How to acquire thousands of target users within a year with 0 budget for ToB content operation?

How to acquire thousands of target users within a year with zero budget in content operation ? Or the ToB industry? When seeing such a title for the first time, I believe many people will think that the author is using "clickbait" to deceive the readership.

Indeed, for content operators in the ToB industry, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, the pitiful number of followers on the company's WeChat public accounts and self-media platforms, the dismal number of article readings, and the sporadic number of client consultations are truly a common plight in the industry. However, the author is here "boasting" that he can acquire thousands of target users within a year with zero budget? It's really hard to believe.

However, facts speak louder than words. Let me review and tell you through real case analysis:

1. Introduction to the company background

Company: Start-up financial technology company (ToB industry).

Product: Fixed income risk warning SAAS platform.

Target market of products: Financial institutions and employees involved in fixed-income product investments such as banks, insurance companies, and funds.

Explanation of ranking: Fixed income products refer to the returns that investors receive according to a pre-determined ratio. Treasury bonds, bonds, certificates of deposit, etc. have pre-fixed interest rates and dividends and are common fixed-income products.

2. Team resource inventory

Team composition: A content operation team of 3 people with relevant financial industry experience (3 years+)

Team budget: 0

Operational resources: 2 WeChat public accounts, 5 self-media accounts, and a WeChat community of about 1,000 people (low activity)

3. Team goals (KPI)

Through content operation, we can acquire 3,000+ target customers. Since the product is a fixed-income risk warning SAAS platform, we can understand it as acquiring 3,000+ practitioners in the financial field who are engaged in fixed-income product-related investments.

4. Goal Decomposition and Operational Thinking

The team was overwhelmed when they first received this task. Considering that the average number of readers of the current public account is only a few hundred and the number of fans is only a few thousand, they wanted to acquire 3,000+ precise users through content operations. And this was done with zero budget, so you can imagine how difficult it was. In order to achieve this goal, we must think and plan comprehensively about the team's content operations.

To this end, we conducted the following thinking:

Experts say that the essence of content operation in the ToB industry is to package the core value of the product into content (mainly soft articles), and then repeatedly deliver it to target customers through channels (channels that users frequently access), and finally subtly influence user decisions. Therefore, for our content operations team, how do we tap into the core value of the product? How to package cleverly? And how to find the most effective channel to reach users? It becomes particularly important.

Let's break them down one by one:

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

As a risk warning SAAS platform, the core value of the product is quite clear, which is accurate risk warning data. The risk warning data with wide coverage and high accuracy is the biggest highlight of the product, and also the focus of our content output.

(2) How to package the product into content?

But the data is cold, and its presentation form is relatively simple, usually just a table. Although the data is valuable, no one will have much interest in a screenshot or a table. This requires us to cleverly package the risk warning data so that it can be effectively disseminated and spread.

But how to encapsulate content? This requires us to find the answer from the content marketing inventory analysis of the entire ToB industry:

As shown in the figure above, content marketing in the ToB industry is divided into 6 categories. However, looking at these 6 categories, under the premise of zero budget, the 5th and 6th content display forms are relatively more appropriate to reasonably and effectively package and deliver the platform's core value - risk warning related data to target users, and form high reading and secondary forwarding. Other content display forms are difficult to effectively acquire incremental target customers due to lack of content readability, communication factors and other reasons. Therefore, we directly established the 5th and 6th marketing forms to package the core value of the product. when

Of course, later when we looked at the historical soft-article reading data on the eve of the platform, we also verified that our idea was correct.

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

Once the incremental target user group has been found, the core value has been established, and the packaging form of content marketing has also been established, then finding the right channel will naturally be much easier. For ToB products in the financial industry, the output channels of content marketing mainly include PC/H5 official websites, APPs, WeChat public accounts, mainstream self-media platforms (Sohu, Baidu Baijiahao, etc.), and vertical field self-media (Tonghuashun’s Tongshunhao, Wukonghao, etc.), considering that the main purpose is to acquire incremental target customers.

