How much money has been wasted on B2B brand marketing?

B2B brand marketing , especially in China, has always been an embarrassing topic.

The embarrassing thing is that at the beginning everyone thought that B2B did not need marketing, let alone a brand.

An industry is very vertical, so who doesn't know each other? Salespeople can get familiar with the industry by visiting more exhibitions. As for other outsiders, it's useless to know them. Brand marketing is something that C-end companies of fast-moving consumer goods need to consider.

Even many people working in the B2B industry are so exaggerated that even their family members cannot describe what kind of magical thing they are doing.

but!

I didn’t expect that the competition on the B-side is becoming more and more fierce, and business is becoming difficult! Of course~Everyone is starting their own business, do you think this is a joke? There is someone to accompany you in any business.

Once the competition came, many companies could no longer sit still and began to think about recruiting.

The stages at exhibitions are getting bigger and bigger, and the brochures and promotional videos are becoming more and more exquisite. Even airports and train stations have seen many propaganda slogans that make passers-by feel "powerful". Search engine optimization, public accounts, and even short videos and live broadcasts on the Internet have become standard features of enterprises, and everyone has begun to follow in the footsteps of B2C companies.

The "planning" department was established, exhibitions and activities were organized, press conferences were held, and H5 was developed...

A chip manufacturer's deployment at the airport

Over the years, I have had some work and entrepreneurial experience in the B2B field. Many years ago, I worked in the think tank of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I also served as the marketing director of DeepGlint, one of China's earliest artificial intelligence and computer vision companies. Later, I served as the president of the Greater China region of the Sino-Korean joint venture InkTec.

Through exploration and observation along the way, I have accumulated my own set of practical methods and experiences in the process of B2B brand marketing. After providing guidance and application to some B2B companies, the effect was immediate.

In the process of in-depth understanding of enterprises, I found that B2B enterprises face two common problems in brand marketing:

1. Not admitting (not thinking) that you are doing brand marketing and not realizing that you have spent a lot of money.

2. They think their products or technology (service) are king and do not need brand marketing.

These two seemingly contradictory perceptions are precisely the current situation of many companies. In the process of half-concealed consumption, existing B2B companies have actually wasted a lot of money and missed opportunities.

When I meet many companies that insist that brand marketing is "unimportant", what I see are the piles of expensively printed brochures that are piled up in their warehouses and gathering dust, the passionate and incomprehensible promotional videos, the gorgeous booths that are dismantled in three days at the annual exhibition, the various customer development "fees" that the sales staff give to the other party, the accounts on Douyin that have only a single-digit number of fans but are maintained by a dedicated person, the truckloads of customer gifts that are carefully prepared every year, the thank-you dinners, the keywords purchased in the search engines every year... (I just want to ask you if it hurts?)

Show network construction diagram

When I was working in a B2B company, I found that the expenses mentioned above were not small.

When adding up the salaries of marketing-related personnel and other figures, I was surprised to find that the expenses were not inferior to those incurred by a 2C consumer product company of the same size.

However, the secretive attitude towards brand marketing has caused this expense to be scattered in every corner like a handful of "invisible sand". If you don't count it, you won't know. Once you count it, you will be shocked .

I have also worried many times during financial reviews whether some "expenses" should be counted as sales expenses or marketing expenses. Looking around, there is not even a reference target in the industry.

We did a lot of brand marketing and spent a lot of money, but none of it was done after strategic brand planning. Not only did I waste money but I also delayed things. The efficiency is really low.

After thinking about it, there are actually three problems of "cognitive gap" in this.

If the CEOs of B2B companies can understand these three things, they can save money, avoid unnecessary mistakes, and enjoy the first wave of dividends from B2B corporate brand marketing.

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The first cognitive gap is: Does B2B need professional brand marketing nowadays?

This cognitive gap exists in: the old idea of ​​not using "brand marketing" VS the new corporate environment where any company needs brand marketing

It is recommended that all B2B corporate executives think seriously about this issue. In the past few decades, China's B2B companies have had a relatively comfortable survival, and they basically made money by relying on "information asymmetry" and finding opportunities in a "hidden industry" that required a lot of industry knowledge and was difficult for ordinary people to access. They could make money by relying on OEM B2B or raw materials B2B.

All "invisible B2B" industries are basically blue oceans. Hold exhibitions, grow all the way, maintain regularly, and have stable customers.

Is it still the case now? The future, or is it?

Let’s look at the United States and Europe, which have temporarily taken the lead in economy over the past 100 years. If B2B could “sit back and reap the benefits”, there wouldn’t be so many well-known brands that have been marketed at such great cost: Intel, Shell, DuPont, Oracle, Cisco, Tetra Pak, General Motors, Boeing…

Looking into the future, after the epidemic, changes in the global economy and the advent of new technologies such as 5G will change the entire B2B brand marketing environment. "Intensified competition" and "innovation out of the circle" are two very obvious characteristics.

We keep talking about B2B, but what exactly is B2B?

There are actually two types of B2B companies: one is traditional B2B , such as equipment, tools, raw materials, basic facilities, services, etc. Traditional exhibitions, printing machinery, accessories, warehouse leasing, talent agencies, etc. all belong to this category.

Another type is new B2B projects that have emerged with the rapid development of the Internet and new technologies in the past few decades, such as new technologies, new species, new services, new models, etc. Industrial applications of 5G, cloud, chips, artificial intelligence, venture capital institutions, ZhaoX.com, SaaS, etc. are all considered new B2B.

