3 Principles of To B Case Marketing

Case marketing is a very practical topic that To B companies often encounter. It is also an area that I often think about and practice for a long time. Over the years, I have done a lot of case marketing for outstanding companies such as Tencent Security, Tencent Cloud, WeChat Pay, Gaodeng Technology, Ping An Zhiniao, Ping An Smart City, Mingyuan Cloud, and Prologis Supply Chain. Today I will share some of my practical experience and methods in case marketing.

1. Three principles of To B case marketing

Principle 1: The growth rule of To B enterprises: attracting people from near and far

If we go deeper into “principle-level thinking” and analyze from the perspective of business operations, the steady growth of To B business will “attract people near and far.”

The phrase "those who are near are pleased, and those who are far away come" comes from the Analects of Confucius.

Everyone around us was satisfied. Since the circles were getting bigger and bigger, the circle near me kept getting bigger and bigger, and then expanded outward. If this development continues, the growth rate will become faster and faster. Just like a "growth snowball", the snowball gets bigger every time it rolls.

Simply put, it means serving the customers well, creating successful cases, and packaging the cases well. Impress new customers through the case content of old customers, word-of-mouth testimonials from old customers, and the help of old customers in participating in online and offline activities to share their own experiences, thereby achieving "snowball" growth of new customers.

Moreover, the more leaders value the company's brand, the more they will pay attention to customer service and reputation. Serving customers well will bring good reputation, and the accumulation of good cases will increase brand assets and form a positive cycle.

Principle 2: Case studies enhance customer trust and help you see the expected results

The To B business has a long decision-making chain, high average order value, fewer customers than the To C business, and relatively complex products. The key to customer cooperation is trust and expectations of cooperation. Coincidentally, cases, especially successful cases in the same industry, can greatly enhance customer trust and provide a reference for the expected results of cooperation.

Principle 3: Reduce the cost of trial and error. Case studies are the most important reference in the purchase decision stage.

From the perspective of customer purchase decision-making, cases are the most important reference content in the customer purchase decision-making stage.

In fact, this is easy to understand. From my personal experience, when customers negotiate cooperation, no matter how good your methods, strategies, and solutions are, they will always ask two questions in the end:

1. Does your company have experience in serving our industry?
2. Does your company have any successful cases, preferably from the same industry?

If not, they generally won’t dare to cooperate with you because they are worried that you don’t understand the industry, unless you are just selling a simple general tool.

For B2B enterprises, changing suppliers is often a very troublesome thing, so they all want to reduce the cost of trial and error. The service experience and successful cases in the same industry are the best endorsement of trust.

Based on these three principles, we can derive the five major values ​​and multiple uses of cases.

2. Five Values ​​and Multiple Uses of Case Studies

1. Case studies are an important part of company introduction and can enhance customer trust

Big customer cases are the most favorable brand endorsement. During the purchase decision stage, customers will definitely read the company introduction and the company's official website.

The most common use of cases is to showcase customer cases in company introduction PPTs, company websites, and public accounts.

For example, for Ping An Zhiniao, which we serve, a series of cases will be continuously released on the official website and public account.

Another popular approach now is to make a mini program or micro-official website. The screenshot here is of Tencent Cloud’s mini program, which is linked in the menu bar of the Tencent Cloud official account. The corresponding cases will be sorted by industry.

The mobile micro-website can also be embedded in the electronic business card, becoming a sales tool for all employees in the company. I have also taken a screenshot here. It was taken when I was communicating with Kingdee last time. I found that Kingdee’s electronic business card is very well made. If the company has tens of thousands of people, the employee sales value of the electronic business card will be very large.

I also like to call this electronic version of the company introduction a "digital brand showroom." Salespeople only need to bring their mobile phones and can access the products and cases in the showroom anytime and anywhere when they see customers. It is a great sales material and facilitates customer negotiations.

2. Case studies are an important part of product introductions, and the effects can be seen directly

For a complex To B product, cases can help customers see the effects intuitively.

For example, the overall solution of a smart city is almost like a mystery. It is often very difficult for customer leaders to understand and imagine the effect of cooperation.

