In a previous post, we looked at 5 differences between business buyers and ordinary consumers.

And I suggested that perhaps these differences are not such big differences after all.

Now let’s move on with some practical tips for how to create better B2B selling messages. Then we’ll again discuss whether selling to the business market is as different as some people suggest.

1. Turn your features into bottom-line benefits. Show how your gizmo will turn a good business into a better business with money or time saved, greater profits, more competitiveness, higher efficiency, etc. And whenever possible, be specific. Instead of saying, “The Gizmo Widget can save you money,” say, “In the first year, the Gizmo Widget can cut printing costs for the average business by $23,687.” Dig for specifics in every benefit you offer.

2. Target benefits for different levels. The motivations of users, influencers, buyers, and decision-makers are all different. Let’s say you’re selling a seminar on how to increase the efficiency of the office. The president of the company may want to increase overall productivity. A department head may want ideas for dealing with difficult employees. A secretary may want to learn how to stand out and get promoted. Know who you’re talking to and speak to that person’s needs. If you can’t do it in one message, do it in several different ones.

3. List all the features. Include product specifications, prices, add-ons, options, future compatibility, and all the details. Often the final decision comes down to tiny differences between you and your competitor. And you can give yourself an edge by listing features your competitor simply doesn’t talk about.

4. Send a “keeper.” Depending on the buying cycle of your typical customer, it could be months or years before a promotion pays off. So if your brochure, fact kit, sample, or other information is easy to file away for future reference, it will continue to sell until your prospect is ready to act. An important caveat: Don’t use long buying cycles as an excuse to avoid making a strong, urgent offer with a clear call to action.

5. Make your mail look important and personal. This can help you get past secretaries and the mailroom. Often, plain outer envelopes are best. For fulfillment, put “Here is the information you requested” or something similar on the outside. Invitation formats also work. Product samples, a message to the secretary with benefits for her or him, and dimensional packages have proved successful for many businesses.

6. Mail to different job titles. You can use versioned copy, each version addressing the concerns of a different level within a company. You can encourage pass-alongs of one complete piece, such as a brochure or fact kit. Or you can address your piece to two or three people to guarantee that at least one person will read it.

7. Lead with your offer. You can get away with a certain degree of creative indulgence in consumer marketing, but with few exceptions, business selling should be the model of directness. Create a strong offer and build your message around it. Make it clear, simple, and to-the-point.

8. Use testimonials and success stories. They can have a profound effect on the risk-averse business buyer. Testimonials show that others trust and use your products and services, so they are therefore less risky. Success stories can accomplish the same thing, but with the added benefit of dramatizing and proving your promises.

9. Feature your guarantee. A solid guarantee reduces the perceived feelings of risk and makes it easier for you to capture that first sale. It helps you build long-term trust and almost always increases response.

10. Generate leads first to qualify prospects. Especially when you have a product or service that requires a significant investment of time and resources, or which is complex or expensive. A good lead program will help your sales team identify the best prospects faster and cut their per customer costs. If you don’t have a sales force, you can still use the same technique in the form of a two-step (or more) direct sell – the first ad or mail piece gets an inquiry and the follow-up asks for the order.

11. Use more letters. They are your sales people in the mail, your personal contact. Often you don’t even need brochures. One simple and nearly foolproof technique I often use for my clients is to create a 1 or 2-page letter, mailed in a business envelope with a reply card or fax-back sheet and maybe a toll-free number. With a simple package like this you can generate inquiries for free information, sales calls, demonstrations, seminars, anything. Letters are personal, cheap, fast, flexible, and easy to produce. And they work.

12. Try self-mailers. They encourage pass-alongs to decision makers. They’re easier and more self-contained than multi-piece mailers, although not as personal. Self-mailers are a way to dramatically cut costs if you’re used to mailing larger packages or more elaborate brochures. Sometimes, their economy can outperform everything else, including personal letters.

13. Nix the jargon. There is language in every field you should tune into, including buzzwords, business concepts, and hot industry topics. However, there’s a difference between speaking someone’s language and hiding behind it. Clear communication works best in every situation. Say what you have to say in simple, straightforward prose.

14. Make responding easy. Provide a toll-free number or business reply card. Explain your billing and shipping policies. Allow fax-back or Internet orders. Do anything that makes it easy for someone to say, “yes” to your offer. Inertia is one of your worst enemies, and you have to combat it actively.

Is B2B really all that different from consumer selling?

