Through some interesting conversations with business leaders and my own interactions with services recently, I'm coming to the conclusion that digital acceleration is forcing B2B marketers & product designers to think more like their B2C cousins. 

Running digital publishing businesses like Sky News, ITV Hub or NBC News doesn't give me a traditional marketing background, but real-time publishing and launching & scaling digital products IS real-time marketing, especially when you're converting purchase intent from a Google Search into ecommerce revenue at Future Plc.

Much is made of the differences between B2B & B2C, but I argue that they are coming closer together, and here are 5 reasons why:

1. Everyone's talking to customers, and they're all human.

Artificial Intelligence and other technologies allow humans to focus on emotional intelligence (more on that in another article). We human beings are not going away. Business is done between people, and the principal currency traded is trust, whether you're talking News or Cloud Networking. The customer is always asking, "Do I believe you can deliver what you say you can?" Beyond the most fundamental act of delivering on your promise in every transaction, most successful businesses nowadays are building trust through telling their story, showing their expertise and building deeper human connections with their customer base.

2. Digital technology gets you direct to the buyer.

More and more businesses are landing in the palm of their customers' hands through digital products. The demise of travel agents is an early example of that disintermediation, and now you can buy your razors, vape liquids and even mattresses direct over digital without going to someone else's shop, in person, or online.

In March this year, eMarketer estimated US D2C (direct to consumer) sales to grow 24.3% to $17.75bn in 2020.

It remains to be seen how the pandemic has affected that trend, but I wouldn't be surprised if it’s accelerated. 

What's really interesting is that the most successful direct to consumer businesses now are adding growth through their own bricks and mortar retail experiences, completing the circle.

3. B2C services have raised the expectations of every customer.

Consumer experiences in digital are benchmarked by the big apps we all use every day in our home life: social media, getting a taxi, binge watching: they just work, and they work beautifully, as evidenced by their meteoric growth. Regardless of whether you're an Instagram addict yourself, these experiences have raised the game dramatically for businesses looking to build long-lasting relationships with their customers.

We now expect the same friction-free experiences in work and in the less fun parts of our personal lives. Starling & Monzo have given the high street banks a kick up the bum with their intuitive app experiences. Recently I've found myself spending more time than I'd have liked with the app for my mesh wifi system, because it's so infuriating to use and solve problems with. Is it because beautiful simplicity is really hard, and in a previously B2B domain like networking, technical experts can hurdle the complications and obfuscations of a poor experience?

4. The democratisation of technology.

Technology is empowering and democratising. When I started out my career in television in 1997, 'home video', as it was called, was a small leap from the arcane and charming world of Super8 cine film.

23 years later, your latest smartphone has more powerful optical electronics than many video cameras, and millions of people all of ages are editing and adding effects to their own videos every day, on their phones.

One media professional told me this week that they'd rather use their iphone for a job than a more conventional camera, but they're worried that their clients would question their credibility. In other words, client perception has fallen behind the technological reality - how bonkers is that?

So what was previously B2B is becoming B2C, and the reverse also is true.

Many corporate procurement functions still struggle with the notion of paying for services with a credit card, yet that's how B2B subscriptions services like Dropbox and Pipedrive (CRM) or bob (People Management) take payment. POs, Invoicing, and 90-day payment terms are becoming more and more incompatible with the accelerating metabolism of digital businesses

5. Value is a universal language, with many dialects!

If good business is about selling a service or product which a customer needs at a price they're willing to pay, then we immediately have common ground between the B2C and B2B worlds. It gets more complicated though:

First, price is not the only factor. In any value exchange, time, simplicity, convenience and flexibility come into play. I would argue that these factors are not solely rational but also touch on emotional responses. You can even leave out 'desirability', which is a bedrock of many consumer products. But you still want your end users to 'love' using your product, whether they're walking a warehouse, standing at a desk in an office, or sitting in their living room.

Second, the definition of value will vary across roles in an organisation, from the end user who 'loves' using the product because it makes his job quicker and easier, to the CFO who 'loves' the product because she has saved costs and increased revenues within the business.

In a B2B setting those value arguments often play out separately to individual roles within an organisation, and they all have different nuances - yet they're all appealing to individual humans, both rational and emotional. In a B2C world, there's usually just one decision maker, combining all those factors. Either way, articulating value in marketing and product strategies must come from customer-centric decisions based on individuals, not an amorphous collective customer, and definitely not based on a seller's assumption.

There are common threads here: Digital technology is widening the possibilities of human connections, and at the same time accelerating the metabolism of businesses; which means wherever you sit on the B2B/B2C spectrum, you face similar challenges, and opportunities.