Adrian Nazari is Founder and CEO of Credit Sesame, a leading personal finance company that helps consumers manage their credit.
Some may view a move from direct-to-consumer (D2C) to business-to-business (B2B) as a potential distraction, but if done properly, it can be a huge asset and accelerate your mission. Recognizing the transformative potential of collaboration, we recently launched our first-ever enterprise platform, marking our strategic entry into the B2B space. This move was designed to enhance our ability to drive financial wellness on an even greater scale.
Expanding into B2B doesn’t distract us from our goals—it accelerates them. Here’s why expanding into B2B can enhance, rather than dilute, an organization’s mission and focus.
Reaching More Consumers Through Partnerships
One of the primary advantages of entering the B2B market is the ability to scale. As a D2C company, you can only grow so much and so fast by relying on significant direct customer acquisition efforts. You may have the best product or service, but you limit your potential reach and impact if you don’t have the oversized marketing dollars and resources to reach a wider audience. This is where B2B partnerships come in.
For Credit Sesame, partnering with other financial institutions allows us to extend our reach to millions more consumers who already trust and engage with their financial institutions, retailers or providers. Instead of waiting for consumers to find us, we’re bringing our services to them through channels they’re already comfortable with. This helps us fulfill our mission of improving consumers’ credit and financial health on a much larger scale.
For any D2C company, B2B partnerships offer an opportunity to amplify your efforts and reach a larger audience. Rather than competing for individual consumers’ attention, you can work with companies that have established relationships with the people you’re trying to reach. Ultimately, these partnerships allow you to serve more consumers while still maintaining your focus on delivering value to individuals.
Driving Innovation Through B2B Expansion
A significant benefit of expanding into B2B is that it creates new opportunities for innovation. As a D2C business, you collect valuable data and insights about consumer behavior, but the scope of that data is often limited to your user base. When you partner with other businesses, especially those with large customer bases, you have access to even more data, which can fuel innovation and improvement across your platform.
At Credit Sesame, our AI platform is built on years of data from our D2C users—over seven trillion data points, to be exact. When we entered the B2B space, we gained access to an even larger pool of transactional, behavioral and creditor data, further enhancing our platform’s value, accuracy and effectiveness. The more data our platform processes, the smarter it becomes, allowing us to deliver even more personalized and actionable insights and intelligence to consumers. This feedback loop of innovation benefits both our D2C and B2B users.
For any D2C company, expanding into B2B offers a chance to innovate continuously by leveraging the scale and data available through partnerships. With more data comes the ability to refine your product, improve its performance and, ultimately, provide a better experience for all users. In this way, B2B expansion doesn’t just increase your reach, it makes your product stronger and more capable of delivering on your core mission.
Building Trust Through Established Relationships
One of the challenges for any D2C company is building trust with consumers, particularly in industries where trust is paramount (e.g., finance). It can take years to establish the kind of credibility that encourages consumers to engage with your product, especially when personal data or sensitive information is involved. That’s why partnering with established companies can be such a powerful strategy for building trust. This increased trust doesn’t just help our B2B partners, it reinforces our brand and builds confidence in the quality and security of our platform.
This is a key advantage for D2C companies looking to expand into B2B. By aligning your product or service with like-minded and trusted brands, you gain more credibility, making attracting and retaining new customers easier. This, in turn, strengthens your D2C brand as consumers become more familiar with your offering in a trusted environment.
Expanding Without Losing Focus
The decision to expand into B2B is not about shifting away from a D2C mission but finding new ways to fulfill it more effectively. At Credit Sesame, our ultimate goal has always been to help consumers achieve better financial health. Expanding into B2B allows us to serve more people, innovate at a faster pace and build trust through established partnerships—all of which contribute to that goal.
For other D2C companies considering a move into B2B, my advice is to remain focused on your core mission. Ask yourself how partnering with other businesses can help you serve your customers better. If done thoughtfully, B2B expansion can enhance your ability to deliver on your mission and serve your consumers better, giving you the scale and tools to make an even bigger impact.
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