8 ways to acquire customers for B2B products!

What is the difference between 2B products and 2C products?

First, let’s clarify the concept. What is a 2B product? What is a 2C product?

The full name of 2B is To Business, which means products for merchants (generally referring to enterprises). My understanding of 2B products is: products made for commercial use by enterprises and can solve organizational needs. Common 2B products include: DingTalk, Mingdao, Funshine Sales, Growingio, Teambition, Kedao CRM, Diansan ERP…

The full name of 2C is To Customer, which means products for consumers (generally referring to users). Common 2C products are those we use almost every day: QQ, WeChat, Weibo, Zhihu, Meitu XiuXiu, Himalaya…

Now everyone should have a very clear definition of 2B products and 2C products. So let’s talk about the 7 main differences between 2B products and 2C products.

1. Different focus. Because the premise of the existence of 2B products is to meet the needs of "organizations to complete business informatization", 2B products usually pay great attention to organizations and businesses. Since the users of 2C products are directly individuals, they focus more on human nature.

2. The core demands are different. The core demands of 2B products are: function, process, efficiency and benefits. The core demands of 2C products are rigid needs, pain points and experience.

3. Different degrees of demand exploration. The demand for 2B products is usually very clear, while 2C products require in-depth exploration of user needs.

4. The purchasing decision makers are different. The purchasing decision maker of 2B products may not be the direct user, while 2C products are basically purchased by the user for their own use.

5. Different focuses. Business refers to commerce, business, and operations, so 2B products pay more attention to "money", and often talk about "commercialization", "customers", and "charging". Most 2C products are free, so when making 2C products, more attention is paid to "users", "experience" and "competitive products".

6. Different number of users. The number of users of 2B products is generally not too large, which means that your relatives and friends may not have heard of the 2B product you made. The users of 2C products are individuals, so it is very likely that the number of users will reach millions to tens of millions.

7. Understand that costs are different. 2B products are usually aimed at professional customers, so the cost of understanding is relatively high, and most of them will have professional training. 2C products are usually simpler and easier to understand, and usually use guide pages to reduce the user's understanding cost.

After talking about the 7 differences between 2B products and 2C products, let’s also talk about their 2 similarities.

1. There is a sentence in the book "Scene Revolution": There is no essential difference between 2B and 2C, because they are both used by people. Therefore, whether it is a 2B product or a 2C product, a good experience is needed, because no one wants to use a product that is difficult to use and affects efficiency.

2. They all need to think about what is the core value of the product? What are the pain points of customers? What kind of customers and roles does the product serve? What kind of problems does it solve? How is it solved?

Operation ideas and methods of 2B products

After understanding the difference between 2B products and 2C products, let’s first talk about the operational ideas of 2B products.

1. Understand the core indicators

When we start operating a 2B product, don’t rush to apply various methods. We must first figure out which core indicators are most closely related to the company’s business.

For different products, the data that operators need to focus on are also different. For example, we are a SaaS product for enterprise commercial use (Dian San ERP), so the three data most closely related to operations are: registration, subscription and renewal.

The number of registrations is the core indicator of operations, which means attracting new customers. Operations need to attract more target customers to sign up for trials through various means. Registered customers may be converted into subscribing customers, and then into renewal customers.

2. Try more and summarize more

Because I work for a startup company, when the funds are not sufficient, how to attract more effective customers at low cost to register and try our products is a very critical issue. All attempts mean the unknown, but the unknown does not mean rushing around blindly. When we explore the unknown, we need to make bold assumptions, verify carefully, and the more thorough the considerations, the better. At the same time, we must also combine the actual situation of the company at this stage, make small-scale attempts first, or directly conduct AB testing. While ensuring the stability of existing data, making more new attempts may lead to greater gains.

3. Learn from peer products and similar products

Usually, you should pay more attention to what your peers have done, especially those who are doing well and early in the industry. What activities have they carried out? What pages have they changed? What product pricing have they adjusted? You should think about why they do this? What is the logic behind it? What is the purpose? What are the benefits? Instead of directly copying or plagiarizing, I feel that every time an article, title, or page is plagiarized by a peer, it is a kind of affirmation from the peer, and I am quite happy.

After understanding the basic operational ideas, let’s share the 8 main methods of 2B products:

1. Join a third-party platform.

First, settle in the platform with large traffic, and then gradually settle in other platforms. Because the traffic of these highly vertical platforms is very accurate, merchants generally search directly in the relevant service market for what services they need.

Promoting new products in shopping malls with large traffic is the most cost-effective method in the early stages. Just like APPs will enter major mobile application markets, we who are engaged in e-commerce ERP will enter the service markets of major e-commerce platforms, which provide a variety of services, such as order-making software, purchasing and sales, e-commerce ERP, etc.

