Pivoting a Startup from B2C to B2B
1. Introduction: The Nature of Startup Pivots
Pivoting a startup is one of those defining moments that will either make or break a company. It’s not just about changing direction—it’s about survival. Startups often begin with a clear vision, but as the market evolves, so do the needs of customers. That’s where pivots come in. Sometimes, despite initial success, you hit a point where your product or service just doesn’t resonate with the intended audience the way you’d hoped.
That’s the exact situation we found ourselves in at HealthJoy in 2017. We were changing lives—literally—by helping people reduce their medical expenses and make smarter healthcare choices. But even after life-changing outcomes for customers, we still faced churn. One customer, for example, reduced her medical expenses from $10,000 a year to zero after using our service, yet she still canceled because we weren’t providing enough value in her daily life. That’s when it became clear that our impact was real, but our audience wasn’t fully aligned with our offering.
We realized our product was better suited for a different group—one that would appreciate it in a different context. So, we made the shift to B2B, targeting employers and brokers, and focused on providing a broader value to their employees.
Pivoting isn’t easy—it’s complex, and it often feels like you’re starting from scratch. But when done thoughtfully, it can turn a struggling business into a thriving one.
2. Understanding the Need to Pivot
The decision to pivot should never be taken lightly, but when you see the writing on the wall, it becomes essential. For us, the realization came when we looked closely at customer feedback and churn data. Despite having a solid product that genuinely helped people, we were facing challenges in retention that couldn’t be ignored. Our product was too infrequent for consumers. It became clear that while individuals needed our service, it wasn’t an everyday necessity, and that’s where the friction arose.
So, the founders and I began evaluating different approaches. We researched the employer space, speaking with HR leaders, understanding what their employees truly needed, and how our product could add ongoing value in that setting. We also studied the competitive landscape, talking to brokers and others who served this space to understand their pain points and opportunities.
Pivoting isn’t just about switching your focus from one market to another. It’s about deeply understanding the dynamics of the new market, the needs of that audience, and ensuring you can meet those needs more effectively than the competition. The founders and I knew that to succeed, we had to do our homework and prepare ourselves to enter a more complex, competitive market. In the B2B space, you’re no longer selling to individuals who make quick decisions—you’re selling to businesses that require proof of value, ongoing support, and long-term relationships. We also basically needed to build a new product.
3. Strategic Planning for a Successful Pivot
Once the decision to pivot is made, the real work begins. It’s not enough to simply switch focus—you need a solid strategy that guides every move from product development to marketing execution. The first step in our transition was revisiting our brand strategy. We had built everything around the consumer experience, but that wasn’t going to work in the B2B space. Our vision, mission, and values all needed to evolve.
At HealthJoy, we reframed our brand vision to focus on empowering employers and HR leaders to take better care of their employees. Our mission shifted from helping individuals directly to enabling companies to provide a better healthcare experience for their teams. This required a full brand repositioning—from our story to our voice and tone, everything had to be adapted to speak directly to a business audience rather than consumers.
Strategic planning during a pivot also means understanding the new competitive landscape. As we entered the employer benefits space, we were no longer just competing with other healthcare apps—we were now up against large, established benefits providers. This required us to develop a more sophisticated market approach, including refining our value proposition to stand out in a crowded space.
Your pivot plan needs to be more than just product changes; it has to account for how you present yourself to the new market, how you communicate your unique value, and how you build trust with a new audience. This isn’t a small task, but it’s a necessary one if you want the pivot to succeed. We quickly learned that everything from our messaging to our content strategy needed to be rewritten to fit this new world we were stepping into.
4. Rebuilding the Brand and Market Positioning
Pivoting from B2C to B2B isn’t just about changing your customer base—it’s about rethinking everything that represents your brand. The identity you crafted for consumers won’t necessarily resonate with businesses, so your brand positioning must evolve accordingly. This was one of the biggest challenges we faced at HealthJoy.
In a B2C environment, your brand might focus on ease of use, personal impact, and convenience. But when you move into B2B, especially in the HR and employee benefits space, you need to reframe your messaging. It becomes about efficiency, ROI, and providing value across an entire organization. You’re not just selling a product anymore—you’re selling a solution that makes a company’s job easier, makes them look good to their employees, and provides long-term benefits.