Therefore, we excluded the PC/H5 official website and APP channels. Due to the limited manpower factors of the team and the massive traffic advantage of WeChat social marketing, we mainly invested our manpower in the content operation of WeChat public accounts. Of course, we will also simultaneously publish the content on various self-media platforms for exposure, and do SEO inclusion and ranking by the way.

At this point, all the ideas have been clarified. The next focus of our team is to package the platform's risk warning numbers through hot event marketing, industry/experience sharing, etc., and then conduct social dissemination and user sedimentation through WeChat public accounts, and finally obtain accurate incremental customers.

5. Review of content operation practice

Thinking alone is not enough. We are well aware that operational practice and data are the only criteria for testing the truth. In the following content operation practice, we carried out the following four effective practices:

(1) Marketing through leveraging hot news events

In the past two years, against the backdrop of financial deleveraging, coupled with factors such as Sino-US trade frictions and stricter financial supervision, China's economic supply and demand have both been weak. A large number of bond defaults have occurred in the domestic fixed income market, especially the bond market, including many well-known large private enterprises that are familiar to everyone. Once a default occurs, it will create a strong public opinion effect in the society and the capital market.

As a fixed income risk warning SAAS platform, we organize content operations personnel to follow up and write articles in advance before predicting the risk of "bankruptcy". We then package our wide-coverage and high-precision risk warning data into the articles in the form of watermarked charts or brand implants. Once the bankruptcy event is announced, we will immediately send and disseminate the prepared soft articles as soon as possible.

Usually, mainstream media will write articles and publish them only after receiving the news, which will delay our publication by about 2 hours. It is precisely because of this 2-hour time difference that the WeChat news articles with soft advertising nature on the platform will be screened in the financial circle, and the number of readings and reposts will increase sharply, and sometimes even dominate the circle of friends, harvesting a large number of accurate users for the official account. At the same time, through this hot news release, our highly accurate risk warning data can also be widely disseminated.

Note: In order to achieve better external marketing effects and prevent users from thinking that we are boasting and advertising too much, we gave up directly naming the public account with "company name and product name", and instead created a new public account with a name similar to "xx Observation, xx Online" and other similar third-party media names for operation, and the actual effect was significant.

(2) Special marketing of industry news morning papers

In the financial circle, the value of information is obvious. Whether it is for work needs or the personal gossip of the financial elites, it is an essential and necessary content. However, our careful research found that although there are daily morning and evening financial news in the financial media circle, most of them are aggregated content. However, there is almost no content targeting the fixed income industry in the financial sub-sector.

After discovering this problem, we quickly followed up and produced a morning report special focusing on the fixed income industry, especially the popular bond industry. Like other financial media, in addition to summarizing the latest developments in the industry, we also made a risk forecast based on our risk warning products for everyone's reference.

On the eve of the launch, we only conducted a content push experiment in one or two WeChat user groups. Unexpectedly, the user response was very good, and more and more members in the group listened to the morning paper. Later, there were even investment institutions willing to pay us to prepare content for push to their internal investment personnel. The word of mouth was remarkable.

To this end, we quickly invested manpower to follow up, templated and normalized this topic, and published it free of charge on the entire network through WeChat public accounts and WeChat groups. Soon, with the help of this topic, a group of loyal fixed income users were quickly introduced into the WeChat group for marketing and management. Since the morning report also includes the forecast content of risk warning products, the core value of our products is also pushed to target users simultaneously.

(3) Special marketing of industry research reports

Currently, in the Internet industry, this form of content marketing is very common, which uses xx research and analysis reports to guide users to share in their circle of friends, and then provides users with free downloads and sharing. Usually, a company will release an annual industry analysis after a press conference or at the end of a year, and use it as a platform for content marketing.

Here, there is not much difference in our approach. The main difference is that in the Internet circle, you cannot conduct industry research reports multiple times within 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 on a quarterly, semi-annual, annual, or even monthly basis, but there is either no analysis data in such a segmented field on the market, or you need to pay to download it.

