B2B marketing integrated into the brand will achieve twice the result with half the effort!

I recently saw a set of data published in the " B2B Marketing Strategy Report", which stated that 67% of marketers believe that their top priority is gradually shifting from brand awareness to lead growth and improving conversion rates. This data not only did not arouse doubts from inside and outside the industry, but instead resonated with everyone!

It is undeniable that the main task of the marketing department is to be result-oriented, find new marketing models that can achieve growth, and participate in the conversion of sales leads throughout the process. However, this cannot completely deny the growth value brought by brand power, and it is even less likely to replace the brand’s core role in capturing users’ minds, establishing emotional ties, and highlighting value propositions.

If companies insist on using MarTech or AdTech to acquire customers in large quantities and improve conversion rates through link marketing that infinitely shortens the user decision chain (transformed from the traditional AISAS marketing rules, similar to the later growth hacker AARRR concept, I will talk about this methodology specifically in future articles), they will inevitably go astray and waste time and money.

1. Brand Marketing: Establishing Emotional Connections with Customers

Since I transformed myself into B2B marketing, I have been confined by C-end operations. The so-called low-cost operations, social attributes, fission factors, subsidy wars and other ideas have never left my marketing planning and operational ideas. I believe that many friends who have transformed from the C-end have had the same experience.

In fact, these considerations are not wrong, but they are no longer so appropriate on the B-side.

It is not only because the decision-making chain and product delivery cycle of B-side customers are longer, but also because various corporate customers have different needs and pain points (corporate customers have different demands for corporate services due to their industry particularities, development status, business philosophy, management methods, strategic models, etc.). It is extremely difficult for corporate service providers to create a hit product.

Under such objective conditions, even those large companies that have everything they want on the C-end have to take one step at a time and serve one customer at a time after transitioning to the B2B industry. Therefore, B2B marketing inherently does not have the potential for large-scale contract signing and explosive growth.

Especially since B2B is an industry with low attention, many people mistakenly believe that customers make decisions based on the matrix of "cost, quality and function", so B2B marketing tends to focus on price and product function, and even uses marketing techniques to follow trends.

For example, the low-cost and high-efficiency Internet models currently promoted by everyone, such as ABM marketing automation, operational thinking, and growth hacking, seem to be lively, but you yourself know best how effective they are.

In fact, the essence of B2B marketing is H2H (Human to Human), because all target marketing focuses on the customer’s secondary identity.

In addition to their profession, everyone has a second identity. If you build a relationship with it through brand influence, it will be a new marketing opportunity, which will generate unlimited imagination, thus seizing the user's mind and playing a role in emotional response when the user makes judgments.

For example, when IBM was in the middle stage of its development, its business growth was slow due to negative impressions such as "arrogance", "poor service" and "bureaucracy".

In order to change the status quo, they launched a promotional campaign and launched a global advertising campaign with the theme "IBM has made a comeback", influencing individuals and the public through small things around them, highlighting IBM's approachable impression, especially its "customer-centric" attitude, and once again reshaping IBM's leadership in technology.

In addition to IBM, B2B companies such as Intel and Tetra Pak all start from the human perspective, because the final users and final buyers are also individuals, and individuals must have emotions.

Although people always think that they are rational and will evaluate options, assess the consequences, and then make solid, well-thought-out and reasonable decisions, when people make decisions, they are unconsciously influenced by emotions.

Research shows that ads with purely emotional content are about twice as profitable as ads with purely rational content (31% vs. 16%, respectively).

This research result is jaw-dropping, and it also indirectly reveals the numbness and homogeneity of the B2B marketing communication world. Whether it is MarTech's growth marketing or blindly using product feature wars and price wars, it will only become more and more limited and narrow.

Therefore, to dispel marketing myths, we must start with long-term brand building and investment.

In B2B marketing, always remember that the product is attractive to someone. No matter what the product is, it must be humanized, and then drive the emotions of the target customers' decision-making and establish a brand experience that can be integrated into the relevant emotional channels.

2. Focus of Brand and Marketing

Building a brand is a long and drawn-out process, while marketing is short-sighted and quick to profit, so in a narrow sense the two are contradictory, but in a broad sense they complement each other.

