Five paths to building a TOB brand

When I was thinking about the issues of TOB brand and communication, I drew a triangular diagram.

The three levels of TOB brand communication needs have been basically sorted out. The four types of TOB companies that do not need to do brand communication much only need to do a good job of [company introduction + sales + brand infrastructure].

The two TOB companies at the top of the pyramid still need to build brands. As for how to build the brands, first of all, there are huge differences in brand building between TOB and TOC. I drew a table to summarize it.

Generally speaking, TOB mainly builds brand awareness and enhances brand trust through the communication of functions, rationality and values.

When it comes to different TOB brands, the ways of building them vary greatly, and there is no universal "routine". This is also what everyone is troubled by. I have only recently sorted out the following five types, and each type has a different approach.

— 1 —Element Brand

Components or raw materials that play a key role in the quality and function of the final product are called "key elements".

Typical representatives are Intel, Huawei Smart Car, and CATL.

For example, the CPU is a key element in a finished computer, but generally speaking, the end user of the product cannot see the accessories, and consumers can only see the appearance of the computer. Intel chose to build CPU into a brand, allowing "Intel inside" to appear in various computer advertisements and affixed to various computer products. It continuously promoted in the terminal market, educated consumers, and won wider recognition. After Intel established a very high brand awareness in the minds of consumers, it was able to influence consumers' purchasing decisions, thereby gaining the right to speak and influence over all computer manufacturers and grabbing excess profits.

For example, when it comes to new energy vehicles, people pay more attention to their intelligence and endurance attributes. This means that smart car systems and batteries are key elements and are very worthy of being built into element brands. At present, Huawei's intelligent automobile system and CATL have such trends.

This method of turning the key elements of a product into a brand in the final product consumer market, influencing the final consumer's purchasing decision and thus influencing downstream manufacturers is called factor branding.

The logic behind its implementation is that the suppliers of these elements, in conjunction with finished product manufacturers, directly build and promote the brand to consumers who purchase the final product. By influencing their decision-making behavior, this in turn forces the finished product manufacturers to have a stronger demand for cooperation with themselves.

Two criteria for becoming an essential brand

The functional value of the product itself

Importance of the product to the end user

To build an element brand, the steps to follow are:

The first step is to analyze the customer value chain of the final product.

To build an element brand, you first need to know which product elements play a key role in the final product market and whether they can influence consumers' purchasing decisions. This directly determines whether you need to build an element brand and how to build it.

The second step is branding of factor products

After finding the key elements in a product's customer value chain, the next thing to do is to brand the element products. Branding is to facilitate recognition and memory by the end consumers.

Therefore, you should choose a name that is easy to remember and pronounce, and make a striking and recognizable logo. Don't use industry terms or technical concepts as your brand name.

The third step is to create consumption standards

The last and most important step is to strive to turn your own brand into an important decision-making factor and selection criterion for end consumers when purchasing products.

For factor brands, the goal of marketing is to place their own products in the context of the final consumer's purchase decision-making process, to make themselves the consumer's purchasing standard, and to influence their decision-making and purchasing behavior.

To achieve this goal, a commonly used marketing method is joint marketing. For example, Intel and PC manufacturers jointly promote the Intel brand.

This is how to build an element brand.

2. Personal Branding

Intellectual service enterprise——personal brand

For service-oriented enterprises that mainly rely on human intellectual power, such as advertising companies and consulting companies, they do not have specific actual products and cannot advertise their products. Therefore, building an expert personal brand is the brand building method with the highest ROI.

Its internal logic is: sharing high-quality knowledge content → increasing personal influence → Earned Media (earning free media traffic) → building an expert personal brand, increasing customer trust → attracting customer cooperation.

The specific strategy is four words: write books and establish theories

Because there are no product advertisements, this type of personal brand only wants to gain influence, so the knowledge content can be very practical rather than just soft articles.

