Having had the opportunity to market in both B2C and B2B (and B2B2C) environments, it’s been interesting to take a step back and evaluate the similarities and differences between the approaches necessary in both to achieve success.  At the core, both share certain basic similarities founded in classical marketing convention.  Customer-needs based brand positioning which is relevant and credible, and creates distance from the competition (through uniqueness within a category or creation of a new category) is the structure upon which I’ve been able to build successful marketing programs in both B2C and B2B environments.  From this commonality; however, diverge two very different marketing lifecycles.  B2C customers are typically much less brand loyal and often make buying decisions emotionally.  My B2C experience has substantiated that a consumer will quickly change brands should another meet a relevant need better with more credibility and differentiation.  My B2B marketing experiences have dealt with customers who consider brand quite important in the purchase cycle (“no one ever got fired for buying IBM”) and engage in a very rational purchase process.  The purchase process itself is exceptionally different.  Whereas B2C marketing can encourage the “impulse buy”, B2B is a much longer and complex sales cycle with typically a large sphere of influencers impacting the ultimate purchase decision.  This difference in purchase cycle leads to much different channel marketing strategies, with the complexity of B2B solutions often requiring multi-step distribution across a number of partners who bundle together a solution of parts for the ultimate end-customer.  These differences impact the integrated marketing approach as target audiences (buyers and influencers) respond to different marketing vehicles.  One thing I have noticed is a convergence of both B2C and B2B in the digital space, as digital marketing proves effective across the audiences to nurture a dialogue with the end-customer regardless of speed and complexity of the sales cycle.  Many of the digital tools once focused on the B2C space to help the consumer easily research a product and hopefully convert them are now being successfully utilized in the B2B space.  B2B customers now the ability to holistically research solutions (and marketers now have the ability to accelerate the sales cycle) through the digital toolkit.  Search any major B2B company on YouTube and it’s likely you will find a channel focused on the B2B customer.  This convergence in the digital space is turning what used to be two different types of marketing skill sets into different points along the same spectrum.