B2B marketing — marketing aimed at companies

What is B2B marketing?

B2B marketing is the set of marketing activities of companies selling products or services to other companies (Business-to-Business), as opposed to B2C (Business-to-Consumer) where the recipient is an individual consumer.

Key characteristics:

• Long sales cycles (30-360 days)
• Buying committee — decision made by 5-15 people at the customer company
• High transaction value (50k+ USD up to millions)
• Rationale-driven purchases (ROI, business case), not impulsive
• Few high-quality leads — vs B2C: many leads, low conversion

Main strategies

• ABM (Account-Based Marketing) — hyper-targeted for specific accounts
• Content marketing — whitepaper, case study, topical authority
• SEO B2B — long-tail use case queries
• LinkedIn Ads — strongest paid channel in B2B
• Webinars and conferences — face-to-face lead gen
• Email marketing — sequenced nurture flows

Key KPIs

• MQL / SQL (Marketing/Sales Qualified Lead)
• Pipeline value — sum of deals in funnel
• ACV (Average Contract Value) — average contract value
• CAC — customer acquisition cost
• LTV / Payback period — lifetime value / time to recover CAC
• Win rate — % wins from funnel

Related terms

• ABM — Account-Based Marketing
• Buyer persona — decision maker profiles
• Lead generation — acquiring leads
• Marketing automation — tools
• Topical authority — expert authority