Therefore, when Tencent was working on smart cities, it spent a long time polishing a case, which was to cooperate with the Guangdong government to create "Guangdong Provincial Affairs", which became a benchmark "Internet celebrity" for government services across the country. Through "Guangdong Provincial Affairs", we can directly see the cooperation effect of Tencent Smart City, which greatly enhances the persuasiveness of the product when negotiating business cooperation with other cities.

With such a benchmark case, Tencent successfully won the 520 million Changsha smart city project.

Many of Tencent Cloud's subsequent complex solutions were presented with cases at product launch conferences, and case customers were invited to give on-site speeches so that target customers could see the effects on site. In other words, internal testing and polishing of "samples" were already carried out in collaboration with customers during the product polishing stage.

3. Case studies are an important part of content marketing and the most powerful advertisement

I also shot advertisements for some large To B companies at the airports in Shanghai and Shenzhen, and you can see that most of them are case ads.

To B products/solutions are often more complex. Compared with product value promotion, cases are often more convincing and are the best product advertisements.

The same applies to white papers and industry reports. When communicating at the [Xiaobu Marketing Salon], we encountered such a problem: pure dry industry reports without advertisements had very good dissemination effects and retained a lot of information, but the conversion rate was very low; if the dry content was at the front and product advertisements were directly inserted at the back, users would skip it directly when they saw the advertisement page. Therefore, "dry content + case advertising" will be very natural and can make customers trust.

For example, the picture above is Yunxuetang’s medical industry case white paper. The first part talks about the dry goods and industry trends, and the latter part introduces the cases. The cases will talk about how these business leaders respond to the latest trends in the medical industry and what specific methods they have adopted. Naturally, they will lead to how to cooperate with Yunxuetang and what results have been achieved. This is very natural and convincing.

For example, the To B enterprise content marketing model that I particularly admire is the "Mingyuan Real Estate Research Institute". It has reports, books, websites, and activities. In addition to industry observation articles, it contains a large amount of case interviews and case articles written from interviews with client leaders.

In addition to the mixed model of content and cases, you can also directly make a case manual. The picture below is the case manual of Tencent Cloud, which organizes representative cases from different industries into categories. The case manual can be made into paper and electronic versions, and can serve as a very good sales material when holding various conferences and exhibitions.

4. An important part of marketing activities, old customers come forward to help sign orders

At press conferences and events, well-known customers speak in person to potential customers and the media to enhance persuasiveness, which is a very common form of To B corporate activities.

When introducing new products, you can also present specific cases to help customers understand the effects of use and enhance persuasiveness.

For example, at the DingTalk organizer conference and Tencent Cloud conference, you will see senior executives from important customers sharing their personal experiences at the conference, which helps increase potential customers’ trust in the product.

5. Hot cases inspire customer cooperation

If we successfully create a hit product, it will actually be very helpful for the development of our business. Here I would also like to give a classic example, which is the long picture of Pechoin.

The Pechoin long picture suddenly appeared in that year. It was made by "Local Climate". After the long picture became popular, many companies approached "Local Climate" to cooperate in long pictures. "Local Climate" later made many similar long pictures. A hit case will attract countless customers to cooperate with him, greatly enhancing customer trust.

In the To B vertical industry, after creating a successful hit case, it is very easy to trigger cooperation from peer customers.

Let me give you another example of a smart hotel we have worked on using Tencent Cloud.

Through the integrated dissemination of Tencent Cloud's Atour Smart Hotel case, including videos, pictures, authoritative media reports, KOL experience article dissemination, and official media dissemination of both parties, after packaging and promotion, sales took this case and promoted it to other well-known hotels, and successively reached cooperation with Shangri-La and other hotels. The cooperation volume of Shangri-La Hotel alone was over 10 million yuan.

Therefore, when an enterprise successfully creates a hit case, it adds the power of communication to make it a benchmark and representative case in the industry. It is very effective to then conduct precise communication and targeted negotiations with peer customers through marketing + sales.

3. Five-step method of case packaging

Having talked about the five major values ​​and various uses of cases, how do we package the cases well?

