How do you market your product for a company?

What is the definition of vertical-specific B2B and how does it relate to a company that has a product to sell and how it would help in defining and locating their target market?

• Does this relate to a company that sells a product or service to an extremely niche market vs a company that can sell their products and services to a wide array of businesses in many different industries?  An example vertical-specific B2B would be selling a mobile app that helps dog washing businesses keep track of their clients and animals vs a mobile app that helps any company manage their facebook account.  If this is not what vertical-specific B2B is then please define vertical-specific B2B as well as what the example is talking about.  Thanks.

• Answer:

  B2B means business-to-business. A business is B2B if it sells its product or service to other businesses rather than to individual consumers. B2B differ from B2C because their approach to marketing and selling their products are necessarily very different. B2C generally sell millions of units at small prices and often via an intermediary (through a channel). B2B often sell a few units at high prices and usually directly to the customer organization. Vertical = an industry. The term is used when thinking of the industry as a market. A vertical is not necessarily a small market. Some verticals contain many potential customers. Others contain only a few, but the companies in that industry are enormous and capable of consuming very large amounts of a product or service. Most verticals are self-organized, meaning they have industry trade organizations and have defined shared conventions around how they perform their business, the language they use to describe their business, and how they prefer to be sold to. Horizontal = Crossing industries.A horizontal market means the customers are in multiple industries. Many people seem to think that a horizontal market is necessarily larger than a vertical one but this does not necessarily follow. A product which is essential to every company in one vertical may in fact have a larger market than a horizontal product which is only a nice-to-have convenience. So a "vertical-specific B2B" decoded into english means, "A company which sells to other business in one specific industry." Is a vertical market a good or a bad thing? It depends. In general, investors seeking out the next multibillion dollar company look for horizontal products. However, the internet is littered with the debris of what was once the next great horizontal B2B play. Vertical selling tends to be easier because marketing campaigns and selling approaches must often be customized by industry. For a small company it may be too expensive to devise multiple pitches for different industries and to hire different sales people who know the ins and outs of each specific industry. So even if a product is essentially horizontal in its functionality, many companies employ a vertical sales strategy when first entering the market.