What is the Consumer to Business Model?
With the consumer-to-business approach in practice, companies can find potential business prospects within their consumer portfolios. It’s somewhat like cross-selling, but the inversion allows consumers more voice (and a piece of the business process).
C2B evolved more recently because popular consumer-generated media and content across consumer segments-social networks, websites, blogs, podcasts, and videos-have changed business processes. In today’s world, consumers can post their thoughts on brands whenever they want; companies must adapt to new ways of marketing themselves.
How Does C2B Marketing Work?
The consumer trend of being more involved in the products and services they use is changing expectations. Many companies are hesitant to adopt this model because it’s difficult to know where and how to start.
Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram offer a way for businesses to communicate with their consumers while also creating new customer profiles that advertisers can target based on specific demographics. The companies can then provide their customers tailored information about products/services that would be most appealing to them or, in true C2B fashion, have some select customers create their content to target like-minded consumers with similar interests.
The process begins when businesses identify people who match their target customer profile and then create cohort groups for targeted communication purposes. Instead of running ads across all channels like you’re used to, companies now must focus on one-to-one interactions with these specific customers.
You can’t fake what’s authentic or try to persuade someone without any degree of mutual understanding; there must be some emotional connection established beforehand through personal conversations before anything else happens.
The C2B relationship also allows consumers to occasionally do some work, with companies supplying tools and other resources. In fact, for many industries or categories like software development, this model is not just a trend but could potentially be considered ubiquitous
C2B Examples You Can Leverage Immediately
Increase Brand Awareness
One way that C2B relationships are helpful is when businesses have consumers help create brand awareness. Traditionally, press coverage highlighting new product launches and critical developments was critical for digital companies.
Writing a professional-quality press release can expand your reach by providing more ways to get published in media outlets. Heck, you can even use C2B to have a freelancer craft your press release. But even better than going through traditional channels could be getting your top consumers or so-called brand ambassadors creating a little digital buzz.
Request More Reviews
Online reviews live forever, and these digital consumer snapshots can make or break a business instantly. Think about the last time you were going to make a purchase. Do you rely on reviews to make decisions as a consumer?
More businesses need this customer input right now because online ratings have become one of the top deciding factors for whether new buyers will choose any given brand over another. It’s not just enough anymore that you offer goods or excellent service at reasonable prices – these days every company needs positive words from the public to sell.
One of the defining aspects of C2B businesses is the ability to capitalize on simple, customer-based feedback, and what better way to do this than asking for reviews?
Freelancers, Contractors, and Gig Workers
In recent years, the freelance work industry has exploded. Freelancers can provide everything from a press release to an entire logo for clients who need assistance in these areas but are unable or unwilling to hire full-time employees.
Royalty-Free and Licensed Photography
Piggybacking off marketing contractors and freelance copywriters are photographers. Businesses like Shutterstock and Unsplash depend upon user-generated photography to keep their profit margins high.
Freelance and professional photographers – business owners in their own right – choose to offer their stylized images for a fee, not only helping the image hosting sites thrive but benefiting other businesses in need of stock imagery as well.
Why Use C2B?
Businesses are looking for new ways to reach their target audience, but traditional marketing methods can be expensive and time-consuming.
Why should you bother adopting this model? It’s simple: You can save money on labor costs by using customer-generated content instead of hiring an expensive team as your competition does.
