B2B companies face the dilemma of large-scale growth, how to think, how to layout, some ideas, and communicate with everyone.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Cape Pine Fruit Marketing” (ID: yangsongguo17) , the author of the pine cones.
Recently talked with some friends about the growth of ToB marketing, mainly exchanged two dilemmas:
1. Media selection: When B2B’s business is used to promote clues through online promotion, many media are not very effective, and the conversion cost is much higher than expected. How to choose media and how to reduce costs and increase conversions through more precise marketing?
2. Large-scale growth plan: After one or two years of exploration, the business can basically achieve profitability, but then face the problem of how to scale up growth, and hope to find a solution for clue growth from online media.
Especially for some SMEs, how to balance the relationship between investment and growth determines whether it can maintain sustained growth.
First, why should ToB business conduct “penetration-specific” penetration communication
In “Flow Pool”, when Yang Fei talked about ToC’s event marketing, he mentioned the standard of “light and explosive”: there should be lightweight content that is convenient to spread, and it should be spread quickly when it is covered by target users. Word of mouth carries out the burst point of fission propagation. As Lei Jun mentioned earlier, Li Wanqiang’s interpretation of “Participation” is focused, extreme, word-of-mouth, and fast. There are some similarities between the two.
However, there are many differences between ToB business and ToC. Many standards of marketing naturally have big differences. Unlike “light bursts,” ToB’s business requires sustained brand recognition and conversion growth. Need to carry out “pervasive” “penetration” communication: focus on professional services and content, steadily carry out penetration, and deeply impress the brandIn the mind of the user.
The reason for this difference is that because the decision chain of the B2B business itself is more complex, the decision cycle is much longer than the B2C business. Every business decision-making environment relies more on rational analysis and discussion, and the difficulty of transformation naturally increases substantially. The short-and-fast approach does not apply.
For example, a B2B business with hundreds of thousands of registered corporate customers has done a communication campaign for the pain points of ordinary users. The H5 page is extremely accurate to the user’s psychological and pain points, and the interaction is very good. , got 10w+ readings. I made a lot of sound, but in the end did not bring a few customers.
This is worth reflecting. For the ToB business, it is necessary to deepen the pain points based on the cost reduction of the enterprise and provide professional solutions for the industry. First of all, we must ensure that our products and businesses have a competitive advantage, and then the marketing is more valuable. The “special and stable” penetration communication can also bring better results to the growth of the company.
If the product is not ready, it will be promoted and it will only have the opposite effect.
Second, to make growth, ToB business should seize the “authority” and “richness” when spreading
After the B2B companies have passed the stage of sales and sales, they have been able to make a profit, but at the same time they are facing the problem of scale growth. Even if you hire a lot of sales, do a lot of offline activities, and the marginal cost will increase after investing a lot of resources, it will not solve the problem of large-scale growth.
First, the sales staff and energy are limited. It is difficult to effectively connect with the target decision makers by traditional telephone and unfamiliar methods. Second, the boundary effect of the conventional method is obvious, and it is difficult to bring about continuous scale. increase.
So outside the ABM model, many companies are looking to bring more growth through LG or other models.
To grow, we need to understand the stages of business development and the lifecycle of our users.
We look at the stages of B2B growth first:
1. Polish products, identify target industries and decision-makers, and run through business models;
2, get customers by regular methods, make customized services for customers, and initially realize profitability;
3. Start large-scale growth exploration and pursue continuous profitability.
For most businesses, going to the third stage often takes a long time. Moreover, not all enterprises need to be scaled up (often in the third stage). Many B2B companies have no stable customer resources and profit models in the initial exploration stage, so they must rely on the most traditional ones. The way to sell resources to the world is to operate.
Some companies that provide B2B services to large enterprises are strongly driven by sales, such as SAP and IBM. Sometimes when you trade a few customers a year, you can get a lot of profits. In addition, from the conversion cycle and the attributes of the target customers, such enterprises have less demand for large-scale clues. After all, there are so many domestic large enterprises. In the case of clue channels, sales can be completely covered.
The spread of such companies is more focused on how to use the media, continue to permeate the target companies, and continuously carry out external strikes to empower sales and facilitate the final transaction.
Such as some activities SAP has done recently, giving the brand a personalized attribute and passing on more brand value to the user.
For businesses that are difficult to rely on large companies to make a profit, there is a need to expand the leads of intent customers online, or some recent attempts by companies to obtain quality leads through partners.
Essentially, through the online media that are not limited by space, the path before the sale is opened, more clues are obtained, and it is hoped that the clues will be screened and educated before the sales take over.
This is a B2B user life cycle journey diagram. The company will experience three stages of pre-dealing-dealing—————————–
At the different stages, one of the core demands is to constantly strengthen the relationship of trust and loyalty through a good experience.
The most important cornerstone of building trust is the experience, the experience of constantly engaging with the company when learning about the company’s products and services, the experience of trying out the product period, the experience of providing problems when the company provides services, etc., each link is closely related. .
The establishment of trust can be split from two dimensions, one-handed authority, one-handed richness:
(1) The authority that is experienced
1, the authority of brand delivery:
Distribute the official image and service content through the brand, increase users’ awareness of the brand, and lay the foundation for subsequent business development.