Through continuous writing and output of knowledge, one can continuously expand one's personal influence, be invited by the media to live broadcast, give speeches, and share, obtain free traffic from the media, and continuously expand one's influence, forming a positive cycle and achieving what Teacher Liu Run calls the "enhanced loop."

Ogilvy, the founder of Ogilvy, wrote the advertising bible "Confessions of an Advertising Man". It was influenced by this book that I went to a marketing company in Beijing.

Xiao Ma Song and Kong Shou are constantly updating their public accounts and publishing books; Liu Run, the founder of Runmi Consulting, and the brothers Hua and Hua are all pursuing a "producer's degree".

It was only in recent years that I discovered that the owners of good advertising/consulting companies were all writing books and building their personal brands, and that’s when I started to follow this path.

If personal branding is done well, it can not only increase customer trust and attract customer cooperation, but also make money directly through personal branding.

Liu Run's "5-Minute Business School" earns tens of millions of yuan a year (249 yuan x 500,000 students), and the Knowledge Planet + official account also earns tens of millions of yuan a year.

Therefore, intellectual service companies can use personal brands to drive corporate brands. If they do well, they not only don’t need to spend money, but they can also make money.

Liu Run can be said to be a representative of this type. In the ToB consulting business, he set an iron rule for himself: "Never go to the client's site for pre-sales" - if the entrepreneur is unwilling to come to his small office to discuss cooperation, it means that his "reputation" is not enough. As long as the customer is not won by "reputation" as the first reason, and is not his real customer, he will continue to write to improve his reputation.

Through the continuous output of works, Liu Run's "reputation" has become increasingly prominent, which has also promoted the corporate brand of "Runmi Consulting" and a steady stream of consulting business.

This is a very good "passive attraction" customer acquisition method for ToB business. The customers acquired in this way already have a high level of trust, which can greatly reduce transaction costs and increase transaction rates.

Therefore, for intellectual service-oriented TOB enterprises, achieving the "passive attraction" customer acquisition effect of luxury goods through the creation of personal brands is a difficult task at first but becomes easier later.

What you invest is time and energy, and what you get out is monetary benefits.

There are five steps to building a personal brand:

1. Find your own value positioning

2. Knowledge system around positioning

3. Find the right communication medium

4. Long-term value output

5. Commercialization of personal brand

— 3 —Knowledge Brand

As a total solution provider and leader, we can build a knowledge brand

Knowledge brands actually exist in both TOC and TOB fields.

For example, Xiaomi's marketing started with Mi fans. In the early years, I also participated in the Mi Fans Festival to learn secretly. The core of Mi fans are still the first batch of technical fans who discussed the use and optimization of the Android system in the Xiaomi forum. The Xiaomi forum contains a lot of knowledge about the use of mobile phones and systems. Xiaomi's earliest mobile phones also won in terms of systems.

For example, Perfect Diary’s rise on Xiaohongshu started with sharing beauty knowledge with consumers, such as lipstick swatches, how to draw eyebrows, and how to use eyebrow pencils.

Among TOB companies, the more typical ones are Zhiqu Baichuan and Mingyuan Cloud.
Zhiqu Baichuan has produced a large amount of TOB marketing knowledge content, making the industry think of Zhiqu Baichuan first when talking about marketing cloud, and successfully built a knowledge brand. Zhiqu Baichuan's content team has about 4 people, and content marketing brings 60% of customer leads to the company.

The first goal of a knowledge brand is to create a direct association between the domain and the brand in the minds of customers. For example, marketing cloud brings to mind Zhiqu Baichuan, and the content can bring in a large number of customers.

The highest level is to create a profitable industry media, such as Mingyuan Cloud Real Estate Research Institute;

Mingyuan Real Estate Research Institute has a new media team of more than 20 people and a public account with millions of followers. It has a complete knowledge "map" of real estate research industry websites, reports, books, journals, courses, industry summits, salon events, and industry ecological exchanges, covering most real estate industry practitioners.