First of all, you need to find the best pre-sales and after-sales colleagues who are good at writing and speaking to be your allies, find the most well-known and most loving customers, understand the value of the project to the customers, conduct in-depth interviews, and write valuable and readable case articles. Benchmark cases can also be made into videos and then disseminated.

I have summarized the five-step method of case packaging, which are the five components of a case.

Here we take the simplest case, which is the case picture of DingTalk.

First, briefly introduce the client company. Second, have customer testimonials, preferably testimonials from decision-making leaders, which will be more convincing. Thirdly, it is the pain points of the industry, that is, what pain points customers originally had, and then they used our products and solved these pain points with a complete set of solutions, achieving good results.

These five steps are actually the most basic components of case packaging. Of course, you can also add some scenes and stories, preferably some very specific and touching details to make the case viewers more resonate.

It is the same with video cases. The video case begins with a customer introduction, followed by customer testimony, and then the industry pain points faced, how they were solved later, what methods were used, what results were achieved, and how the pain points were successfully solved. These are also the five parts.

There are 4 key points to note here:

(1) Identify the pain points of the industry and trigger resonance among potential customers

When we do customer cases, even though we interview old customers, they are actually for potential customers to see. Therefore, you must not focus on the pain points that are unique to specific customers. This will upset old customers and potential customers will not resonate with it. Therefore, you must write about the pain points that are common in the industry.

Only when the pain points resonate with the readers will they be willing to continue reading. "Our company also has this problem. I want to see how they solve it."

(2) Pay attention to the logical closed loop and the overall structure is linked together

Starting from the pain point - a complete solution & naturally bringing out the product - solving the pain point problem & achieving cost reduction and efficiency increase

Pain points are problems that trigger resonance, and solutions are wisdom. The entire solution includes the wisdom of the client company to solve the problem, so the highlight lies in the solution. Since they are our customers, our products are naturally used in the entire solution, which naturally brings out the product and the final effect.

(3) The content is professional and informative, and the language is easy to understand

The case content must first have industry value and learning value, but in terms of expression, professional content must also be popularized. It is best to have stories, scenarios, solution pictures, usage pictures, and results pictures to make people interested in reading and increase reading rates.

Never use a bunch of professional terms and make your writing obscure and difficult to understand in order to show professionalism. That is like writing a paper, not a case report. Although what we are doing is To B, readers are also human beings. To B articles do not have to force themselves to pursue fun and Internet language, but they can pursue "popularization of professional content."

(4) Have interviews and testimonies, don’t make things up behind closed doors

Only by conducting real interviews, writing about practical experiences, and writing about the methods used by client companies and leaders to solve problems can you be inspiring to potential customers. You cannot write something wonderful by making up stories behind closed doors.

Therefore, it is necessary to establish good relationships with pre-sales and after-sales colleagues and customers, conduct in-depth interviews, and explain the value of the project to customers in order to impress potential customers.

In addition, by interviewing clients and asking their leaders to testify, the credibility of the case can be greatly improved.

In summary, case packaging means interviewing old customers and writing them to potential customers so that they can resonate with their pain points, have valuable methods, have intuitive and visual effects, and have highly readable content, thereby stimulating potential customers' desire to cooperate.

If the budget is sufficient, it would be best to interview well-known customers and shoot a few benchmark case videos, which would be more intuitive and effective.

If a well-known customer is unwilling to cooperate with video shooting, we can conduct a joint interview with the media. This is a form of interview that I have done very often in recent years. Because when clients come to support you, although they are emotionally willing to help, there is often a practical problem. Generally speaking, most of the people who do case packaging and help give testimonies are vice presidents or department heads of the company, and the bosses are usually too busy to have time.

For example, if Tencent Cloud is engaged in technology, it will find a CTO to speak on the platform; if it is a product that develops financial and tax software, it will find a CFO or financial director to speak on the platform; if it is a marketing product, it will find a CMO or marketing director to speak on the platform. Going further up, the client company’s vice president came on stage to help accept interviews.

At this time, the vice president will have a concern. Helping to shoot case videos seems to have no value to his own company, but instead takes up a lot of time. He will wonder what his boss thinks, so he will have some concerns.

