Daily Deal Summit: “Business to Business”

The deal space is known for offering discounts from businesses to consumers, but has essentially ignored another market; the market of other businesses.

One of the last of today’s Daily Deal Summit presentations, “Business to Business” with Robert Ball from RapidBuyr, focuses on whether the deal model can be utilized in the business to business market as well.

RapidBuyr is a marketing channel that offers deals to businesses. A year ago, the company launched and partnered with B2B media outlets, which allowed them to offer daily deals without having to source their own subscribers and pay for advertising. They have sent about 70 million offer emails to direct subscribers or their publishers’ lists.

Robert stressed that this model is not hyper-local, but is focused on national deals, mostly in the US. He explains that this is because most of their merchants are not small businesses, but they are large companies trying to get to the small businesses.

The B2B space, he continued to say, is an extremely large market, as businesses spend large amounts of money on various products such as office supplies, computers, and even  office services. 50 million people in the US work for companies with less than 20 employees, which essentially makes these businesses just another large market of consumers.

Robert explains that B2B is unique from the B2C market as consumers base their purchases on need, instead of the common impulse buy. This means that B2B offers must be very targeted to a customer. This also means that offers must clearly explain the value behind the offer. What’s valuable to small businesses owners is their time and money, which means offers must prove they are not only a good deal, but are also easy to fulfill.

The B2B space is a market of note as businesses often make repeat purchases, as well as, multi-purchases, something the B2C market strives to achieve.

The takeaway from this presentation is that the B2B deal space is extremely profitable as well as useful for small businesses.