These two categories increasingly need brand marketing. As competition among the former intensifies and the latter gradually influences and changes them, many traditional B2Bs that have transformed faster have also gained financing and digitalization. As for the latter, not to mention, the genes of the people carry the flavor of "the light of human wisdom" from birth.

The original narrow vertical industry circle has been broken, and various new roles such as investors, new customers, and new entrants have poured in. Without professional and systematic brand marketing and relying only on simple production and sales, the competitiveness of such enterprises will be seriously challenged.

The anxious companies just casually set up marketing positions but fail to truly pay attention to management and do not truly change their mindset. All the money spent is paid for anxiety.

It's like, you think you are sitting there reading a book, but in fact your mind is a mess, and just turning the pages of the book wastes time doing other things.

If you’re going to do it, do it well. Otherwise it’s better not to do it.

The second cognitive gap is: What does B2B corporate communication with Chinese characteristics rely on?

Since we are an enterprise with Chinese characteristics, we cannot always refer to foreign countries. Moreover, the foreign marketing theories we can get are still in the 1980s, and the key is that there are not many about B2B. In the future, our development will be far ahead of others, and there will be no one to follow.

Therefore, you can only face your own problems by yourself.

In the past, in the era of traditional industries, the B2B field was mostly composed of agents, industry and trade, OEM and other companies, which always relied on sales mouths and sales legs. Therefore, salespeople are generally the most powerful people in a company. What brand marketing do you want? Sales is everything.

Later we saw the arrival of the Internet, new technologies, new ideas, and the emergence of truly original technology experts. Our B2B suddenly became the world of new things, and at this time many companies were full of confidence in technology and ideas.

It's good to be full of confidence, but when it comes to user communication, everyone fails.

B2B has completely turned into an "information cocoon".

Every B2B company has its own "jargon system", which is a mixture of professional terminology and industry jargon , mixed with the nicknames of companies in several industries. When Lao Wang and Lao Zhang shout, outsiders are completely confused.

But, here comes the problem.

Investors, cross-industry partners, decision-makers among customers, potential customers, leaders at the regulatory level, and even channel partners who are faced with new tools and technologies...these people are all outsiders.

In the past, B2B companies relied on meals, tea and wine to conduct face-to-face explanations, and relied on exhibitions, brochures and dealers to popularize knowledge layer by layer. Nowadays, these communication methods are too slow. Especially since the outbreak of the epidemic, people have moved around less and exhibitions have dropped sharply. The brand marketing and communication efficiency of B2B companies has shown a clear cliff-like decline.

So what will our B2B communications rely on in the future?

Relying on truly spontaneous brand combing and digital marketing within the enterprise. Companies that continue to confuse sales and brand marketing will suffer sooner or later, while those that separate the two early will enjoy the benefits of brand marketing.

I have said on many occasions: Brand is the biggest Matthew effect in the commercial era.

This Matthew effect has first-mover benefits in some vertical fields.

To put it bluntly, the industry is not big, and the companies that face up to their brand issues first will benefit first.

Next I will talk about where the key point lies if we want to face this matter squarely.

The third cognitive gap is: What is the focus of B2B brand marketing?

I wrote an article two days ago titled "Future Marketing: B2C speaks jargon, B2B speaks plain language". The trend mentioned in it is that in the future B2B companies will have to work hard on the "expression" of brand marketing.

Because: The key point of B2C brand marketing is to [find traffic and channels] , so finding a slogan to promote it is a routine action.

However, for B2B brand marketing, if you continue to go this route, you will end up wasting a lot of money. Firstly, a slogan with just one sentence cannot fully explain what B2B is all about. Secondly, B2B users are almost all existing and accurate, so the difficulty lies in how to convince them.

Therefore, the focus of B2B brand marketing is to create content that can be spread. This focus has been completely missed in the past.

The reason is very simple:

The CEO can't take care of it, the people in charge of technology are too lazy to "translate", the marketing department has no motivation or ability to innovate, and the sales department is only concerned with making connections and negotiating prices.

The industry threshold is high and other people cannot enter, so no one is interested in doing this.

Over the past few years, I accidentally put in some hard work on this matter, did some sorting and research, and applied some methods to several B2B industries. I found that without increasing the investment and communication budget, the brand marketing effect can be greatly improved by simply leading the team to shift the focus of work. Sometimes, marketing work can even be "profitable".

After reading this, you may think that these three cognitive differences are not that big. I am eager to know the specific methods, but experience tells me that the simpler the cognitive gap, the more deadly the consequences will be.

Management’s awareness is the most important methodology in this matter .

If the CEO of a B2B company does not have sufficient understanding of brand marketing, then no matter how hard the marketing department tries, the results are likely to be weak.

I have always insisted that a company’s chief brand officer should and must be the CEO. If he believes that this matter is important and that he needs to take the lead in trying to change it, then no matter what method he uses, success is not far away.

The best way to spend less money is to think more before taking action.

Similarly, should you work in B2B brand marketing or spend your precious professional time in companies that have no knowledge of this area?

If you are the marketing director of a B2B company, your first job should be to have a deep chat with the CEO to find out his attitude towards brand marketing before deciding whether to join the company.

Author: Li Qian talks about brands

Source: Li Qian talks about brands