ToB business is about providing services to customers, creating value, and ultimately gaining value of one's own.

Make the product easy to use, build user stickiness, and maximize value. Judging from the current business functional department settings of ToB companies, the roles most suitable for assuming this responsibility are product operations and marketing, and activities are one of the effective means to enhance brand potential, obtain leads, convert leads, and realize value.

01

The logic behind B-end and C-end activities is different, and the B-end business cannot be managed using the C-end approach.

C-end product users are generally individuals, with a large base. A hit event can easily bring millions or even tens of millions of exposures. Users mainly make emotional decisions, and the event only needs to meet the needs of individual users.

The number of B-end product customers is relatively small, and the users are often not the decision makers. There may even be several decision makers involved, and more rational decisions are made. Targeted marketing activities are needed to meet the needs of multiple parties.

C-end users are more sensitive to prices , so activities such as limited-time flash sales and instant price increases can significantly promote short-term sales growth; while B-end customers are less sensitive to prices, but more sensitive to relationships and value, and are more inclined to cooperate with trusted brands in the long term, so activities should be conducive to building relationships with customers and promoting communication.

B-side business is sensitive to value and has the characteristics of long decision-making cycles and complex decision-making processes. It is difficult to get direct results through a short-term activity. It is necessary to carry out activities in a systematic and planned manner, and avoid being busy executing unrelated activities one after another.
For an activity to be effective, it needs to combine long-term and short-term objectives. The long-term objective is to build brand potential, while the short-term objective is to acquire, cultivate, and convert effective leads. However, at present, most ToB companies do not pay enough attention to the creation of brand potential, and are only doing some small-scale, small-scale short-term activities. Such scattered and unplanned activities cannot form brand potential.

When doing B-side activities, you must have a strong sense of cost awareness, attach importance to the input-output ratio of each company, and have the ability to think about "how to make marketing activities more effective" and "how to improve the input-output ratio of activities."

02

There are many types of B-side activities. ToB activities need to combine and mix different forms of activities according to different goals to create a marketing rhythm that accompanies the business cycle. According to the scenario, it can be divided into two categories: online and offline.

Common forms of online activities include live broadcasts, communities, micro-class activities, etc. The methods are not much different from ToC. The main difficulty lies in how to obtain as many high-quality leads as possible.

DingTalk held micro-class activities

The main forms of offline activities include industry conferences, exhibitions, salons, sales meetings, corporate visits, etc.

DingTalk New Manufacturing Salon

Offline activities can be further divided into hosted, participated, co-organized, sponsored and other activities.

Sponsored activities refer to activities initiated independently. The industry conferences, exhibitions, salons, etc. mentioned above can all be organized independently. If divided by scale, the largest hosted activities are those with brand attributes, which can even involve thousands or even tens of thousands of people and only need to be held once a year.

Perfect Engineering Anniversary Brand Event

There are also mid-level activities with hundreds of people, which are usually aimed at conversion and have clearer themes. In addition, there are small salons and seminars. The number of people does not need to be too large, but it must be of high standards and some higher-level people should be invited. Such small activities can also be very effective in promoting sales.

Participating in activities is a low-cost way, such as participating in industry exhibitions, which can not only effectively enhance the company's image, increase product visibility and market competitiveness, but also save time to reach more potential customers, and understand the dynamics of competitors at the exhibition site. Participation in activities depends on the organizer's schedule, and try to participate as much as possible if conditions permit.

Joint events are jointly organized by multiple parties to expand their influence. Generally, they are jointly organized by venues with the same customers but different industries.

Sponsorship activities are mainly aimed at enhancing the influence of the industry. They sponsor well-known events such as industry conferences, provide their own peripheral gifts or experience services, place roll-up banners, leaflets and other materials at the partner's event site, and jointly display logos.

03

The value of traditional online activities focuses on attracting brands and traffic, while the focus of offline activities is on obtaining leads, exploring needs and promoting sales. Nowadays, many large-scale activities are carried out both online and offline. The change brought about by the 2020 epidemic is that online activities account for an increasing proportion, and online activities also play a role in collecting and converting a large number of leads.