Now take a second look at those 14 hints. Anything sound familiar? Let’s see …

• Turn features into benefits. Standard stuff.
• Target your message. Of course.
• List your features. Heck, you do that in product packaging.
• Send a keeper. Borderline difference, but many consumer brochures are keepers.
• Make your mail look important and personal. Another borderline, but lots of consumer mail does the same thing. A direct mail package with a plain envelope, for example.
• Mail to different job titles. Hey, that’s just targeting.
• Lead with your offer. Always good advice.
• Use testimonials and success stories. Works everywhere, really.
• Feature your guarantee. Nearly always boosts response wherever you use it.
• Qualify prospects. This is used more in B2B, but it’s no different from a two-step consumer sale. Get an inquiry from a print ad, for example, then follow up with mail.
• Use letters. Hey, everyone reads letters.
• Try self-mailers. Just a test of economy.
• Nix jargon. You should be clear in all circumstances.
• Make response easy. That’s a given.

When you take a hard look at the details, all those dreaded differences just evaporate. From the standpoint of creating sales messages, B2B just isn’t that much different from consumer marketing.

It’s a mistake to think that you can take a purely consumer approach to the business market. But it’s a greater mistake to think that the business market is a world unto itself and that the people in it stop being human when they clock in at work.

Never forget that business is business. But it’s more important to remember that people are people. Even when they’re on-the-job.

When business-to-business marketers call my office, they always ask the same thing: “Do you have B2B experience?”

They ask it like they’re looking for a white-haired wizard with a pointy black hat and a big gnarly cane, some spell-weaving Merlin who understands the strange and ancient ways of the “business buyer.”

I reply in two parts. First, I assure them. “Yes, I’ve worked successfully with a tremendous number of business marketers.”

Second, I shock them. “But you know, there really isn’t that much difference between B2B and consumer marketing, at least from the standpoint of creating offers, writing copy, and designing ads and direct mail.”

“No difference?” they sputter, “But … but … but ….”

Having had my fun, I then smooth their ruffled feathers and explain what seems to be shameless heresy.

You see, I admit that there are certainly vital differences between B2B and consumer marketing, but in my experience, the differences too often overshadow the similarities. And this can lead to some truly bad selling messages.

If you begin with the assumption that business people are all emotionless, money-making robots, as many B2B marketers do, you end up with flaccid offers, ponderous copy, and do-nothing design. Just look at the mail you get in your office.

In truth, business buyers are just people, with the same problems, fears, feelings, and dreams as everyone else. They simply experience their problems, fears, feelings, and dreams in their office instead of their living room.

They’re far from emotionless. In fact, because of the stress of the workplace, their emotional responses are often far more intense than consumers. And if you think money is the only issue they respond to, you’re simply not in touch with the average business person.

For the most part, business buyers respond to the same motivators and techniques as consumers. I never, therefore, divide the known world into consumer and B2B marketing. Rather, I begin with the idea that I’m going to sell to real people and then adjust my approach based on who and where those people are.

This is part one of a two-part post on this topic. So let’s first take a look at 5 key differences between business buyers and consumers.

1. Business buyers usually aren’t spending their own money. Even if you’re speaking to the owner, there’s a different mind set about personal expenses and business expenses. Therefore, most purchases need to be justified in quantifiable terms.

2. The buying process for major purchases is often complicated. It can follow a formal, rigid pattern of bids, budgets, bargaining, and analysis. Business buyers need plenty of information to make a decision, often over a long period of time.

3. You must sometimes talk to many layers of a company. This includes decision makers, buyers, influencers, and users. And you may or may not be sure who is who. Then there’s the mailroom and secretary barrier, people you have to go through first to get your message to your target.

4. Business buyers are particularly wary of taking chances on unknown products and services. The cost for mistakes — in time, money, and personal reputation — is too great. While some like to be on the cutting edge, most prefer to play it safe. They are especially influenced by the actions and opinions of colleagues and competitors. And they have elephantine memories when it comes to bad experiences.

5. Business buyers are time-conscious during business hours. They don’t welcome cold calls from businesses they don’t know. They are barraged with mail and sort through it quickly. However, if something interests them, they will read it, though they want to get to the point fast.

Whew! If you’re used to the straightforward sell of consumer marketing, this may send shivers up your spine.

But wait. Let’s look at those differences again. We’re talking about some pretty basic things here: purchase justification, full information, targeted messages, brand confidence, and clear communication.

Does that really sound so different? Don’t you consider the very same issues in consumer campaigns?

I wish to stress that business marketing is very different in terms of pricing, planning, buying cycles, and so on. However, creating selling messages for B2B shouldn’t be all that different from creating selling messages for the consumer market. From a creative standpoint, they are more alike than different.

Keep this in mind. Next time, we’ll look at hints for selling to the business buyer and reconsider how different B2B selling messages are from consumer selling messages.

Recently, I ran across a short interview I did with Inside Direct Mail several years ago about the difference between copywriting for business to business advertising (B2B) and business to consumer advertising (B2C).

