B2B writing, or business-to-business writing, is content created by one business for another business. This is in comparison to B2C writing, or business-to-consumer writing, where businesses are writing for consumers.
When a business has a need to purchase a product or service, it’s understandably going to be a much larger investment than if you or I as a consumer needs to buy something, right? Think software to power an entire business, or an entire digital marketing agency to improve sales.
As a result, there are many people involved in the decision, the decision process itself could take months even years, and there is a lot of legwork involved in integrating said software or onboarding said agency, etc.
Given all of that, you can imagine how a writer trying to sell another business on a new phone system and infrastructure must take a different approach than if they were trying to get a consumer to buy a baseball cap.
For example, a CRM software business’ target audience is going to be other businesses with a need to organize customer data and track customer interaction. Their B2B copy is going to be tailored to:
- Appeal to multiple decision makers
- Inform with stats and data
- Match a specific stage of the buyer’s journey
- Tell a story or provide multiple examples
- Use industry jargon and technical terminology
- Educate on pricing options, implementation, and more
- Be consumed and referred back to by the reader over multiple sittings
- Match a specific marketing channel
Breaking Down B2B Writing
Going back to the B2B CRM software example, the underlying needs are wide-ranging:
- Organization: First, they need a software product to solve the core need of customer data organization.
- Budget: But, they also need something that fits the amount budgeted for.
- Integration: And one that integrates with existing systems.
- Timeline: And can be implemented by the end of next quarter.
And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.
Even so, there is no way a paragraph and a picture will suffice. Instead, you’ll see long-form copy as an eBook, whitepaper, email, etc. Typically, a shorter social media post won’t be able to convey all that’s needed, and even single blog posts will find difficulty.
In the end, B2B writing usually needs to be undertaken by a product expert; one who knows the ins and outs of the product, and/or has close working relationships with the departments that can assist in more of the detail.
Check out more copywriting terminology.