The long-term goal of the activity is brand, and the short-term goal is conversion. When the brand potential is sufficient, the cost of the conversion activity will be reduced, and the brand premium of the product will also be reflected.

When a company is just starting out and its products are still in the verification stage, instead of spending time, effort and money on a large-scale brand campaign, it is better to serve existing customers well, polish its own products, and at the same time do some light activities to amplify the brand influence. If the company has grown to a certain scale, the product has reached PMF, and the customer has completed a life cycle of service and can stand for your company, then you can consider holding a large-scale brand event with brand attributes. Try to arrange the brand event in the off-season of the customer's business.

The ultimate goal of short-term event marketing is to reach key people conveniently, in batches, and accurately, demonstrate the value of products or services, and ultimately convert them into orders. The purpose of different types of activities is different, which can be roughly divided into three steps:

1. Get sales leads, quickly capture customers' interest and attention, and demonstrate results and potential;
2. In the customer promotion stage, marketing activities are used to help enterprises realize their difficulties and needs, improve their understanding and awareness of solutions, and promote customer sales;
3. During the conversion stage, report promotional plans and offer preferential incentives as the finishing touch.

B-side business has the characteristics of long decision-making cycle and complex decision-making process, and it is difficult to get direct results through a short-term activity . Before planning an event, you first need to identify who your target audience is. For B-side enterprises, customer purchasing behavior involves decision makers, purchasers and users. Different groups have different concerns and demands, so activities should be planned with different themes based on different target customers. It is recommended to carry out combined activities in a planned manner according to the above three steps. For example, you can collect potential leads through exhibitions, cultivate leads through activities such as salons, and finally cooperate with sales to carry out promotional activities to convert leads.

04

When handing over leads to the sales team, you cannot only focus on quantity and ignore quality, as this can easily cause friction. The operations/marketing team feels that they have received a large number of leads through the event, while the sales team feels that there are not enough leads that can be directly converted.

The solution to this problem is to establish standards for effective clues. The standards for clues are generally based on the BANT principle.

1. Budget: Does the customer have enough budget to purchase your product or service?
2. Authority: Whether the lead contact is a purchasing decision maker or influencer
3. Need: Is there a purchasing demand? Is the demand strong? Can the product meet the demand?
4. Time: whether you are considering purchasing in the near future, and whether you agree to meet with the salesperson in the near future

For example, the effective clue standards set by the "Perfect Construction" HRM management software.

Through positions and responsibilities, it is ensured that the contact person has the corresponding authority. Limiting the company size to more than 100 people can exclude some small companies with relatively weak paying capabilities. The main purpose is to ensure that the customer has sufficient budget. Sometimes the contact person is unwilling to disclose the budget, or there is no fixed budget for the product or service.

Using the above principles, we can identify more mature leads. For those leads that are not mature enough but are considerable in number, we can also use activities to cultivate them and promote conversions. For example, if you have obtained the contact number or email address of a potential customer during a sponsorship event, but do not have a very clear purchasing demand, the success rate of inviting them to participate in a brand event is still relatively high. By conveying trust and influence in brand events, you can not only demonstrate your own strength, but also take the opportunity to directly contact the senior management of the potential customer's company.

05

When organizing an event, you cannot work in isolation. You should take a look at the event formats and event reviews of other manufacturers. It is even more important to review the activities you have done, with a focus on calculating the ROI.

It cannot be denied that money is an amplifier of activities. When the budget is small, try to use time and energy to achieve small goals and avoid using the routines of large companies. When the budget is medium, focus on resources, divide the work and cooperate, and learn from classic routines. The strategy for a large budget is to be all-round, use more industry-leading resources, and continuously accumulate influence.

I’d like to share a little experience with you all. Welcome to communicate and share.

Author: Lao Yu

Source: Lao Yu's Notes