Given the growth in B2B, and the fact that I came off sounding reasonably intelligent, I thought I should reprint the interview here on my blog.

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What is one of the key differences between B2B and consumer writing?

Business buyers often aren’t spending their own money. That’s good and bad. Good because they’re more open to big-ticket purchases. Bad because they usually have to get approval from others. In fact, you must sometimes talk to many layers of a company before making a sale – decision makers, buyers, and end users. All of which means you have to provide more purchase justification than you do for consumers.

Two other challenges also face the B2B marketer:

First, the buying process is often complicated, following a formal, rigid pattern of bids, budgets, bargaining, and analysis.

Second, you often have to get past a ruthless mail room or secretary before your message reaches your prospect.

However, these differences too often overshadow the similarities. Remember, business buyers are people with the same basic problems, fears, feelings, and dreams as everyone else. They just have those problems, fears, feelings, and dreams at work instead of at home. So while your products may be less sexy than in consumer marketing, you must never separate the sizzle from the steak.

When writing B2B copy, do you want to try to individualize the copy or make it appeal to a group of people?

I always try to target my message to one person. If I have to talk to more than one person, the ideal answer is to send more than one message. The broader you make any individual message, the more diluted it becomes.

Instead of one big brochure that tries to speak to three levels simultaneously, why not three smaller brochures, each clearly targeted? Or you can mail the same basic package to different people with versioned letters. Or if multi-level approval is essential and you’re on a budget, turn your one-step into a two-step and provide targeted information for each level as a follow up. There are lots of ways to do this without delivering watered down copy.

And frankly, it’s not the multi-level appeal that cause problems in the typical B2B mailing, but a client who wants to say everything about everything instead of focusing on the problem at hand.

If you want to sell a widget, sell a widget. If you want to position your company, position your company. But don’t try to meet all your marketing objectives in one big campaign.

And speaking of positioning, the best way to establish an “image” for your company is to make sales and put your products into people’s hands. That’s an image that lasts.

What kind of copy motivates a business person to buy?

That’s easy. Copy that has something to say.

Most writers approach a direct mail package or ad or whatever as a word problem. They focus on form over content. But WHAT you say is more important than HOW you say it. Clumsy copy with a powerful message can easily outperform carefully crafted verbiage that says nothing. Of course, it’s best to have both.

The key to having something to say is research. I routinely spend half of every project gathering information. I use the product. Talk to the manufacturer. Read background information. Search the Internet. Analyze test results. By the time I get to writing, I usually know what I want to say and the copy seems to write itself.

Should B2B copy be long or short?

Everyone gets so hung up on this long copy or short copy thing. But the question should be, “How much information does my prospect need to make a decision?” For lead generation, that usually means shorter copy. For direct sales, it usually means longer copy. But each case has to be dealt with individually.

It depends on how familiar a prospect is with your company, product, or category. The price level. The difficulty of switching from product A to product B. And so on.

Instead of saying write long or short, I would prefer to say, “Write clearly and concisely. Provide enough information to make a decision. Then shut up.” The only thing worse than short copy that doesn’t sell is long copy that rambles on and on and puts people to sleep. You can’t bore people into buying.

I know that each element of direct mail has its own role in consumer marketing. Do the elements play the same roles in B2B packages?

Absolutely. Divide and conquer. Here are a few of the basics …

Envelope - There is no law that says you are required to cover your envelope with clever copy to impress a client. You should not expect an envelope to position your product. You should not use it to show off your design skills. Its job is not to entertain or amuse. Aside from holding together the contents until delivered, an envelope has only one job: to get opened.

Letter – Your letter is a sales pitch, meant to be read generally in sequence from beginning to end. It should make a personal, emotional connection. And it should make a promise and ask for the order.

Brochure – Your brochure is factual support for the letter, meant to be scanned or read in any order. It is less personal. It should illustrate features, list benefits, provide proofs, make comparisons, and list technical details to lend credibility to what your letter claims. In B2B it’s often a “keeper,” so it has to be complete.

Order Form or Reply Form - Direct Marketing guru Bob Stone called the order form the “moment of truth.” Its job is not to persuade, but to make response easy and quick. It’s a facilitator meant to keep the action going and not get in the way. Along with order forms, you can include reply cards and reply envelopes in this category, whose job is also to aid response.

Guarantee – A solid guarantee is tangible proof that you’re reputable, and it helps to lower the perceived risk your prospects feel when considering your offer and almost always boosts your response rate.

Testimonials – People expect you to say wonderful things about your product, service, or cause. But when they hear other people saying wonderful things, that’s when they really start believing you. Testimonials support your claims and build confidence. Plus they engage the “bandwagon” effect. All of us look to others to help us decide how to act, to guide our behavior, and to determine whether something is right or wrong. The more people doing it, the more correct it seems.