We found the customer base, but failed in the investment. Why is B2B marketing so difficult?

Under the new marketing concept, low-cost customer acquisition has become the mainstream demand. Hacker growth using fission and viral transmission as the main ways to attract new customers has been imitated by more and more companies, but how can this gameplay be applied to ToB marketing?

The tightening of C-end traffic is an indisputable fact. The rise of Pinduoduo and Qutoutiao also reflects that the "probe" of the traffic drill is about to hit bottom.

In this cold winter when there is nothing to talk about the Internet , major companies have also expressed the view that industrial Internet is the second half. Even Chen Yizhou, who sold Renren , announced that he would dive into the warm pool of industrial Internet.

However, the market is still the same market. No matter how it changes, products that want users, word of mouth, and conversions ultimately rely on marketing to drive them. However, in the future, if you don’t do SaaS, you can only call yourself a company and dare not call it the next step of the enterprise. ToB products seem to be lucrative, but is marketing easy?

1. Accurate customer base, vague delivery

Compared with C-end products, where anyone is my user, ToB products require customer definition that is accurate to the hairline. Although it may seem like "yes, that's that group of people!", the actual calibration of the delivery is very vague.

Although I know that this marketing nuclear bomb is going to be dropped over a certain island, I hope that its explosion will only "kill" the extreme left (affecting the precise customer group), and I do not expect civilian casualties (a large number of C-end users). Therefore, there are two difficulties in advertising on the B-end:

1. Difficulty affecting the path

A. Large-scale placement is feasible, and the marketing influence path will be:

From mass users → precise customer groups → precise customer group decision-makers → precise customer groups

This path places marketing hopes on the word-of-mouth influence of mass communication. The basic logic is to hope that through C-end content, it can trigger wide-ranging dissemination so that it can be known by precise customer groups. This customer group will then pass this information to the decision-making circle through various media channels ( WeChat , Weibo, etc.). After the decision-making circle breaks through the brand awareness, it will finally decide to purchase a certain product.

After the mini program of GiftTalk went viral, GiftTalk launched its own corporate gift procurement business, which can be said to be a perfect presentation of the first half of this path.

B. The cost is limited, and the campaign must be launched among precise customer groups. The path of influence will be:

From the location of the precise customer base (office building/park/exhibition) → precise customer base/decision-making level

Similarly, although the target customers are precise, due to limited costs, companies can only start from their locations and hope to reach core groups such as administration, human resources, procurement, IT project managers, etc., which are common in B-end products, by marketing in office buildings or corporate parks and exhibitions.

The building advertisements purchased by Alibaba Cloud and JD Enterprise are based on this point.

However, the contradiction between the two marketing paths does not lie in whether they can reach the other side of the customer base. The ultimate focus is: which kind of marketing can spend the least money, achieve the most ideal ROI, and maximize the number of orders.

Judging from word-of-mouth communication, the marketing model of GiftTalk is definitely worthwhile for the brand, but the final order and transaction volume of corporate gift purchases are questionable. Although building advertising seems to be more expensive, the drainage channels in the marketing materials, as well as the website PV and transaction volume after the launch, all have clear measurable directions.

However, inferring from the results, of the two paths, the brand is more important than the effect. No matter which path is used, it is too vague to trace the order/transaction volume. Often, the final channel selection is not supported by data and can only rely on past experience.

This is also the core dilemma for the marketing department when choosing marketing methods and setting budgets.

2. Difficulties in selecting KOLs :

The law of individual characters is well known to everyone because of Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point”. The selection of KOL actually conforms to the elements of contact person, expert and salesman given in it. But different from consumer-grade products, although we can increase the price of large-scale Weibo, Weibo and Douyin from 2,000 yuan to 600,000 yuan, there seems to be no KOL for B-end products.

For example, for a company engaged in IT system integration, who is the KOL who can influence the IT equipment/service purchasing decision-making level? Where is it? It's difficult to define.

Focusing on products like corporate gift purchases, which can influence administrative/human resources KOLs, in terms of professional experience, we can only start from the big names in the general workplace category, hoping to cover precise customer groups with a certain probability, and then rely on the "perfection" of the content to impress them to place orders.

So the difficulty lies in:

1. Who are KOLs? Where to find it?
2. What is the probability of covering the customer base?

In fact, B-side products are not without KOLs, but the connection with the rules of individual figures is very weak. The KOL for B-side products is not an individual, but the customer himself.

This is determined by top-down decisions in B2B product procurement. The best KOL is often not an individual, but a customer case with a significant reputation in the industry.

Every successful customer case is your KOL. Although it is no longer limited to individuals, the recognition of influence under industry pressure will start the automatic tape playing in the user's brain - "what everyone thinks is good is generally not wrong."

Therefore, the customer base is precise but the delivery is vague. The difficulty in finding KOLs is still due to the lack of effective communication nodes (customer cases) on the word-of-mouth communication side, and the subsequent pressure of industry recognition.

So once the approach is right and effective communication nodes are established, B-side marketing will be easier?

2. It is difficult to integrate the old and new marketing models

There are two main ways of traditional B-end sales: sales meetings and cold calls.

• The essence of sales meetings is a kind of relationship point penetration. Sales, as a product output point, transforms weak relationship points into product-oriented strong relationship points through places where customers gather to achieve sales goals.
• Cold calling is to actively create relationship points and tap into potential customers one by one.

The common point between these two marketing channels is that they are completely dependent on manual labor.

Whether it is a traditional enterprise that mainly serves B-side customers, or a newly emerging ToB enterprise with an Internet prefix, these two channels are still the mainstream of marketing.

Although sales materials have been upgraded to include new extension materials such as H5 or electronic posters, the sales department is still the department with the most say in most ToB companies.

Under the new marketing concept, low-cost customer acquisition has become the mainstream demand, and more and more companies are imitating hacker growth, which completely abandons traditional market behavior and uses fission and viral transmission as the main ways to attract new customers. However, there is currently no proven method for applying this gameplay to B2B marketing to achieve order execution. This is also the core difficulty that needs to be considered urgently in future B-side marketing.

At present, the only non-artificial growth channel for ToB products is concentrated on SEO and SEM of search engines , especially in the real estate O2O field. Previously, Haozuo and Kongjianjia, two companies in the field of corporate site selection, had invested tens of millions in this channel quarterly. In terms of content creativity in social media marketing , DingTalk’s “dramatic” posters for entrepreneurs are undoubtedly a highlight of B-side marketing in recent years.

In comparison, WeChat for Business introduces user operation methods (red envelopes) into new customer marketing, which also brings a touch of color to the ToB market. But once the final order is mentioned, the most frightening thing is that the air suddenly becomes quiet.

Therefore, it is not difficult to see that the dilemma of integrating the old and new models lies in whether the creative form of marketing content can be recognized by the precise customer group, thereby extending consumption points and purchasing motivation. Of course, it is particularly important whether the ToB enterprise itself can break the existing dogma and release fresh blood.

Finally, being able to add as many zeros as you want to the marketing budget is the ultimate dream of every marketing practitioner, but the reality is always as cruel as the day when Concubine Yu was struck by lightning.

With limited consumer stock, ToB marketing is naturally restricted by the overall market trend. However, when "occupying the B-end" becomes the development trend of the Internet industry, I believe that B-end marketing will gradually become the focus of future marketing discussions.

Back to our topic, based on the known precise customer base, how to use limited costs, dance with shackles in a specific context, and shoulder the responsibility of customer acquisition and conversion. In countless nights of battle with sales, countless versions of revised materials, countless brainstorming mornings, every moment, you will find that ToB marketing is really difficult!

Source: Yaowan (ID: mns610)