For HealthJoy, we had to redefine our entire positioning strategy. We needed to speak directly to the pain points of HR leaders and brokers, people who are overloaded with administrative tasks and are searching for ways to streamline their operations. This meant that everything—from our brand voice to our story to the types of content we produced—had to be adjusted.
At this stage, we focused heavily on content marketing to build credibility and trust. White papers, case studies, and thought leadership articles became our tools to showcase how HealthJoy could solve real business problems. We needed to ensure that every touchpoint—from our website to sales presentations—was aligned with the new brand strategy. The pivot wasn’t just a product shift; it was a full-scale rebranding effort that took time, intention, and a deep understanding of the new market.
5. Marketing for a B2B Audience: A Pivot Process
In B2C, your marketing often revolves around driving direct conversions—whether that’s through digital ads, social media, or email campaigns aimed at getting a quick sale. But in B2B, the buyer’s journey is different. It’s longer, more relationship-driven, and requires a deeper level of trust. Businesses are careful about the decisions they make because those decisions affect not just one person but potentially hundreds or thousands of employees. So, marketing becomes more about nurturing leads over time than driving immediate transactions.
At HealthJoy, we quickly realized that the tactics we used in B2C wouldn’t be enough. We shifted towards a more education-driven approach, focusing on webinars, SEO, and email marketing to build relationships with potential clients over time. We also leaned into thought leadership—putting out content that established us as experts in the employer benefits space. That’s how you build trust in a B2B market—by consistently delivering valuable information that addresses the specific needs of your audience.
One key element of our marketing shift was the introduction of sales enablement. In a B2C environment, marketing often does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to generating and closing leads. But in B2B, you need a tight alignment between marketing and sales. We created content that would support our sales team—things like case studies, detailed product comparisons, and educational materials aimed at helping HR professionals and brokers understand the unique value we offered.
The marketing strategy also expanded to include more direct outreach efforts. We ran webinars, wrote in-depth white papers, and developed a robust email nurture campaign to engage potential clients at different stages of the funnel. This not only helped build a relationship over time but also educated our audience on why HealthJoy was the right choice for their company’s needs.
6. Successful Startups Need to Build the Right Sales Structure
The biggest shift we faced during our pivot was the creation of a sales structure—something we didn’t need in our B2C days. Previously, we relied on marketing to bring in customers through automated systems and self-service sign-ups. But in the B2B space, especially when selling to HR leaders and brokers, we needed a dedicated sales team to handle the complexity of these deals.
The first step was to build out sales enablement resources. We needed materials that could support our sales team in their conversations with potential clients—presentations, battle cards, case studies, and ROI calculators. These assets helped our salespeople demonstrate the tangible benefits of HealthJoy to HR departments and brokers, making it easier for them to sell our solution.
Next, we added an SDR (Sales Development Representative) team, whose sole focus was to book meetings with HR leaders. This was a big shift from our previous marketing-led growth, where everything was automated. The SDR team brought a more personal, proactive approach, reaching out directly to potential clients to start the conversation and then handing them off to our sales team to close the deal.
It wasn’t just about adding more people—it was about creating a culture that embraced sales and marketing working together. This expanded our team and introduced a new dynamic to the company. We had been very tech-heavy, but the introduction of sales brought an entirely new energy to the business. And while the transition wasn’t always smooth, it led to rapid growth, proving that we had hit the right mark with our pivot.
We went from $0 to $7 million in annual revenue in the B2C space in the first 3 years, In our first year as a B2B company, we went from $0 to $5 million in ARR after we completed the pivot. This kind of growth wouldn’t have been possible without investing in the right sales structure and building a strong partnership between sales and marketing. It was one of the clearest signs that our pivot was working and that we had found a market that truly needed what we had to offer. This was also proven by our venture capital raise a few months later,
7. The Challenges of Shutting Down the B2C Side
Pivoting from B2C to B2B isn’t a clean break—it’s a process. One of the toughest parts of that transition was deciding to shut down the B2C side of the business. For a while, we tried to juggle both, maintaining the consumer-facing product while building out our B2B offering. But as the B2B side gained traction, it became clear that we needed to focus entirely on it to ensure our success.