It is precisely based on this pain point that we share our own risk warning data and predictions with wide coverage and high accuracy for free on the entire network. Of course, the prerequisite for obtaining it is to join a group and share it on WeChat Moments. Due to the high frequency and simple and uncomplicated operation, we quickly acquired batches of accurate users (usually each share can get nearly a hundred friends to add invitations).

Here, we must pay special attention to the channel value of sales personnel of ToB companies. Usually, ToB companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, will only recruit some sales personnel with resources and experience in order to survive better. They all bring their own users and accurate traffic. When forwarding such research reports, with the help of the driving force of sales personnel, they can often achieve twice the result with half the effort.

(4) Cooperative marketing with well-known media

At first glance, the operating partners who see such operations must find it incredible. Isn’t it said to have zero budget? Why are you engaging in cooperative marketing with well-known media?

In our impression, cooperating with big brands means high costs, but this is not the case. In the marketing leveraging hot news events, we usually publish articles 1 or 2 hours earlier than the mainstream media, and at certain moments, we will create a high-reposting screen-sweeping effect. Later, we often found that some mainstream financial media would apply to us for authorization to reprint part of the article content or data charts, and then go back to reprocess and create them. However, the timeliness is usually much worse (mainstream media also require the editorial team to review the manuscripts, which is time-consuming), and the final publication time will be much slower. By the time they send it out, related news on the market has already been flying all over the place.

For this reason, some financial journalists will proactively contact us through the WeChat public account to ask how we can quickly understand the source of information and write articles?

Of course, all of this stems from the core value of our products, but since media reporters are individuals, even if they understand the reasons, they are unlikely to pay to purchase the products. However, we can take this opportunity to cooperate with them. We will inform them in advance of the relevant sources and data of the warning and ask them to prepare the manuscript in advance. However, they are required to include a screenshot with our watermark in the article, or to indicate that the warning information comes from our product (brand exposure). In this way, they complete the task of writing quickly, and we also carry out large-scale content marketing with the endorsement and traffic of mainstream financial media.

At the beginning, there were few media outlets willing to cooperate, but after the ice-breaking effect of one or two mainstream financial media outlets appeared, subsequent cooperation with other financial journalists became much easier. It is with the help of this kind of cooperation that we have gradually gained a group of precise users who came from nowhere.

VI. Practical Achievements

In the end, after almost a year, the official account alone added nearly 30,000 accurate fans, of which nearly 5,000 were target users screened and settled through WeChat (confirmed by business card or corporate email) and WeChat groups, which exceeded our content operation goals for the whole year. In addition, through content operations, we also obtained a considerable amount of advertising income, which can be regarded as a reward for the team.

VII. Practice Summary

When doing content operations in the ToB industry, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises, not having a budget is not a terrible thing. The most terrible thing is not having deep thinking and strong execution. There is nothing innovative about the operating methods involved in this article. They are all familiar operating tools and conventional methods. The key is to combine the core value of your own enterprise/product, find the most suitable operating method, and then quickly replicate it.

Through the above operational means, we have indeed achieved some small achievements, but this is just the beginning. Acquiring accurate target customers is only the first step in the operation. There is still a long way to go before the final user conversion (purchase). So don’t deify content operation, and don’t overly belittle it like some companies do. Content operation is just a part of the overall operation. What we need to do is to make full use of the low-cost attribute of content operation and maximize the operational goals.

Zero budget for content operation does not mean zero cost. Although no financial resources are spent in the entire practice process, a lot of manpower costs are invested. After all, chasing hot topics, writing original and soft articles every day, and doing user grouping and WeChat group sedimentation are all very tedious and laborious. But since everything we have done is worthwhile, everyone is still enjoying it. However, in the complex content operation process, the team must focus on core values ​​(user growth, conversion), which is most valuable to the team and the company.

Author: Monk

Source: Monk