B2C Marketing Explained: Tactics, Tips, and Challenges

Customer loyalty is harder to earn and easier to lose than ever before. With rising consumer expectations and seemingly endless product options, consumers are quick to keep scrolling if your marketing efforts don’t feel relevant, authentic, or valuable. How can small businesses or ecommerce brands reach consumers and keep their attention in today’s fast-paced, digital marketplace?

One strategy is building personalized, meaningful relationships with your target audience by marketing directly to individual consumers.

Learn more about the basics of business-to-consumer marketing and how brands are using this marketing strategy to stand out in their industries, build consumer trust, and drive sales.

What is B2C marketing?

Business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing is a marketing strategy where companies promote and sell products or services directly to individuals who will use them, rather than selling to other businesses or retailers.

Many brands choose this approach because it allows them to build direct relationships with individual consumers. When you market and sell directly to the people using your product, you can foster customer loyalty and drive sales without diverting resources to third-party distributors. B2C marketing is popular across a wide swath of industries, including retail, beauty, hospitality, fitness, and beyond.

B2C marketing vs. B2B marketing

While B2C marketing refers to advertising directly to end users, business-to-business (B2B) marketing is when a company markets its services to other businesses, such as retailers, wholesalers, or distributors. For example, if your company sells luxury fruit baskets directly to individual customers—whether through a retail store, online shop, or subscription service—you’re practicing B2C marketing. If your business sells luxury fruit baskets to grocery stores or hotels—who then sell or give those baskets to individuals—that is considered B2B marketing.

While B2C and B2B marketing may have some overlap, there are key differences in the associated marketing tactics:

Target audience

B2C marketing focuses on selling or marketing directly to individual consumers, while B2B marketing often appeals to a larger group of business stakeholders. B2C marketing is often more focused on forming an emotional connection with people by appealing to their lifestyle, desires, or needs, while B2B marketing appeals to an organization’s goals, such as how to increase sales or business efficiency.

Speed of sales cycle

In B2C marketing, it’s common for consumers to take immediate action, such as subscribing to an email list or purchasing a product. The sales cycle timeline for B2B marketing is often longer, as multiple stakeholders are typically involved in purchasing decisions for a company.

Tools and platforms

The technology and channels used for B2C and B2B marketing also differ. B2C marketing efforts often rely on social media platforms—leaning on influencer marketing or other forms of storytelling to spark an emotional connection.

B2B marketing, however, relies on professional networks and channels such as industry or trade publications. They may also use professional events (such as conferences and tradeshows) and email newsletters to target business leaders.

These marketing methods are not mutually exclusive. Many brands engage in both B2B and B2C marketing. DAISO, a Japanese ecommerce retailer with extensive inventory, has physical stores and two online platforms—one for B2B bulk orders and another for individual consumers. Their business model allows them to tailor the buying experience and messaging for each distinct audience. By customizing their marketing strategy to serve both businesses and individuals, DAISO increased sales by 400% and traffic by 249% using Shopify Plus.

B2C marketing tactics

• Define your audience with customer data
• Use your website to build trust
• Optimize your website for search
• Connect with content and social media marketing
• Communicate directly via email marketing
• Target motivated customers with pay-per-click (PPC) marketing

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to B2C marketing. Here’s an overview of common marketing tactics to help you identify which strategies make the most sense for your business, depending on your target audience, resources, and goals:

Define your audience with customer data

Before choosing which B2C marketing strategies your business will invest in, it’s important to build a foundation based on key customer data and insights. Understanding what your target audience cares about—and how your business can uniquely meet these needs—will be your compass when developing impactful marketing campaigns. Data is the fuel for your marketing efforts.

There are many ways to gather customer data, such as:

• Conducting market research to identify what motivates your target audience
• Hosting user interviews and focus groups
• Using survey apps to ask open-ended questions
• Leveraging social listening tools to gauge customer sentiment in real time

From there, you can separate your audience into distinct audiences using customer segmentation. Then put systems in place to regularly measure success against your defined business goals.

Use your website to build trust

A user-friendly website serves as a central source of information for consumers and a window into your brand’s identity, voice, and values. A website not only showcases products and services, but also builds trust by providing a platform for customer testimonials, thought leadership content, social impact efforts, and more.

For businesses without a retail location, a website serves as a digital storefront. It’s the place customers visit to browse, evaluate, and decide whether to purchase or further engage with your brand.

Best practices for consumer-facing websites include:

• A clear user experience that makes it easy for customers to navigate your website, find information, and make purchases
• Mobile-first optimization (more than 75% of US retail site visits are on phones)
• Strong calls to action (CTAs) that prompt users to purchase, sign up, or engage in other actions aligned with business objectives

Optimize your website for search

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website’s visibility when people browse or search the internet for products, services, or information related to your business. To boost your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs), you can leverage SEO best practices, such as:

• Conducting keyword research to identify what phrases your target audience uses when searching for products or services like yours
• Analyzing competitors’ keyword rankings
• Optimizing your website copy, including headings, title tags, and meta descriptions
• Creating a content marketing strategy

Connect with content and social media marketing

Content marketing is the practice of creating and sharing content with a unique point of view to educate, entertain, and solve problems for your target audience. Content can also serve as a helpful strategy for consumer-facing businesses looking to build customer loyalty without relying on traditional advertising.

