Why B2B Companies Can't Ignore the 5th P of Marketing — Payments

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For decades, marketers have relied on the four Ps (price, product, promotion, and location) as the building blocks of strategic planning. In 1960, E. Jerome McCarthy proposed the four Ps in his book, Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, and they still hold true today. But there have been big changes in the cultural landscape since 1960, culminating in the digital explosion during the pandemic. And that's why the fifth P -- -- has proven to be an essential part of the marketing mix in 2022. Customer journey improvements now extend throughout the checkout journey as well, as buyers want to transact from seamlessly on their terms, with their choice of payment methods.

Today, there are more and more ways to interact with brands, especially online, and through their experiences with B2C companies, buyers have improved their buying expectations. In fact, 51% of business buyers are attracted to B2B sites that offer a great B2C-like user experience. That's why now is the time for B2B companies to modernize their payments. After all, B2B buyers are traditional consumers first and have heightened expectations when it comes to doing business with the brands they prefer and trust. The risk of ignoring the fifth P as a central part of the B2B customer journey is huge.

Related: How Digital Wallets and Mobile Payments are Changing and What It Means for You

What B2C Payments Can Teach B2B Businesses

B2C companies have already invested considerable effort in determining what buyers prefer, and the answer is simple: fast and convenient ways to pay their way through a seamless experience. Thus, B2C merchants have already implemented a more established fifth P-based customer journey.

is a well-known example: they offer many B2C payment methods including Cash, Pay, , Debit Cards, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, , Starbucks Cards, as well as their own popular app. In fact, Starbucks' mobile payment app, launched in 2009, has synced with their customers' checkout journey. The app had the most mobile payment users in the US until recently. Today, Starbucks has an impressive 31.2 million loyal app users who love the omnichannel payment method, second only to Apple, which has 43.9 million mobile payment users.

Starbucks has pioneered payments to build customer loyalty, effectively impacting marketing results without changing the product, price, location, or mix of promotions. Now consider the fact that professional buyers are also coffee consumers. It's easy to see how they were influenced by Starbucks and other B2C innovators and carried this expectation of transparent payments into the business world.

Related: How Financial Technology and Payments Innovations Will Disrupt Global E-Commerce

Credit cards are not favored in B2B

Thanks to the existing merchant services of many sellers, credit cards are the typical default payment method in digital B2B transactions. But credit cards are often not the best payment method for B2B purchases. Although more than half of B2B buyers use credit cards to make online purchases, study data Why more payment options mean more purchases