When most real estate companies have learned this knowledge system, it will be natural for them to use Mingyuan Cloud software, which best matches this knowledge system.

The implementation logic of TOB knowledge brand can follow the following steps:

Step 1: Establishing the Research Institute

It is recommended that the research institute form a professional content team and link a wide range of internal and external expert groups through resources;

Step 2: Industry-systematic knowledge content planning, production, and distribution to cover as many target customers as possible in the industry

Step 3: Accumulate content and become a well-known knowledge academy in the industry

The establishment of a knowledge brand is to establish professional content connections with target customers through the distribution of valuable in-depth knowledge content, and ultimately become a knowledge academy in the minds of customers.

Nowadays, when selling SaaS or software products, it is often necessary to provide consulting services to make it easier to impress customers. As Luo Zhenyu said: "Sell goods as knowledge, and sell knowledge as goods."

It should be noted here that both personal brands and knowledge brands are centered on content, but there are huge differences in content form and operation methods.

Knowledge brand content is created by the company's content team, with mind maps, reports, white papers, books, self-organized events and other heavy content as the core, and resources are leveraged to mobilize a large number of external experts to co-create content. The goal results are to improve the brand's professional image and to achieve customer acquisition and conversion to help close orders. Therefore, it is necessary to use heavy content to let customers fill in personal information (leave information), download materials or register for events. The company uses this to collect customer leads and finally transfer the leads to sales to follow up on the orders. If you just let users read the article and then it's over, then it has no marketing value.

Personal brand content mainly consists of in-depth articles signed by individuals, with personal speeches as a megaphone and personality and personal image as a display. The goal is to increase the individual's influence in the industry. Therefore, individuals rarely make reports, white papers, or organize their own events.

A personal brand should not only be professional but also have personality; a knowledge brand should be professional enough to inspire users to download or sign up for activities;

— 4 — Unique Brand

Total solution providers are just followers - unique brands

Although they are all overall solution providers, not every company can afford a professional content team to output a large amount of knowledge content. For industry followers, such as SaaS SMEs, it may be a better choice to compare with industry leaders, find differentiation, and build a unique brand.

UPS's differentiated marketing theory has a long history, and positioning theory actually evolved from it, allowing the brand to occupy a position in the minds of customers and let customers remember the differences of the brand.

Positioning theory emphasizes avoiding competitors' strengths in customers' minds, or taking advantage of the weaknesses hidden in their strengths, and finding the most advantageous position in customers' minds relative to competitors, so that the brand wins and gains priority in competition. This is the meaning of positioning.

"Positioning" requires companies to choose a niche field and have unique differentiated advantages in the niche field in order to establish a dominant position and build a brand.

Simply put, it can be divided into four steps.

The first step is market insight

Five things to look at: look at the industry, look at the market, look at the competition, look at yourself, look at the opportunities, understand in which aspects our competitors are strong and in which aspects we are strong, and find where we have unique advantages.

Step 2: Establish brand positioning

Positioning should avoid the strong points of competitors in the minds of customers, or take advantage of the weaknesses hidden in their strengths to establish the brand's advantageous position.

After fully investigating our competitors and determining our advantages, we move on to the third step.

The third step is to provide reliable proof for positioning

To provide reliable proof for positioning is to prove that you can do well in the positioning you have chosen.

Step 4: Fully implement brand positioning

Integrate brand positioning work into all aspects of corporate operations, think about how to build the brand internally, and carry out marketing activities such as market publicity and advertising externally to implant the brand image into the minds of customers.

— 5 — Social Branding

A social brand is a TOB enterprise that serves the general public and provides extensive services to a large number of customers, thus indirectly serving the general public.

As we all know, brand marketing is often communicated to target groups.

For example, TOC brands will also develop appropriate content and communication channels based on the target users, whether young people or middle-aged people, men or women, girls or mothers.

TOB will communicate precisely based on the vertical industry it is in. Real estate software will target real estate people, and financial and tax software will target financial people.

