Blog 75: What's the difference between B2C and B2B product management?

Product management activities for B2C and B2B products are generally consistent. However, there are some differences. These differences occur due to the specific nature of the customer base being served.

B2C stands for Business-to-Consumer where mass consumers are the customers. While B2B stands for Business-to-Business where an enterprise is the customer.

Comparison between B2C and B2B products

Business-to-Consumer (B2C)	Business-to-Business (B2B)
1. Customers are mass consumers	Customers are enterprises
2. Larger user base	Comparatively smaller and focussed user base
3. Caters to a wider range of needs and preferences	Caters to more specific needs and preferences
4. Extremely price sensitive	Not so price sensitive
5. Shorter sales cycle – needs a different go-to-market approach	Longer and complex sales cycle (involving multiple stakeholders)
6. Impulsive purchases are not uncommon if the UX is efficient	More focus on ROI with an immediate focus on benefits
7. Higher feature release frequency - to keep user base engaged	Frequent changes may disrupt an enterprise’s current workflow
8. Branding, product experience & messaging plays a greater role	Comparatively the focus is more on functionality
9. Large amount of user behaviour data (large user base) …	Lesser amount of user behaviour data …
10. … facilitating data-driven decision making	… focus is more on customer feedback and qualitative data points
11. Shorter contracts and lower customer life-time value (CLV)	Longer contracts and higher customer life-time value (CLV)
12. App is functional almost immediately once installed	Often requires integration with existing systems

Example of a B2C product

Duolingo is a global language learning app that directly caters to millions of individual users. Duolingo creates a seamless and a personalised learning experience for each of its users. It also leverages data analytics to understand individual preferences. That, results in personalised in-app experiences (refer blog 67 to learn more about Duolingo’s push notifications strategy).

In addition, the entire product experience is made as intuitive and user friendly as possible. With a focus on creating a habit-forming product (refer blog 22 for more on the Hooked model).

Example of a B2B product

Salesforce caters to enterprises. These enterprises could be small, medium, or large-scale. Salesforce offers cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software solution for sales, service, marketing, collaboration, analytics etc. A B2B product team will be accustomed to handling large amounts of data, providing best-in-class security measures, and building sophisticated admin functionalities.

In addition, the marketing and sales teams will need to engage with multiple stakeholders and engage with the demands for custom solutions.

It is important we appreciate the differences between the two to ensure we create an appropriate product experience right from the start.

Jump to blog 100 to refer to the overall product management mind map.

All the best! 😊