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© Copyright 2024 B2B Hackers - All Rights Reserved • Educational Resources for B2B SaaS Digital Marketing • By Team4
B2C2B is short for "business-to-consumer-to-business" and defines the business relationship between a company and a private consumer, at the first step. The B2C2B SaaS model aims to sell the product to individuals within a business first and the hopefully expand from there. This usually means the product is low-cost and you can sign-up online.
This approach favours products that have a low initial cost or that are free because it means you can shorten the sales cycle by not involving lots of stakeholders and procurement. Some common attributes of B2C2B SaaS products are:
Examples of products that fit this GTM strategy are tools like Airtable. Airtable is a great example because it can be used by an individual for a multitude of things like project management and content calendars for marketers.
You can then however scale the platform by feature and users to introduce more collaboration and therefore land and expand within a team and a company.
One of the main attributes of the B2C2B model is that products offer a free version of the product for individuals. This freemium model enables the product to be used within a large organisation by an individual with very little friction. This is a great way to 'get your foot in the door'.
These products nearly always have a 'self-service' model until you want to use an enterprise version of the product. This enables high-volumes of sign-ups on the free tier and doesn't create bottle necks and higher costs of acquisition where sales and onboarding teams need to be involved.
Products that enable automony can be used by an individual withing a larger firm without interupting anyone else. This means there are no barriers for someone signing up and using the product straight-away. Common barriers that can stop this are things like the requirement to add in company data that is not freely available or having to integrate the system to an existing piece of software.
These types of SaaS products tend to have multiple use cases. This enables them to be used by both individuals and large organisations. Tools like project management tools and like Airtable, relational databases have a multitude of use cases which allows them to be used by lots of different people and teams within a business for completely different things.
Because these products can be used in a Business-to-consumer manor, they typically have a much larger TAM than other B2B SaaS products. This is because they can just be used in personal life, at home, for everyday things - they don't need to be used in a business context.
B2C2B products have lower CAC values because the market is larger and the sign-up process is often automated and doesn't require input from sales teams. Because of the lower CAC they can often obtain a larger number of low paying users very quickly.
B2C2B SaaS Products typically have a lower average deal value and lower Average Lifetime Value (ALTV) because they are much lower cost and often used for free. This is a challenge for these companies, as it can be easy to gain free users but more difficult to scale afterwards into higher paying enterprise customers.
CRM software helps businesses manage interactions and data related to their customers and prospects. Examples include Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, Zoho CRM.
Airtable is a cloud-based platform for creating and sharing relational databases. You can store, organize, and collaborate on information about anything—like employee directories, product inventories, and even apartment hunting.
Canva is an online design tool that aims to make it easy to create professional designs and to share or print them. Canva can be used by an individual for personal projects or it can be used by enterprises by entire teams at scale.
Monday.com is a work and project management tool. It can be used by anybody to manage personal projects like a house renovation all the way through to large enterprise projects and even for professional service firms.
Marketing activities for B2C2B SaaS have a lower cost of acquisition because the typical call to action is to sign up for free or start a free trial.
This means there is less of a commitment for the buyer and they are more likely to convert. The other factors that impact marketing strategy are that the cost of the product is typically low and the target is individuals, therefore the market is typically larger than other B2B SaaS models.
Marketing strategies for this model often involve more B2C tactics such as influencer and social media marketing across more consumer channels. Some examples are:
B2C2B SaaS products can be great to work with and market because of the large growth potential and addressable market.
The success of these SaaS products heavily relies on the fundamentals of the product and the idea itself. Only the best products gain enough traction and success to succeed in this model. You rely heavily on product onboarding and operational efficiency to scale.
One of the major challenges of B2C2B SaaS is transitioning from free users to paying ones and then moving into a more enterprise model.
Enterprise companies like to have more custom solutions and sometimes a product that has a free version can be seen as generic and not fit for purpose in an enterprise.
Creating product champions within businesses is key to successfully scaling these products in larger organisations.
B2B SaaS products are often not easy to put into one bucket, but there are 3 broad categories that they can fall into: B2C2B, Team Specific and Enterprise B2B SaaS. A lot of companies will fall into all of these buckets but it is good to understand the nuances of the different types of marketing strategies required for each.
B2C2B is short for "business-to-consumer-to-business" and defines the business relationship between a company and a private consumer, at the first step.
Team Specific B2B SaaS products are software solutions built for a specific team within a company such as a procurement team or finance team as two examples.
Enterprise B2B SaaS products are the most difficult to sell and typically have the longest buying cycles, but they also have the highest ROI and potential sales value.
At B2B Hackers we speciliase in providing knowledge and support for B2B SaaS companies. Whether that's through useful guides and templates or our recommended list of B2B SaaS specialist agencies we're here to help.
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