Practical Methodology for B-side Operations to Acquire 50,000+ Customers

The article is divided into three parts:

1. Overview of Enterprise SaaS in China
2. 6 points that must be clarified in B-side operations
3. B-side customer acquisition practical cases

1. Overview of Enterprise SaaS in China

Looking at yourself from a global perspective, I believe you will have a different understanding of B-side operations. (Note: The following pictures are from iResearch Consulting Group. Please delete if infringed.)

China's enterprise-level SaaS is mainly divided into two types: business vertical and industry vertical. From the perspective of market size: among business verticals, the CRM market is the largest, followed by customer service and call centers, ERP and communications. HRM, OA collaboration and financial and tax management tied for fourth place.

China's enterprise SaaS market segment structure in 2018: vertical business

Among industry verticals, benefiting from the rise of new retail, smart retail, and borderless retail concepts, the retail e-commerce market has the largest scale, followed by medical care, logistics, and catering.

China's enterprise SaaS market segment structure in 2018: industry vertical

Major companies such as BAT have accelerated the layout of enterprise-level products, adopting a dimensionality reduction approach with entry-level products (IM, OA and other fields with high-frequency and relatively common demands), which only involve common basic functions themselves, and then rely on advantages such as brand, traffic, and capital to attract third-party partners to create an open ecosystem.

China's Enterprise SaaS Industry Map in 2019: Business Vertical

Most traditional leading enterprise management software vendors adopt strategies similar to Salesforce.com, which resolves the contradiction between SaaS product standardization and customer demand customization by building a PaaS platform, allowing customers to engage in secondary development based on the PaaS platform, while attracting third-party partners to join the open ecosystem.

China's Enterprise SaaS Industry Map in 2019: Industry Vertical

As of now, big companies such as BAT are developing rapidly with the help of their huge traffic. Traditional enterprise software management vendors, beware.

2. 6 points that must be clarified for B-side operations

1. Clarify operational needs

Enterprises can be roughly divided into small and micro enterprises, medium-sized enterprises and large enterprises according to their scale. Enterprises of different scales have different service demands. Small and micro enterprises have backward information construction, so standardized products can meet their needs. Medium-sized enterprises have more customized demands than small and micro enterprises, so products with industry characteristics can meet their needs. Large enterprises have higher demands for customized products.

In the domestic environment, there are relevant policy supports for the informatization construction and digital transformation of small and micro enterprises, the product prices are not high, the market needs to be expanded, and there is enough room for operations. However, for the products and services of large enterprises, the high price is secondary, and having strong relationships is also important (refer to Kingdee and UFIDA. In the traditional software era, the functions of the two products were not much different, but UFIDA basically covered schools and governments). For operations, there is not much room for development.

2. Clarify the pricing model

The sales model of traditional software manufacturers in the past decade has basically been a buyout model, but with the emergence of SaaS, this model is no longer applicable. After being tested by most startups, the completely free business model has also turned to charging due to pressure from cash flow and capital.

Now many manufacturers basically adopt a model of free trial for x months (as short as 3 days and as long as 1 month) before paying. If you adopt a model that combines free first and paid later (multiple dimensions such as number of users, functional modules, value-added services, etc.), coupled with the characteristics of difficult and lazy migration of B-side data, it will be a major breakthrough in B-side operations.

Insert-About the pitfalls of price:

We once held a big promotion event, offering 10% to 90% off and various discount coupons, and also set up a sharing invitation mechanism. After the event ended, we found that the people who used the discount coupons were basically customers who were ready to buy and waiting to grab the coupons, and there were very few completely new customers. It was not worth the loss, and it was embarrassing...

Tips: Promotion is not applicable to most enterprise-level products. Products are king.

B-end products are not as prone to impulse buying as C-end products, and their price has little impact on purchases. For an enterprise, the decisive factors are whether the product functions are satisfactory, the performance is stable, and the data is secure. Imagine if the product does not meet the company's requirements, as a purchaser, user, or business owner, even if it is cheap, only 100 yuan, would you buy it? What's the use of buying it?