At this time, inviting the media as a third party to interview the client will make the client feel very natural and accept the media interview instead of just feeling like they are helping to stand up for you. It also has the value of brand promotion, which can effectively leverage well-known clients to cooperate in case packaging and dissemination.

For example, WeChat Pay used the First Financial Daily to interview the CEO of McDonald's China, telling the story of how McDonald's achieved digitalization and how McDonald's China became the most digitalized McDonald's in the world. There is a lot of practical information and business wisdom in it. Of course, she will also talk about how McDonald's cooperates with WeChat Pay, which is very natural.

IV. What to do if there are not enough cases

The most basic and direct way to use cases is to create case articles and databases, and continuously update and publish them on the official website and public account, so that company executives and sales can have "cases" to post on their Moments, and potential customers can see that the company has a steady stream of customers coming to cooperate.

Take Yongxi’s official account as an example:

At this time, some To B companies will encounter the problem of "not enough cases". In this regard, I have summarized a set of "Customer Full Life Cycle Case Packaging" methods, which can maximize the use of customer resources for case packaging.

Customer life cycle case packaging:

(1) Contract signing: new customer contract signing ceremony and contract signing announcement

• Basic idea: The two parties hold an offline signing ceremony to form a signing document.
• Value: Frequently release news about new customer signings, so that potential customers can see that "more and more companies choose to cooperate with our company", boosting their confidence in cooperation.

(2) Cooperation: Display of achievements of cooperation projects

• Basic idea: Assist customers to explore cooperation highlight projects and form phased case articles.
• Promote the customer success department, invite customers to cooperate, provide certain cooperation rewards, conduct online interviews, and form case articles.
• Through customer interviews, we uncover industry pain points, propose overall solutions, and achieve implementation results.

(3) Interaction: Experience exchange and sharing activities with customers and leaders in the same industry, in the form of group workshops and salons

• Basic idea: Invite customer managers, industry experts, and company experts to jointly conduct online live broadcasts or offline communication and sharing activities, focusing on the topic of "something" and carrying out communication and sharing activities by industry.
• Organize events by industry for executives in the same industry to exchange and discuss ideas, so that customers have a better experience.
• Offline communication: For example, drawing on the WeChat Pay industry-specific merchant forum model, invite hotel industry executives + organizers to give speeches + group discussions + group representatives to share in the workshop + take group photos.

(4) Study tours: Organize potential customers to visit excellent old customer companies for study tours and exchange activities

• Basic idea: Plan diverse value-added services, bring the platform and customers closer together, maximize value, and achieve win-win cooperation for both parties.
• Old customers share their successful experiences.
• Corporate study tours: Create "benchmark corporate study tours" activities, invite representatives from various companies to study and learn from well-known old customer companies, and help them broaden their horizons and open up the ecosystem.

(5) Interview: The company or third-party media interviews old customer leaders to discuss [industry pain points + solutions + practical experience + results achieved], forming a series of case columns to facilitate dissemination and sales calls

• Basic idea: Choose a high-sounding column name, such as "×× Living Room", cooperate with authoritative industry media/KOL, conduct in-depth interviews with old customer leaders, and talk about [industry pain points + solutions + practical experience + results achieved] to form a series of case columns to facilitate dissemination and sales calls, and create a series of case columns for high-end figure interviews.
• Video Interview: The column will visit the case companies and conduct one-on-one interviews offline; invite authoritative media reporters/KOLs in the industry to conduct in-depth interviews with client leaders; a professional video shooting team will participate in recording and editing; and all media communication resources will be distributed across the entire network.

(6) Annual: Old Customer Appreciation Dinner + Award Ceremony

• Basic idea: At the end of the year, invite outstanding corporate representatives and leaders from cooperative customers to gather together to share speeches and hold an awards ceremony.
• The organizing committee of the ceremony selected the final winning companies, works and individuals from benchmark customers, and awarded them certificates and trophies.
• Hold an offline dinner, invite customer representatives, and hold a small award ceremony.
• The ceremony will work with industry media to conduct concentrated exposure and shape the company's reputation.

The above is all the content of my sharing on "Case Marketing". Thank you for watching.

Author: Chen Xiaobu

Source: Chen Xiaobu