After entering these platforms, the key point is how to operate the APP well. The service market is also a platform. Since it is a platform, it has its own corresponding rules. All we need to do is to be familiar with the rules of each platform and understand the development trends of the platform. Pay attention to these 7 points:

①Cover. The cover is mainly to attract the user's attention at the first time, because the cover has the largest display position.

②Title. The title is mainly for identification and searching. Writing a good product title will bring more click-through traffic, just like WeChat articles. In addition to the cover image, the title will also determine whether users will click in to see more product introductions. In addition to the product name, you can add a product slogan, or the benefits the product can bring to customers, so that the click-through rate will be higher.

③Introduction. The more attractive the introduction, the greater the chance that customers will click through to the page. The suggestion is to list 3 very attractive points to give users a better first impression.

④Details page. The details page can play a big role in the target conversion rate. For example, when we are shopping on Taobao, we usually read the details page before deciding whether to add the item to the shopping cart or collect it. After our potential users see our page, most of them decide whether to try it out after reading the details page. Therefore, whether a details page is attractive is the key point in determining whether this part of the traffic can be converted into registrations. As for how to create a high conversion rate details page, you can click on this article "Product Selling Point Exploration and Description Writing Skills"

⑤ Rating. The rules for dynamic scoring are officially announced, so you must be very clear about the rules of each platform so that you can optimize the corresponding scores. Let’s take a look at the scoring indicators of our service providers given by the three e-commerce platforms: Tmall, JD.com, and Suning. Taobao service market emphasizes: ease of use, service attitude, and stability. JD.com’s service market and Suning’s service market emphasize: description match, product quality, and service attitude. So here, you just need to understand the scoring calculation formula of each platform.

⑥Evaluation. I believe that everyone is very aware of the importance of good reviews, so actively asking customers for good reviews is also a very necessary daily task. In fact, sometimes customers are not dissatisfied with the product, but are too lazy to leave a review, so at this time you can arrange for customer service to actively find customers and give positive reviews.

⑦Ranking. The ranking of the platform is really the most important. Even if the ranking goes up one, the traffic may be significantly different, and the work of optimizing the ranking is also the most challenging. Because the official ranking rules are never announced, you have to rely on your own trial and exploration. When doing optimization ranking work, it is best to develop the habit of recording every day. Either screenshot or table records are fine. Because this way you can more clearly see the changes in rankings during the continuous optimization process.

2. Deliver the values ​​that bosses care about. 2B products can only generate value through use by enterprises, so for 2B products, it does not matter whether they are free or paid. The key is to see what value they can bring to the enterprises. Therefore, insisting on delivering product value, maximizing the value and continuously amplifying it is the key to 2B product operations.

Unlike 2C products where you buy or use them yourself, 2B products are a group usage behavior. Because the roles are different, the focus will be different, so the value we need to present must also be different.

For example, business owners are concerned about revenue and cost. If what you convey to them is: using our products can improve business efficiency and make employees' lives easier... that is nonsense.

Since he is the boss, why should he spend money to buy something to make his employees' work easier? So the content that should be conveyed to the boss should be: purchasing our product can help the company improve its overall business efficiency. The work that used to require 5 people to complete can now be managed by only 1 person after using our product to automate all business processes. It can also avoid human errors such as missed orders, etc.

In this way, he can reduce labor costs. If he used to need 5 people to be responsible for making orders in the warehouse, and each person's salary was 3,000 yuan, then his monthly net salary expense would be 15,000 yuan, and his annual salary expense would be 180,000 yuan. Using our product only costs more than 8,000 yuan a year, which means that his annual employee expenses are only 36,000 yuan, plus the product service fee of more than 8,000 yuan, a total of only 44,000 yuan, saving 136,000 yuan compared to 180,000 yuan. Therefore, you must figure out what role the other party plays, and then choose what content to present and what value to convey accordingly.

3. Find where your target customers gather. Once we have the right value, we need to find the right place to spread it. This is different for each industry, so you need to collect and improve it yourself. For example, our product’s current definition of target customers is those who have at least one online store and place more than 50 orders per day. So once the target customers are determined, the next step is to find these customers and attract them to sign up and try out our products.

Taking our products as an example, our target customers are generally concentrated on media platforms such as Yibang Power, E-commerce Online, Tianxia Wangshang, and Wangshang Online, and e-commerce forums such as Paidai Forum, Taobao Forum, Taobao Operation, and Tao66. When they need to know some professional knowledge or encounter problems, they will go to Baidu Knows, Baidu Wenku, Zhihu and other question-and-answer platforms to ask questions or find answers. The micro-courses that have become popular in the past two years have also gathered people who do e-commerce, and the users are relatively precise.

