Operation: What should B-side products do in the initial cold start phase?

"Cold start" has become a hot topic for PM discussion. In the early stages of a project, with no money, no traffic, and no users, how should a cold start be achieved and promoted? Of course, as an aside, before doing a cold start, you must first ensure that your product has undergone a small market validation and reached the PMF (Product/Market Fit) state. Otherwise, if the core of any product is not polished, no matter how good the start is, it will be in vain.

The difference between 2B products and 2C products in the cold start phase

I would like to share a few thoughts first. When a 2C product is in the cold start stage, if it has a little resources and money, it will generally screen out the first batch of users and establish brand reputation through red envelopes, small games, viral marketing, etc. If it is a startup company with few resources, it will also find ways to find the first batch of target users in the early stage, serve them well, and then iterate and expand the product.

However, in 2B products, these ideas need to be carefully considered:

Traffic thinking : The C-end user market is often in the hundreds of millions, or even billions of users worldwide, so many C-end products only need to attract more users and maintain a good retention conversion rate in the early stages, but B-end users do not have that much traffic.

For example, if you are making a management software for banks, there are only so many banks in the country. If you harass all the banks in the early stage but fail to come up with good products or have insufficient attractive points, it will be more costly to attract their attention later. Therefore, on the B-side, we must think carefully about the traffic thinking of casting a wide net.

Free thinking: In the past, the concept of free was very popular, but now if any software on the market requires payment, it will be ridiculed. However, on the B-side, you must not think too much about the concept of free. You must know that the products on the B-side are not like those on the C-side. They focus on entertainment, social networking or other things, and rely on traffic, advertising, etc. to realize monetization in the later stage.

First of all, there are relatively few users on the B-side, and it is unrealistic to monetize through traffic advertising. In addition, many companies are sensitive to data. If they know that their data is being monetized, they will have a very bad impression of the product and cause loss.

Secondly, the B-side is generally created to improve corporate efficiency or save corporate costs, with the aim of helping the company save money. When you are making a product in the early stages, you must think clearly about how this product can attract users to pay. When communicating with seed customers, you should also ask, what does this product bring to you, are you willing to pay for it/how much, etc.

Finally, free does not necessarily attract B-side customers. B-side customers will incur higher usage costs when using a product. What attracts them to try may be the initial free experience, but what makes them stay may not be free.

For example, I have seen such a customer before. A certain product was free during the public beta period. He expressed interest but would not use it because the migration cost of using this product was high and would affect his business. Free use during the public beta period would make him feel insecure. He would rather wait until the product is officially commercialized with service guarantees before paying for it.

Identify customers and users: In C-end products, general customers are users, nothing special. However, on the B-side, the decision-making chain is long, customers and users are often separated, and the same product has different types of users. Therefore, when screening target users, you need to think about who your product mainly targets and who has the right to make decisions and use the product.

For example: the image of the mother in today's cartoons is generally one who has a high status in the family or is very respected, like Red Wolf, Apron Mom, etc. The people watching the cartoons are children, but the child's closest educator is his mother, so the image of the mother will be optimized in the cartoons to avoid the cartoon being rejected by the mother. Similarly, if the cartoon is too negative, it will also be screened out by the mother. In a scenario like watching a cartoon, the mother is the client and the child is the user.

How to find your target users?

I think many people will be confused by the concepts of customers and users I mentioned above. How to distinguish customers’ users and how to promote them?

Before distinguishing between customers and users, we should first treat our target enterprise as a whole, find ways to screen out our target group, and then segment the internal decision-making chain of this group. There are two ways to find target customers: active and passive. Active search means finding places where your target customers often gather.

For example: forums, entrepreneurial learning/chicken soup for the soul communities, or some industry big names groups, etc. The passive way is to optimize your own SEO and SEM (of course you may need to pay, which is costly), wait for target customers to come, and then do data analysis.

I have read the sharing of "NetEase Qiyu - Fully Intelligent Cloud Customer Service Expert" before. I think their method of finding target customers is great. They made a 2B customer service system, using startups as the entrance, and accurately analyzed the current status of the customer service systems of startups:

Many large platforms find it much easier to find customers in the early stages. For example, the product I am responsible for is just a small product on a large platform, so I can first screen the customer base within the platform and find the first batch of users.

Another advantage of large platforms is that they can use the brand influence of the platform to test the market before the product comes out. Many Internet companies will do this, publishing news on their own public platforms or other platforms, such as "This product from someone is so amazing" to attract attention, and then see the direction of the comments. If the comments are all positive, then the product can basically be developed or the next step can be planned. If the comments are all negative or no one is interested, they will come out to dispel the rumors and continue to polish it.

In the process of searching and promoting, whether to focus on finding customers or users, or both, requires the enterprise to weigh the pros and cons. The premise is to figure out what the focus of both is. This can be analyzed by analyzing several typical enterprises, large, medium and small, to establish a complete decision-making chain, list the focus points, and then do analysis:

For customers (decision makers), the product value can be monetized to highlight their most sensitive concerns (picture from NetEase Qiyu sharing):

For users, you can explain what problems this thing solves for them, what benefits it can bring to them, how much efficiency it improves, and provide promotional copy.

After finding the target customers, go to their doorstep to contact and attract them, and take out a trial version to conduct user research and guidance (picture from NetEase Qiyu sharing).

Do a good job in brand building and establish product value

When doing a cold start in the early stage, you need to take out your MVP (minimum viable product) and find customers to use and guide them. However, many products are very troublesome to use, and even require multiple users to use them together. So how can you show the effects to so many people in one place?

Many companies will choose to make a display website or APP when they are starting up their front-end. In fact, for startups that do not have the money to make a display website or APP in the early stages, WeChat public accounts are a very good choice for brand building and MVP presentation.

Attach your own product introduction video to the article, or create some very simple interactive small pages to clearly demonstrate the value of your product and interact with users. You can leave an application channel or consultation channel for a free trial version in the official account and leave sales leads. In addition, official accounts are also a very good way to spread information. Maybe some big shot thinks the product introduction is cool and forwards it to his friends.

Summarize

Regarding the cold start of the B side, the author's thoughts are as follows:

1. Grasp the user's pain points and the customer's concerns, use videos or H5 interactive pages as product MVPs, showcase your brand, and establish your own advantages
2. Don’t use traffic thinking to evaluate operational results. B-end products focus on real value, while C-end products focus more on entertainment and other factors.
3. There is one thing I forgot to mention above. After the cold start, we should focus on the product and empower from top to bottom. We should influence sales, customer service, and operations from the product, and show our professional side to the outside world.

The above are some of the author’s thoughts, welcome to leave a message for communication.

Source: Waiwai