This is the most intuitive and effective way to build first cognition. It can be seen from the brand advertising and joint marketing of major ToB giants. If you have a budget, you can advertise at the beginning of the project. If you don’t have money, you can cooperate with the industry and gradually build your brand image.
2, the authority of official content delivery:
Everyone doing B2B marketing in China may not pay much attention to LinkedIn. Their white paper on marketing is of high quality and the content has a lot of reference. Others, including SAP and Oracle, also have professional industry solutions.
If a B2B company can continue to produce high-quality content through official channels, it can continuously influence users at all stages of the life cycle, and consolidate the image of the company in the user’s mind, professional, trustworthy and authoritative.
3. The authority of the solution:
Do you know the pains of the industry in which your company is located?
Before attending a teacher’s training, what is the professional and persuasive plan: For example, Huawei sometimes bids, the core plan is a page, and the pain points and solutions are clearly understood. It is more convincing than the 100-page PPT.
4, the authority of employee image transmission:
It’s important to talk about the contact between the company and the customer. Don’t underestimate this. Why are the people of PricewaterhouseCoopers dressed in formal contact with customers? Why do you see most of the offline activities of SAP?
Customers see your first impression, more intuitive than the brand impression, can greatly affect the establishment of the first trust, or how dare he hand over hundreds of thousands of projects to you.
Either the brand, content, employee image or the solution is delivered to the user, the authoritativeness of the establishment can penetrate the user’s entire life cycle, and in the process of continuous interaction with the enterprise, consolidate the authority’s cognition.
(2) The richness experienced:
1, the richness of the content:
There are many different types of content, such as benchmarking cases, white papers, news reports, videos, etc. Rich content allows companies to have a more complete understanding of the business and easier to establish initial trust relationships.
2, the richness of the media:
There are a lot of contacts with companies, search engines, official websites, news media, self-media, short video media, emails, and more. Because the entire decision-making chain is very long, if you can interact and communicate through the rich media when you need it, you can more effectively eliminate the gaps and strangeness, and more effectively deliver the content to the enterprise.
Because of the diversity and uncertainty of decision makers’ behavioral habits, rich media can also better assist user coverage.
3, the richness of the experience:
As the content of the target company and the brand, through the relationship between the media, the experience has been continuously generated. The experience of the content, the experience of the solution, the experience of the interaction, the experience of the service content, and so on.
The multi-level experience also helps to gain a competitive edge when it comes to capturing companies.
Three, do a good job of growth, you can try several combinations of methods
Combination example
(1) Market offline activities, continuous exposure:
Participating in offline activities is a way for every ToB company to not miss out on targeted sales opportunities. Also for every ToB businessOne of the important job responsibilities of the marketing department.
High-quality activities not only allow the company’s business and products to be exposed in the industry and target companies, but also help sales to collect more sales leads and communicate one-on-one with the company. .
(2) Content-based online media matrix:
1, official website: one of the most important content channels
The official website is the best distribution center for corporate content. The content displayed can be business content, solutions, customer stories, news information, etc. It is also one of the most important channels for users to understand enterprise information.
A good official website can continuously contribute high-quality traffic and clues, while doing the content of the official website, and don’t ignore SEO.
Excellent example: Didi Enterprise Edition official website
2, vertical and own media content continues to cover
In addition to the official website, the industry’s vertical media and its own media (mail, WeChat, Weibo, headlines, vibrato, etc.) are the content channels that need to be taken care of in the second step. These media can be at different stages of the user’s life cycle. , show official content and provide services.
In the continuous content penetration and interaction, establish closer contact with the decision makers of the target company.
3, paid media
Payment media has always been a channel for ToB business to love and hate. It is a piece of fat, but I don’t know how to make a fuss. I also introduced it in the previous article.
If you want to do a good payment medium, you need to have a deep understanding of the behavioral habits of the target company, and you need to know more about the characteristics of the media resources themselves (such as crowd labels, audience attributes, etc.).
Example: Paid Media Strategy during an Event
(3) Word-of-mouth communication – make every step of the experience, build trust and loyalty: old customers turn to introduce
Looking at this picture again, word-of-mouth communication is an important step for the ToB business to achieve sustained growth.
Previous content dissemination, media placement, and the construction of infrastructure such as the official website and self-media are all aimed at better service. In the ToC business, there is a familiar concept of growth hacking. For ToB’s business, the target company’s trust and loyalty to the brand is an important step in word-of-mouth communication.
From PricewaterhouseCoopers
This also requires market and sales people to focus on quality and experience throughout the lifecycle of the process, each interaction with the target company. Put the experience to all aspects, and serve every need with a dedication.
Fourth, write at the end
Page limitation, this article is a simple chat with everyone about some conventional methods. In the follow-up, I will gradually talk about the two pain points that the article starts with, and share with you the common digital marketing strategies of ToB business. What are the common routines? There are pits that need to be avoided.
Because the types and pain points of B2B business are scattered, we welcome everyone to communicate and make progress faster. ToB is not easy to explore and cherish.
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