When I first entered the industry, someone told me that corporate brands have two dimensions: one is based on maintaining image and public relations; the other is promotion with marketing as the goal. The two positions are independent and parallel and are completed by different teams.

In fact, I believe that the meaning of brand, operation methods, and relationship with marketing are different for different companies at different stages of development.

The brands of start-up companies are mostly considered based on market clues, and they focus on ensuring that every penny invested can directly bring visible benefits. However, using content as a marketing tool cannot bring obvious results in the short term, so there are highly purposeful working methods such as PR cooperation, offline activities, online marketing, and cultivating seed users.

In short, all objectives are centered on obtaining clues: target - portrait - channel - delivery - data analysis - return on investment.

The general marketing logic is as follows:

Large-scale enterprises gradually have a demand for industry influence and product reputation, so they will gradually move from simple "clue assessment" to brand image.

The operating methods at this stage are either centered around customer value services, such as customer service, user operations, etc., or analyzing the industry, creating opinions, and establishing a unique image by producing white papers, research reports, sharing meetings, etc.

This stage mainly focuses on the experience of existing customers and the maintenance of potential customers. Only by calming down and focusing on research and creating valuable content for them can customers become more proactive.

For large-scale enterprises, when market leads come uninvited, brand influence becomes even more important.

Therefore, the brand positioning must be clear. It runs through the entire company's spirit and guides any behavior in market operations. Of course, maintaining the brand and shaping the image are also the main tasks at this stage, such as public relations, public welfare activities, industry norms, etc., to highlight the company's social responsibility and sense of mission.

3. Control the direction of brand marketing?

No matter what we do, we must have a very clear purpose and path. If we start without thinking anything through, it will only waste personal energy and company resources.

As far as I know, many product managers will repeatedly ask the demander and themselves, what is its purpose when judging demand? What do customers want? Does it comply with product planning? How can I achieve this? Only when there are no doubts will we mobilize resources to start development.

As marketers, when we do brand marketing, we must first figure out what the company's vision is? How is the brand positioned? What is the direction of strategic decision-making? How should I execute it? How to measure after execution? Once you think through this series of questions, your implementation path will naturally become clear.

Below, based on my own practical experience, I share the strategic decomposition ideas of the Xunlian Cloud Platform for your reference.

VSEM is a classic analysis model. To put it simply, it is a logical deduction: what value do you want to operate (vision) - how to achieve it (strategy, method) - what indicators can reflect the value of your operation (pointer) - how to collect these indicators (design methods and strategies for obtaining data) - data feedback, correction (data analysis, performance, adjustment).

In short, you need to have a clear purpose first before you can have the means, instead of just following the trend without thinking anything through. That will only cause a huge waste of the company's resources.

4. The value of content platform to brand marketing

Finally, I would like to propose the concept of a content middle platform for B2B marketing.

I believe that content is always the soul of an organization and even the main embodiment of a brand’s value. Any great marketing campaign is based on the promotion of content. There are countless examples, including Huawei's patriotism, Bilibili's overnight increase of 4 billion yuan in value, and the lifestyle advocated by Xiaohongshu.

But what kind of content can play this role?

It must be high-quality, high-nutrition, and highly recognizable content knowledge, otherwise it may have a counterproductive effect. Especially in the B2B industry, the brand's political nature, professionalism, and emotional connection all require in-depth content and unique perspectives to maintain.

So, where does this content come from? I think an organization’s content operations also require a middle platform.

Its background is the company's mission and vision, product design concepts and development materials, customer solutions and success cases, industry development status and market analysis.

Its front desk not only provides the foundation for the sales team, community operation team, new media operation team, and even the business growth of all members of the organization, but also serves as the organization's unified external image.

Therefore, this content middle platform is crucial to the organization. It not only represents the processing of organizational source materials and their easy-to-understand delivery, but also requires cross-domain integration and sublimation of professional knowledge.

Many well-known organizations have their own research institutes, which in theory can be regarded as content middle platforms. However, for corporate marketing purposes, the nature of the research institutes needs to be more down-to-earth, diversified, and commercialized. That should be enough.

Author: No Sad Autumn Guest

Source: No Sad Autumn Guest