ToB industry’s content operation, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, the company’s WeChat public account and the poor followers of the media platform, bleak article reading volume, and sporadic consultations of Party A, is really the general misery of the industry. So how did the author get thousands of target users in one year with zero budget?

Editor’s note: This article comes from “Everyone is a product manager” (public ID: woshipm) , author: monk.

Get thousands of target users in one year with zero budget for content operations? Or the ToB industry? At first sight of such a title, I believe that many people will feel that the author is using the “Title Party” to deceive reading.

It is true that doing content operations in the ToB industry, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, the company ’s WeChat public account and the poor followers of the media platform, bleak article readings, and sporadic consultations of Party A, are really common in the industry. Miserable. However, the author is saying “big words” here to get thousands of target users within a year with zero budget? It is hard to convince.

But the facts speak louder than words, here I will directly review and tell you through real case disassembly:

I. Company background introduction

Company: Start-up fintech company (ToB industry).

Products: Fixed-income risk early warning SAAS platform.

Product target markets: Banks, insurance, funds and other financial institutions and employees involved in investment in fixed income products.

Glossary : Fixed income products are defined as the returns that investors receive at a predetermined rate. Treasury bonds, bonds, certificates of deposit, etc. have fixed interest rates and dividends in advance, and are common fixed income products.

Second, team resource inventory

Team composition : A three-person content operation team with a related financial industry background (3 years +)

Team budget : 0

Operational resources : 2 WeChat public accounts, 5 self-media accounts, 1,000 WeChat communities (low activity)

Three, team goals (KPI)

By content operationsObtain the target customers of 3000 + , because the product is a fixed income risk early warning SAAS platform, so we can understand it as the acquisition of 3000 + financial industry engaged in fixed income product related investments By.

Fourth, target decomposition and operational thinking

At the beginning, the team also crashed when receiving this task. On the basis of the current average number of readings of the public account is only a few hundred, and the number of fans is only a few thousand, we want to obtain 3000+ accurate users through content operation. And on the premise of zero budget, the difficulty can be imagined. In order to achieve this goal, we must fully consider and plan the team’s content operations.

Thinking about it for this:

Experts have cloud, the essence of ToB industry content operation is to package the core value of the product (mainly soft text), and then repeatedly pass it to the target customers through the channel (the channel that users often reach). There, the last subtle influence on user decisions. So, for our content operations team, how do we tap the core value of the product? How to do clever packaging? And how to find the most effective channels to reach users? It is particularly important.

Let ’s dismantle them one by one:

(1) What is the core value of our products?

As a risk early warning SAAS platform, the core value of its products is fairly clear, which is accurate risk early warning data. Its wide coverage and high accuracy risk early warning data are the biggest highlights of our products, that is, our content output Focus.

(2) How to content-encapsulate the product?

But the data is cold and its presentation form is relatively single. Usually it is a table. Although the data is very valuable, no one will be interested in a screenshot or a table. This requires us to take risk warning data. Only by clever encapsulation can we effectively spread and spread.

How about content packaging? This requires us to find the answer from the content marketing inventory analysis of the entire ToB industry:

Do B content operation with zero budget, how to get thousands of target users in one year?

As shown above, the content marketing of the ToB industry is divided into 6 categories, but an overview of these 6 categories,Under the premise of zero budget, it can reasonably and effectively package and transmit the platform’s core value-risk early warning related data to target users, and form high reading and secondary retransmission. The fifth and sixth content display forms are relatively more appropriate. For other content display forms, it is difficult to effectively acquire incremental target customers due to lack of content readability, propagation factors, and other reasons. Therefore, we have directly established the 5.6 type of marketing to package the core value of the product. When , in the later period, when we looked at the historical soft text reading data on the eve of the platform, we also verified that our thinking was correct.

(3) How to find the most effective channels to reach users?

