impossible to communicate with everybody. And secondly, the proportion between price and result makes this tool irrational: vast sums of money will be spent out, but the there will be no confidence in sales increasing. On the other hand is industrial or b2b market, where personal selling is on the top. And this result is understandable. The target audience here is not the man in the street, but representative of business, the professional, so it’s better to use personal approach. And advertising campaigns are not so effective here: advertising reaches a mass audience, personal or direct selling focuses on one customer at a time. Besides, industrial products and services are more sophisticated and require detailed explanation, customized application, or careful negotiation over price and payment plan. The salesperson helps the customer identify problems, works out a variety of solutions, assists the buyer in making decisions, and provides arrangements for long-term service. Does advertising do the same? Unfortunately, doesn’t. And in b2b market all of the enumerated points are key to the success in business. If we continue examination of promotional instruments, we will see that usage of other tools is the same. Both b2b and b2c use sales promotion in order to increase sales volume, as an addition to personal selling and advertising. And also public relations are on the lowest position as the most unpopular tool. This can be explained by the result of PR: it builds image, reputation, not sales. Very few companies use this form of promoting, because most of them put profit on the first place, and the image of the company on the second. Only after several years of stable position in the market they turn to PR. So, to make a conclusion, I want to say that it’s important to remember that choosing promotional tool depends on the market, where you do business. Businessmen should take it into consideration, if they don’t want to flow out their money without worthy result.