How to do To B marketing?

In recent years, the topic of To B marketing has become very common. To B and To C, these two product models have different marketing strategies. To C products have a large audience and many operating methods, while To B products have a relatively small audience. It takes a certain amount of time to find the precise target group and convert them into paying users. Therefore, how to do To B product marketing is not a simple question. The author of this article tells us some of his views.

Recently, more and more people have been asking about 2B marketing . As B-side empowerment industries such as enterprise services and industrial Internet have received attention, the topic of B-side marketing has become increasingly popular in recent years. In fact, I personally have not studied 2B marketing in depth, so I can only briefly express my views, which may not be accurate.

The logic of 2B enterprises and 2C enterprises is completely different. 2B enterprises usually have large scale, different customers have different customized needs, and the focus is on after-sales service operations. Many companies have customer success departments, which basically help customers succeed.

In short, B-side marketing does not need to pursue mass traffic exposure, but the focus is on penetrating into circle groups and obtaining business opportunity clues.

It is for this reason that some industries rely heavily on sales relationship marketing, and sales meetings, industry summits, and industry exhibitions have always been relatively effective methods. Now there are also many companies that like to do content marketing, such as publishing industry white papers, industry methodologies, live broadcasts and other content to gain active attention from target audiences.

We might as well sort out B-side marketing from the perspective of the process chain. Simply put, such companies usually only need to do three things: acquire customers - conversion - service.

If we break it down further, customer acquisition is actually a matter of accurate traffic, which can be divided into active traffic and passive traffic.

• Active traffic: naturally refers to sales personnel participating in industry conferences, industry activities, looking for target customers, etc. B-end marketing is different from C-end marketing, and there may never be a situation where "good wine needs no bush", so the active pursuit of sales personnel is very important.
• Passive traffic: It is based on the business needs of B-side customers themselves, and sets out hooks for potential customers to find you, such as participating in industry exhibitions, keyword searches, recommendations from old customers, and the dissemination of industry content that many people in the industry like to do, which has become more popular in recent years.

But no matter what, according to most relevant reports and survey data, offline activities and sales meetings have always been the most effective means of acquiring customers for many years and have not changed, so it is still necessary for sales personnel to attend industry conferences.

What B-end companies need to do is empower sales staff, which is very different from C-end companies. The focus of B-end marketing is not on building a brand, mass communication, or gaining attention, but on how to empower sales staff to ultimately sign orders. After all, the result that the company wants is orders.

Now let's look at the conversion link. When customers choose suppliers, they simply consider the following points: brand, product, price, and service.

However, B-end products have the following characteristics:

1. Users and decision makers are often not the same, and it is often the boss who makes the final decision for employees to use;
2. The cost of trial and error is very high, and there are often not many opportunities for in-depth trials;
3. Decision makers focus on the final effect, that is, whether it can solve the fundamental problem and improve efficiency, and are relatively insensitive to price;
4. Follow-up service and technical support are needed, but this is difficult to compare before making a decision;
5. There are industry attributes, and the needs of different industries vary greatly.

In short, back-end services are relatively difficult to demonstrate, and when there is not much difference in products and prices, customers will focus on the brand. However, the brand here is not the brand in our traditional sense, but requires more industry endorsement to increase trust.

The most common way to increase customer trust is through industry case packaging. For example, if a cola company sees that Coca-Cola is using your product, it will naturally think that your product may also be suitable for them. This increases their trust and they will naturally be motivated to get to know you.

Some large 2B companies may also be able to obtain government endorsement. The issues involved are sometimes more complicated, and small and medium-sized enterprises usually do not get involved. But in general, constantly packaging successful cases, seeking industry endorsements, and turning this information into communication materials is the most effective way for B-side companies to build their brands.

Another point is that when customers are in the final stage of making a decision on selecting a supplier, they need to give sales staff a certain amount of price flexibility. This is also the most effective way for companies to empower sales staff.

Some industries rely heavily on relationship marketing, and the space for kickbacks and business banquets requires companies to provide corresponding support to sales staff.

There is no need to say much about the final service section, which is nothing more than achieving customer retention and stimulating them to recommend and share. Many 2B companies hold industry summits and other activities, and will invite customer partners to make relevant outputs.

Generally speaking, B-side marketing is more sales-oriented. All marketing actions are aimed at enabling sales behavior and obtaining sales leads. All branding operations are also aimed at increasing the chances of closing orders. This is the biggest difference between 2B and 2C.

Finally, I still have to mention the issue of marketing digital transformation. Marketing digitalization is obviously a major trend in the future and a transformation that mature companies have to make. Currently, when talking about 2B marketing digitalization, everyone can think of companies such as salesforce and adobe. Various popular concepts such as CRM, CDP, DMP, SAAS, PAAS are also relatively vague.

In fact, the logic of 2B marketing digitalization is very simple, which is to standardize the process of customer acquisition and conversion, and continuously iterate and optimize this set of standardized actions through continuous operational data. When there is enough data, different marketing models can be established for customers with different segmented labels.

For example, through a data-based system, we can summarize how to communicate with customers, how often to communicate, and what content to send in order to most effectively close an order. Then, this entire process can be replicated as standardized actions to increase order-signing efficiency. Based on this set of standard actions, the company can form its own marketing toolbox and take targeted measures.

Digitalization can also effectively reduce resource waste and increase the reuse of existing resources.

To give a simple example, many 2B companies now like to create industry content to spread and acquire customers, but in the process, they tend to turn themselves into small industry media, reporting on all the big and small things in the industry. However, if they really turn their new media into industry media, not only will the investment be large but it will also be completely unnecessary.

What companies should do is to accumulate content into a content library and push different content to customers at different stages, instead of re-creating the content every time, which would be inefficient.

According to consumer psychology, when a customer comes into contact with a product, there is definitely a series of processes: knowing - understanding - trusting - converting - recommending. Different stages require different content to stimulate and promote. Companies only need to label customers and push different content in a targeted manner to increase their transaction rates. In fact, there is no need to work hard to make themselves an industry media.

However, in fact, not many companies can use WeChat public accounts to push different content to different fans with different tags.

Of course, we have also contacted related companies and found that the marketing digitalization of B-side companies relies more on top-down promotion. In fact, internal promotion is a relatively challenging task, and digitalization itself is also a process with long-term returns.

There will definitely be a stage in the early stages where the investment costs of enterprises increase, so most companies actually lack the determination to digitize.

Generally speaking, B-side marketing tends to focus on the sales behavior itself, which is a relatively complicated topic.

The area of ​​marketing digitalization is even more confusing. In the past few years, many enterprise service companies claimed to be China's Salesforce and Adobe, but it seems that there has been no voice in the past two years. Whether a Chinese version of Salesforce can emerge is still a mystery in the industry.

Author: Zheng Zhuoran

Source: Spread Gymnastics (ID: chuanboticao)