When the incremental target user group is found, the core value is established, and the packaging form of content marketing is established, it is naturally much simpler to find the appropriate channel. For ToB products in the financial industry, the main output channels for content marketing are PC / H5 official website, APP, WeChat public account, mainstream self-media platforms (Sohu, Baidu Baijiahao, etc.), vertical self-media (flush flush with Tongshun) Number, Goku number, etc.), considering that it is mainly to acquire incremental target customers.

So we exclude the PC / H5 official website and APP channels, and are limited to the human factors of the team, as well as the massive traffic advantage of WeChat social marketing, so we mainly invest manpower in the content operation of WeChat public account. Of course, at the same time, we will also synchronize the content on the respective media platforms for exposure, by the way, SEO indexing and ranking.

At this point, all the ideas have been clarified. The focus of our team is to package the platform’s risk warning numbers through hot event marketing, industry / experience sharing, etc., and then socialize through the WeChat public account. Precipitation with users, and ultimately acquire accurate incremental customers.

Fifth, review of content operation practices

There is no thinking alone. We know that operating practices and data are the only criteria for testing truth. In the following content operation practices, we have carried out the following four effective practices:

(1) Leverage marketing of hot news events

In the past two years, under the background of financial deleveraging, China’s economic supply and demand have been weak due to the combination of factors such as stricter trade and financial supervision. The domestic fixed income market, especially the bond market, has experienced a large number of bond defaults, and many of them are well-known large-scale private enterprises. Once they default, they will form a strong public opinion effect in society and the capital market.

As a fixed income risk early warning SAAS platform, before predicting the occurrence of a “thunderstorm” risk, we organize the content operations staff to follow up and write in advance, and then use our wide coverage and high accuracy risk warning data to Watermarked chartOr the brand implanted form is packed into the article. Once the thunderstorm event is announced, we will immediately send and disseminate the prepared soft article.

Usually, the mainstream media does not write articles until the news is received. During this period, we may delay our publication by about 2 hours. Thanks to the time difference of about 2 hours, the platform has soft and wide WeChat news. The manuscript will be screened in the financial circle, the reading and forwarding volume will rise sharply, and sometimes even occupy the circle of friends, harvesting a large number of accurate users for the public account. At the same time, with this hot news release, our highly accurate risk warning data can also be disseminated on a large scale.

Note: In order to achieve better external marketing effects and prevent users from feeling that we are bragging about ourselves and advertising tend to be too strong, we have abandoned the use of “company name and product name” to name the public account name instead, but newly created A public account with a third-party nature such as “xxwatch, xx online” and other similar media is operating, and the practical results are significant.

(2) Thematic marketing of Industry News Morning Post

In the financial world, the value of information is obvious. Whether it is a job need or a personal gossip for the financial elite’s life, it is an indispensable content. However, our careful investigation found that although there are daily financial news morning and evening newspapers in the financial media circle, most of them are aggregated content, but for the fixed income industry in the financial segmentation field, there is almost no content.

After discovering this problem, we quickly followed up and targeted the fixed income industry, especially the popular bond industry. We did a special content of the morning newspaper focusing on the fixed income field, like other financial media, except for the latest industry trends. In addition, we also made a risk prediction based on our risk warning products for your reference.

On the eve, we only conducted content push experiments in one or two WeChat user groups. I did not expect that the response from users in the back was great. There were more and more members listening to the morning newspaper. There were even investment institutions willing to pay for it. We prepared the content for their internal investment staff, and the word of mouth was remarkable.

To this end, we quickly invested in human follow-up, templated and normalized this topic, and released freely on the entire network in WeChat public account and WeChat group. Soon, with this topic, a group of loyal fixed income users were quickly introduced into the WeChat group for marketing and management. Because the content of the morning report also includes the forecast content of the risk early warning products, the core value of our products is also pushed to the target users simultaneously.

(3) Special marketing for industry research reports

At present, in the Internet industry, this kind of content marketing using the xx research analysis report to guide users to share a circle of friends, and then give users free download and share is not common. Usually the company releases the year after a conference or at the end of a yearIndustry analysis to take a wave of content marketing.