Is TOB brand communication TOC-oriented? It is a frequently discussed topic.

I think that TOB brands really need to learn from TOC in terms of content format and make it more easy to understand, but excessive pursuit of fun and novelty will often backfire. After all, the people who make the final decision on purchasing in TOB companies are often leaders, whose average age is older than TOC.

In terms of social event marketing for the general public, only TOC and TOB brands at the mass level are valuable.

TOC social brands are more common, and many well-known fast-moving consumer goods can do it. For TOB social brands are basically top-level companies.

The social branding strategy is to build the brand's social influence, thereby winning the right to speak in the industry and the advantage of social opinion. Companies use the potential of this brand to influence customer decisions and even industry policy making.

It is built in such a way that it demonstrates the contribution and importance of the enterprise to the entire industry, society, the public, the country and the world.

For example, the video "Tencent Supports the Real Economy" that went viral some time ago. Through this video, Tencent demonstrates its value and significance to society.

A better way is event marketing, which uses stories to spread the message on social media.

Humans are born storytellers. As early as ancient times, we were accustomed to sitting in front of the campfire when night fell and listening to the stories told by the elders of the tribe.

Why do humans love stories? This is because we always use stories to understand our own situation, pursue the meaning of our existence, understand the world around us, and learn how to get along with society.

Therefore, the creation of a social brand is to use storytelling techniques to demonstrate the company's concern for the living conditions of the general public and what it means to people, so as to win recognition at the social level.

For example, IBM has released 100 logos of important historical moments and events in its 100 years, and has made a series of logos for major events in technology, customers, industry, and the world. These logos represent and highlight the significant impact that this century-old company has made on the industry and the world during its development.

The story of mankind's first landing on the moon was based on IBM's technology. Behind the astronauts who were cheered by the crowd were countless IBM technicians.

This is IBM's way of expressing its contribution to customers, industry and society. This is an important brand asset of the social brand.

There was also the first man-machine war in human history, and it was also the first time that computing power was presented in a way that was familiar to ordinary people. At that time, chess champion Kasparov played multiple rounds against IBM's Deep Blue computer, and Deep Blue won.

This is how social branding works. In fact, for B2B companies, the creation of social brands must answer the following questions:

1. Product value: What is the original intention of the product?

2. Corporate value: Why does the company exist? What is industry value?

3. Ecological value: How does the company view its customers, employees, upstream and downstream partners and related stakeholders?

4. Social value: What is the value of the enterprise to society, the country and the world?

Only by thinking through these issues can a company find its own value and position and have the opportunity to transform itself into a social brand.

Final step:

5. Popular event marketing, delivering ecological and social value, and using C-end potential to drive extensive B-end cooperation

To sum up

The above five paths are suitable for B2B companies in different industries and types to build their brands.

If your TOB business mainly relies on people to provide intellectual services, such as a consulting company, then build an expert personal brand;

If your TOB enterprise provides overall solutions to target customers and is an industry leader, you should build a knowledge brand and become a knowledge academy in this industry;

If your TOB enterprise is not strong enough at present, it may be very dangerous to compete with the industry leader. It is not advisable to invest too much. Then look for differentiated competitive advantages and build a unique brand.

If your TOB enterprise has a very high industry status and strength, has a wide range of customers, and indirectly serves a wide range of the general public, then build a social brand;

If your company provides target customers with key materials and technologies for final consumer products, then build an element brand.

But no matter which branding strategy is used, the ultimate goal of TOB brand building is to condense the company's products and services into a brand name so that target customers can know it as soon as they hear it and feel at ease and trust it.

This enables:

1. Improve trust expectations and reduce procurement risks;

2. Improve identification efficiency and simplify purchase decisions;

3. Increase value recognition and achieve brand premium;

4. Ultimately influence customer reputation and decision-making criteria;

THE END.

Author: Chen Xiaobu

Source: Chen Xiaobu