This is a common challenge when pivoting. The B2C side was where we started; it was where we had the most experience, and it had become part of our identity as a company. But maintaining both business models stretched our resources too thin. Eventually, we realized that to truly excel in the B2B space, we had to let go of our consumer product.
This wasn’t an easy decision. It’s hard to walk away from something that has had an impact, especially when you’ve put so much work into it. But pivoting means making tough calls. You need to be willing to shift focus and dedicate your energy to the new direction fully. Half-measures won’t cut it.
For HealthJoy, the decision to shut down the B2C side allowed us to concentrate all our efforts on refining our B2B offering after we knew we had product-market fit. It gave us the bandwidth to innovate, iterate, and deliver a stronger product to HR leaders and brokers. And as difficult as it was to say goodbye to the consumer side, it was a critical step in ensuring the long-term success of our pivot.
8. Revisiting Your Marketing Processes and Team Composition
When you pivot, you’re not just changing your product—you’re changing how you go to market. Everything about your marketing process needs to be revisited, from the channels you use to the metrics you track. You also need to rethink your team composition. The skills that were essential in a B2C environment may not be as relevant in B2B, and vice versa.
For example, at HealthJoy, we had to restructure our marketing team to better align with our new B2B focus. We moved away from purely digital and direct-to-consumer strategies and invested more in content creation, thought leadership, and relationship-building. This meant adding team members with experience in B2B marketing—people who understood how to navigate longer sales cycles and create materials that spoke directly to HR professionals and brokers.
One of the most significant changes was in how we measured success. In B2C, it’s all about customer acquisition—how many users are signing up, how many are converting, how much are they spending? In B2B, the metrics shift. It becomes about lead quality, pipeline growth, and how well you’re nurturing those relationships over time. We had to develop a new set of KPIs and adjust our tools and reporting to track our progress in a way that made sense for the B2B market.
This kind of overhaul isn’t easy, but it’s necessary when pivoting. Your old processes and team structures are built for a different audience, a different business model. To succeed in the market, you need to evolve your approach and ensure you have the right people, processes, and tools in place to support the new direction.
9. Why the Pivot Worked: Getting Sales, Marketing, and Product in Sync
The success of a pivot doesn’t come from one single change—it comes from getting everything in sync. In our case, the trifecta of sales, marketing, and product alignment was what ultimately made the pivot work. It’s not enough to simply shift your focus; your entire company needs to be aligned around the new goal.
At HealthJoy, our sales, marketing, and product teams worked closely together to ensure that everything we did supported our new B2B strategy. From the very beginning, we involved all three teams in the pivot process. This helped us make sure that our messaging was consistent, our product met the needs of the B2B market, and our sales team had the tools they needed to succeed.
The product team worked on adapting our core offering to better suit the needs of HR leaders and brokers. This meant not only refining the user experience but also developing features that would resonate with businesses, like reporting and integrations that made our platform more valuable to employers.
Meanwhile, marketing focused on educating the market, building brand awareness, and creating trust with potential clients. Our efforts in thought leadership and content marketing helped to position HealthJoy as a valuable partner in the benefits space. The sales team then took this groundwork and built relationships with HR leaders and brokers, leveraging the materials and positioning marketing had developed to close deals.
When these three teams work together, the pivot becomes much smoother. Each team brings a different perspective to the table, and by collaborating, you ensure that all aspects of the business are moving in the same direction. This alignment is crucial to building momentum and achieving growth in a new industry.
The proof of this alignment was in the results. The kind of growth we experienced wouldn’t have been possible without the strong partnership between sales, marketing, and product. It’s a lesson that applies to any pivot—no matter the industry or market—success comes from getting everyone on the same page and pulling toward the same goal.
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If you are entrepreneur or startup founder thinking it’s time to pivot and your looking for a fractional CMO or advisor who has been down that path, reach out. I also work on both B2B and B2C brand strategy and brand identity on my new websites.