There is not much difference in our gameplay here. The main difference is that in the industry research report of the Internet circle, you can’t do it many times in a year, but in the financial circle, we can do it. Because in the financial circle, especially in the investment field, these financial professionals will conduct industry summaries and write analysis reports quarterly, semi-annually, annually, and even monthly, but there is no market analysis data in such a subdivided field. , Or you need to pay to download.

It is based on this pain point that we share our wide-area, high-precision risk early-warning data and predictions with the entire network for free sharing. Of course, the premise of obtaining them is to add groups and share circle of friends. Due to the high frequency, the operation is simple and no routine. , We quickly acquired a batch of accurate users (usually can get nearly a hundred friends to add invitations each time sharing).

Here, we must pay special attention to the channel value of ToB sales staff. Usually ToB companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, will only recruit some sales staff with resources and experience in order to survive better. , They all bring their own users and precise traffic. When forwarding such research reports, the sales force can often do more with less.

(4) Cooperative marketing with well-known media

At first glance, it certainly feels incredible to see the operating partners doing this, isn’t it about zero budget? Why did you play cooperative marketing with well-known media?

In our impression, working with big brands means high costs, but it’s not. In the borrowing marketing of hot news events, we usually publish articles 1.2 hours earlier than the mainstream media, and at some moments, it will form a high reposting screen effect. Later, we often find that some mainstream financial media will apply to us for authorization to reprint part of the article content or data charts, and then go back for reprocessing and creation, but usually the timeliness is much worse (mainstream media still needs to be reviewed by the editor team, which is time-consuming) When it is finally published, it will be much slower. By the time they are published, the relevant news on the market is already flying.

For this reason, some financial reporters will take the initiative to ask us through the WeChat public account to find out how to quickly understand the source and write an article?

Of course, all of this comes from the core value of our products, but because media reporters are individuals, they just understand the reason and cannot pay to buy the product. However, we can take this opportunity to cooperate with them instead. We will inform the other party of the relevant sources and data related to the warning in advance, and let the other party prepare the manuscript in advance. The warning information comes from our products (the brand is exposed). In this way, they have completed the task of writing quickly. We also rely on the endorsement and traffic of mainstream financial media.Conducted a wide range of content marketing.

In the beginning, there were few media willing to cooperate, but when one or two mainstream financial media broke the ice, the cooperation with other financial journalists was much simpler. Thanks to this cooperation, we have gradually harvested an inexplicable number of precise users.

Sixth, practical results

Finally, after almost a year, nearly 30,000 accurate followers have been added to the public account alone. Among them, nearly 5,000 target users were selected and deposited through WeChat (business card or corporate email confirmation) and WeChat group. Exceeded our year-round content operation goals. In addition, through the content operation, we also obtained a decent amount of advertising revenue, which is regarded as a team’s toil.

Seven, practice summary

Doing content operations in the ToB industry, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises, is not a terrible thing without a budget, and it is the most terrible thing without deep thinking and strong execution. The operation methods involved in this article are not innovative. They are familiar operation tools and conventional methods. The key is to combine the core values ​​of your own company / product, find the most suitable operation method, and then quickly copy it.

Through the above operation methods, we did achieve some small achievements, but this is only the beginning. Obtaining accurate target customers is only the first step of operation. This is a long way from the end user conversion (purchase). Way to go. So don’t deify content operations, and don’t degrade it too much like some companies. Content operations are just one part of big operations. All you have to do is to make full use of the low-cost attributes of content operations to maximize operational goals.

Zero budget for content operation does not represent zero cost. Although no financial resources have been spent in the entire practice process, it has invested a lot of manpower costs. After all, chasing hotspots every day to write original and write soft articles, and do user group and WeChat group precipitation It is very tedious and laborious. But because everything is valuable, everyone is happy. However, in the complicated content operation process, the team must focus on core values ​​(user growth, conversion), so that it is most valuable to the team and the company.

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