With consumer attention spans at an all-time low, many brands are focusing their marketing efforts on short, snackable content. This includes digestible articles (on web or a blog) and video clips optimized for social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube.

You can tailor a content marketing strategy to fit your target audience’s needs as well as your marketing strengths. Customer data can inform which channels to prioritize based on where your audience is already active. This could mean marketing through major social media channels like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and X. You could explore influencer marketing partnerships or build content for your company’s blog or email newsletter.

For Charlotte Palermino, a licensed aesthetician and co-founder and CEO of skin care brand Dieux, sharing transparent, scientifically informed skin care advice on TikTok was transformative. This approach helped her reach new customers and build customer loyalty. On an episode of Shopify Masters, Charlotte explains how her team’s short-form video strategy on social media led to eight million likes—and helped increase sales.

Communicate directly via email marketing

Email marketing is when brands communicate directly with existing or prospective customers through email or newsletters. An email marketing strategy can help you stay connected to customers and keep your brand top of mind by delivering valuable content straight to subscribers’ inboxes.

Your emails might feature exclusive offers for loyal customers, product updates, upcoming events, educational how-tos, or thought leadership that positions your company as an industry expert. Building and growing a list of email subscribers also allows you to communicate consistently. It lets you foster long-term relationships with customers, which can drive sales, engagement, or other desired objectives.

Hot sauce company Yellowbird’s welcome email is a strong example of how to craft an engaging, eye-catching email. It has a unique and authentic brand voice, illustrative design style, and eye-catching use of interactive elements, such as animated GIFs.

Target motivated customers with pay-per-click (PPC) marketing

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is an advertising model that allows advertisers to pay only when users click on their ad. In today’s crowded digital marketplace, paid advertising methods like PPC marketing and targeted ads play a critical part in reaching your target audience.

Many brands engage in pay-per-click marketing to focus their budgets directly on people who will be most likely to purchase or engage with their products or services. Popular platforms like Google Ads make it easy to target specific demographics, locations, interests (through keyword research), and more to make sure you’re getting the most value for your money.

Challenges of B2C marketing

• Steep competition
• Dwindling customer loyalty
• Tension between privacy and personalization

The B2C marketing landscape faces an ever-growing roster of challenges. Here are common obstacles, and a few real-world examples of businesses and founders who’ve tackled them with success:

Steep competition

At a time when consumers are saturated with advertisements, content, and brands begging for their attention, companies have to differentiate their marketing efforts to cut through the noise. For small businesses and early-stage start-ups without “pay to play” capital at hand to spend on pay-per-click (PPC) ads, the fierce competition can be especially daunting.

After a slow first three years in business, Knix founder Joanna Griffiths doubled down on her mission: celebrating real female bodies through authentic storytelling and standout products. Unlike the aspirational, airbrushed marketing aesthetic common in the retail market (especially for intimate wear), Knix took a relatable, unfiltered approach. By consistently reinforcing this message across every touchpoint—from marketing campaigns to product pages to social media posts—Griffiths built a brand that resonated deeply with customers and outpaced competitors, all without a massive marketing budget.

Dwindling customer loyalty

According to Forrester’s 2025 B2C marketing predictions, economic uncertainty and rising prices will cause brand loyalty to decline by 25% in 2025. In the midst of US consumer fatigue with branded content, businesses need to find creative, genuine ways to meet their target audience’s evolving demands.

Bluboho co-founder Natalie Westlake credits the handcrafted jewelry brand’s ability to build customer loyalty to “radical personalization.” In an episode of Shopify Masters, she explains how her team closely analyzes customer data, tests communication strategies, and focuses on the platforms that drive the most revenue—staying responsive to changing consumer needs.

The brand also forms emotional connections with loyal customers by turning transactions into meaningful relationships.

“I’ve had conversations about people’s IVF journeys, receiving a new family member, the passing of somebody, or a divorce,” Natalie explains. “When you center the other person and you’re really, really genuinely curious, and that’s what you love to do—well, that’s authentic.”

Tension between privacy and personalization

One of the biggest challenges for B2C marketers today is balancing the demand for hyper-personalized brand experiences with rising consumer concerns about data privacy. According to McKinsey research, 71% of consumers expect brands to provide tailored experiences, and 76% of consumers get frustrated when companies fail to deliver on this.

The conundrum? People are also concerned about how the customer data used to personalize experiences is being protected. Nearly 85% of consumers consider a company’s policies around data privacy before making a purchase.

Your B2C marketing efforts need to build customer trust by focusing on data compliance, security, and adherence to regulations. Shopify offers several features to help merchants maintain compliance and transparency, including Shopify admin customer privacy settings and automated privacy policies. Tools like Shopify Audiences also provide built-in support for opt-outs or customer data disclosures.