4. Determine the channels and methods for APP promotion. No matter what method is used, it must be determined according to the type of product. If you are a small boss who repairs locks in a community, but choose to do Weibo promotion, that's a bit ridiculous. We must not do it blindly just because social media is very popular in the past two years. We must first see whether this channel has our own target customers, and whether this method will achieve twice the result with half the effort, or twice the result with half the effort. In short, we need to choose the most appropriate channel and method according to the type of our product.

5. Deeply explore customer needs. In addition to the cost of the product itself, if the product has other paid services, you can make use of existing old customers. Since old customers already trust your products, you can recommend other additional paid items to them. As long as they really have this need, the possibility of paying is very high.

But this is still an advertisement after all, so it is recommended to group all current customers according to the size of their needs, screen out target customers with needs, and then carry out publicity and guidance. For example, in addition to the software fees, our product also allows you to buy some coins to send marketing text messages. Therefore, we will create some special pages to tell merchants the value and importance of sending marketing text messages, and then use some small promotions to attract customers to buy and use it.

6. Carry out preferential activities according to market conditions. Usually the prices of 2B products are relatively fixed, but the market is constantly changing. When the market changes, it is best not to change the prices of the products easily, but we can do appropriate promotional activities. Instead of directly discounting the prices, I think it would be better to give customers discounts on product usage time or other paid functions. On the one hand, it can directly give customers discounts, and on the other hand, it can also drive the frequency of use of other paid functions.

7. Old customers introduce new customers. When I first came to the company, we had very few clients, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that many new clients were referred by old clients, which really made me feel proud and gratified. At that time, old customers helped us recommend new customers for free, and the order conversion rate of the recommended new customers was very high.

Here I would like to share with you a small mistake I once made. The first invitation-gift event I planned was not very successful. Only about 20 old customers invited their friends to register for a trial.

Later, when I was reviewing the event, I realized that I might have only added invitation codes to each main account, while all employee accounts did not have invitation codes. A small company may have a dozen people, a large company may have hundreds or even more people, so many people are using our products at the same time, but I only gave them an invitation code.

If the operator is in charge of the main account, he may recommend it. But if the boss is in charge of the main account, will he recommend it just for a little prize? And those sub-accounts are usually customer service, warehouse, procurement, finance... They are the most frequent users of our products, and their recommendations to their friends and relatives are the most convincing. So later it was changed so that not only the customer's main account had an invitation code, but all employee sub-accounts had their own unique invitation code, and the number of people actively inviting new users to register increased a lot more than before.

8. Build user reputation. Ultimately, it’s really good when all your customers say hello to you and spread the word about you. Internet 2B enterprise-level products place more emphasis on creating the core value of the product itself and shaping user reputation. Relying on the Internet user-oriented thinking, we provide users with satisfactory products and services, and consolidate the brand through user word-of-mouth communication.

4 things to pay attention to when operating 2B products

1. Don’t blindly apply the 2C approach to 2B. We often see many successful experiences in the 2C field, but it is recommended that people who make 2B products must pay attention to: "The essential difference between 2C and 2B in the definition of users: 2C users are individuals, and 2B users are groups. There are great differences in consumption risks and time consumption between individual decisions and group decisions."

For example, a company boss downloaded an app and ordered a takeaway during lunch, because he received a newly-created takeaway order downstairs in the company and thought it might not hurt to give it a try. At the same time, a friend's company recommended a mobile office product. Although it is free, it is necessary to conduct internal trials, hold meetings to discuss, and compare products based on one's own needs before deciding whether to fully implement it in the company. From the perspective of the single conversion cost of operation, this 2C promotion is easier and has low cost.

2. Pay attention to industry trends. I remember when I first came into contact with 2B products, I did not realize the importance of understanding the industry and customer business, and I was only thinking about doing my part well. Later I realized that my thinking was really limited if I only looked at one point, so now I pay attention to the news in the e-commerce industry every day.

3. Communicate more with target customers. Communicate with target customers more often so that you can better understand their ideas. For example, when new customers first learn about our products, what questions do they ask? What are they most concerned about? What concerns and worries do they have? Because when we know what our target customers care about, we can compile them into unified content and use them to optimize the product details page to present it to more customers.

4. Communicate more with other departments. Although each department has its own responsibilities, the common goal is to make the company's products better.

Talk more with colleagues in the sales department about some situations of registered users. Which types of roles have the most registrations? Are there any special issues? Do registered customers think our prices are reasonable... Talk to colleagues in the customer service department to learn more about the usage of old customers and which customers can serve as success cases; talk to colleagues in the product department about the usage scenarios and development directions of new product features.

Author: Liu Yucen

Article source: Activity Box