3. Identify your target customers

Enterprise-level products can be roughly divided into these two categories. If the product is business-vertical, it is generally necessary to identify the user groups of this business to acquire customers. For example, for HR products, the decision is usually made by the HR director, and large offline exhibitions such as HR summits can be held.

If the product is industry-vertical, it generally targets a specific industry to acquire customers. For example, Erweihuo, which focuses on the catering industry, can form a catering industry association to provide free related courses and salons, which will attract a steady stream of traffic from catering peers.

4. Identify users and decision makers

The purchasing decision-making level of B-end products is complex and the decision-making chain is also very long. Users may think it is good, but decision-makers may think it is expensive and it may be passed. For the operation of B-end products, the core is to deal with decision-makers from top to bottom.

If the user and decision maker of your product are the same person (called an enterprise-level product with 2C attributes), you can adopt a bottom-up operation path and acquire customers from the C-end through growth fission.

For example, our cloud accounting product is highly professional, and its users and decision makers are basically accountants. Therefore, we can target the accounting group to obtain larger traffic from the C-end, and then convert it through content marketing. This is also the methodology I will share next.

5. Identify your North Star Metric

Is it registered? CAC? LTV? Or NPS?

Many B-side operations use CAC or LTV as the North Star indicator, but for B-side operations, NPS may be the most suitable North Star indicator.

Only when the product and service are good can the customer's net recommendation value be high. A high customer net recommendation value means that old customers will bring in more new customers, which also means that the customer acquisition cost is reduced. Good service will increase customer satisfaction, and the total customer lifetime value will also be improved accordingly.

This is easy to say, but it involves many departments and coordination, and the road is long and arduous...

Insert - About the pitfalls of the North Star indicator:

We once used registration as the North Star indicator. We blindly promoted registrations and held activities, which consumed huge amounts of manpower and resources. However, very few of them were ultimately converted into purchases, and the input and output were not proportional. The purpose of the B-side is to sell products, so do not fall into the vicious circle of blindly attracting registrations.

Tips: NPS may be the most appropriate North Star indicator for B-side operations.

6. Identify the most effective customer acquisition channels

Putting aside Alibaba's DingTalk, Tencent's WeChat for Business and others, which have their own huge traffic source channels, and the huge agency channels of traditional software manufacturers.

Currently, the largest channels for B-side customer acquisition through the Internet are mostly SEO and SEM, but as CAC becomes higher and higher, expanding multi-channel customer acquisition and finding the most effective way to acquire customers are also one of the compulsory courses for B-side operations.

3. Practical Case Study of B-side Operation

Product: Kingdee Jingdou Cloud Accounting - Enterprise Intelligent Finance and Taxation Management SaaS Target User Profile:

• Target group: Accountants of small and micro enterprises (the users and decision makers of this product are basically accountants)
• Education level: No professional title, mainly junior professional titles, few intermediate professional titles and above
• Region: The acceptance rate is high in first- and second-tier cities such as coastal areas

Customer acquisition method : By creating a closed loop of the WeChat ecosystem, supplemented by fission activities, the accounting group is settled in WeChat groups, personal accounts, mini-programs and public accounts, and then users are screened and converted through relevant content marketing.

Operation path: Here we only use the operation path within the WeChat ecosystem as a representative. For other customer acquisition methods such as BD, ASO, and old customers bringing in new customers, please see [Panorama of B-side Customer Acquisition Channels] and I will write about it in detail next time.

Turn the phone around and tilt your head to look hahahaha

Carrying system: The content marketing system (users need to register to receive courses, materials, etc.) is connected with the CRM system. Operations can check user behavior tracks in the background of the content marketing system, automatically/manually determine whether it is a mature business opportunity, and then push it to sales for follow-up. If unsuccessful business opportunities are not successful, they can be incubated again. Operational results: As of September 1, the WeChat ecosystem had more than 50,000 business opportunities and nearly 500 orders, and the B-side operational exploration has achieved initial results.

Author: Luo Gongzi

Source: B2B Operation Notes