Recently we posted about REQ’s different approach to public sector PR. Now it’s time to explain why having a different approach to B2G is so important, and how to maximize your public sector and commercial marketing without watering down your messaging for either audience. 

Let’s start with what not to do: treat government buyers the same as commercial customers. Public sector buyers aren’t like corporate executives. They operate under different incentives and constraints. Sure, they might be as interested in your cybersecurity or AI solution as the next person, but the reasons they’re interested – and how they even buy it – are very unique.

Let’s look at what makes them so different and how that necessitates a different marketing approach. With that frame of reference  in mind, we’ll explore how to effectively market a product designed for both the commercial and public sectors to each of these very distinct audiences.  

How is B2G marketing different from commercial B2B marketing?

First off, it starts with who the buyer answers to. A commercial buyer is ultimately accountable to shareholders and revenue targets. They tend to respond well to messaging built around competitive edge and ROI. Not so much with the public sector, however. There, buyers answer to the public and taxpayer dollars. That key difference makes a big impact on your approach. Everything you say has to tie into the impact on mission delivery or constituent service.  That mission could change with the issuance of a new executive order, memorandum, or compliance framework. You need to stay on top of all of these changes or risk running a campaign around a message that’s out of step with what your buyers are prioritizing.

Budget cycles work differently in the public sector, too. Public sector organizations operate under stricter, more predictable cycles and heavier reporting requirements than most commercial buyers deal with, so timing a campaign around a fiscal year is extremely important. For instance, if you’re targeting federal agencies, you’ll want to keep the dates September 30 and October 1 in mind; that’s when the federal fiscal year ends and begins, respectively. 

Finally, there’s the sales process itself. Despite efforts to accelerate deployments, public sector procurement still tends to move at a more leisurely pace than enterprise sales. That’s why it’s so important to create and disseminate consistent messaging that builds credibility over time. In the public sector, sustained marketing programs are your best allies.  

How do you effectively market a product that serves both commercial and public sector customers?

Now that we’ve established the ground rules of marketing to a B2G customer, let’s dig into how you can apply these rules to your own products.

Let’s say you’ve got a great technology platform that you sell to both corporate and public sector customers. It does the same things for both – same features, same benefits, same results. But how you promote these characteristics to your B2G customers has to be different from the way you talk about them to your B2B clients. So how do you keep your messaging on point for both audiences? A few things help:

• Build separate value propositions from the same core capability, translated for each audience rather than genericized to fit both.
• Use distinct content and channels for each audience, since where a commercial buyer looks for proof points isn’t where a public sector buyer looks for them.
• Build teams fluent in both worlds, so the translation between commercial and public sector messaging happens naturally instead of getting reverse-engineered every time a new campaign comes up.
• Keep internal alignment tight on which audience a given campaign or asset is actually built for, so public sector nuance doesn’t get diluted by commercial instincts, or vice versa.

In short: build on a common foundation, but diverge from there. Highlight your product’s capabilities and your brand, but tailor your messages and content so that they speak in the language that your buyers speak. For corporate executives, that might be the language of bottom lines, efficiency gains, and accelerated sales. For public sector purchasers, talking about efficiency gains will probably also work – but so might improving citizen services and their ability to meet some complex new cybersecurity mandates. 

We help companies build messaging that speaks fluently to both audiences without sacrificing credibility in either. If you’re navigating that balance and want a second set of eyes on where your commercial and public sector messaging might be blurring together, let’s talk.