How to build a content system for B2B customer acquisition?

For B-side customer acquisition, the WeChat ecosystem is a very important link. It can effectively reach, cultivate, and incubate potential users and achieve a good reach rate. So how do we do it specifically? The author starts from the WeChat ecosystem and combines actual case analysis to analyze how to establish a content system for B2B customer acquisition. I hope it will be helpful to you.

Let’s talk about why the WeChat ecosystem is important for B-side customer acquisition?

Taking the B-side corporate official website as an example, a 5% registration conversion rate is considered average, and a large number of customers who were invested in are lost.

However, given the long purchase cycle of enterprise-level services and the large number of purchasing decision makers, customers who leave after a quick glance at the official website may not buy now, but that does not mean they will not buy in the future; they may not be decision makers now, but that does not mean they will not be decision makers in the future; they may not have demand now, but that does not mean they will not have demand in the future...

Wouldn’t it be a pity to lose these potential customers who were hard-earned by the brand, bought with money, and have a certain interest in the products?

It becomes particularly important for B-side enterprises to continuously reach, cultivate and incubate these potential customers to avoid being preempted by competitors. As for China, the reach rate of emails and text messages is really "touching", and the WeChat ecosystem is undoubtedly the best choice at present...

Contents of this article:

1. Clarify the definition of B2B customer acquisition
2. The classic 4P strategy of content marketing
3. Cognitive stage: Find a single point of breakthrough and acquire customers in a fission-like manner
4. Attraction phase: customer-centric
5. Summarize

01 Clarify the definition of B2B customer acquisition

In ToB, the definition of customer acquisition varies. From the perspective of the B2B customer life journey, we define other registrations, product registrations, trials, purchases, etc. as cutoff points as successful customer acquisition.

The further along the customer life journey is, the broader the scope of the content becomes, and the less it can be controlled by the marketing/operations department. Therefore, the customer acquisition mentioned in this article uses the "trial" in the figure as the cutoff point.

In other words, the content system is built around the stage from awareness to trial, with the ultimate goal of attracting more target customers and increasing product trials.

Whether or not to buy after the trial is not determined by the content, but depends more on the product or sales capabilities. The content after this, such as the "Product Operation Manual", plays a more auxiliary role.

02 Classic Content Marketing 4P Strategy

No matter which stage of the content system you are building, the 4P content marketing strategy proposed by Pam Diller, author of "Chief Content Officer", is applicable.

This strategy covers: planning, production, promotion and perfection, thus forming a closed loop of the entire content marketing.

Among them, planning is often the most easily overlooked, but also the most important part. Only by combining the company's strategic direction, product development direction, market strategy direction, etc. can we correctly plan the content.

For example, the company will continue to focus on small and micro enterprises this year, and continue to iterate and improve products for the accounting groups of small and micro enterprises. The market strategy is also aimed at this group, so we will only focus on this point to plan the content.

The penetrating power of 10 fists hitting 1 point will far exceed that of 100 fists hitting 100 points, and the same is true for content.

Once you have properly planned your content, you can start producing it. Whether it is to target different job levels, different stages of the customer life journey, or to produce content in the form of articles, infographics, videos, audio, etc.

After the content is produced, it can be promoted on different channels. When promoting, remember to monitor all channels that can carry CTA, so that we can provide feedback through data analysis and continuously improve the content system.

I will not go into detail about B2B content marketing here. If you are interested, you can read an article I wrote before: 6,000-word comprehensive analysis: How to carry out B2B content marketing?

03 Cognitive stage: Find a single point of breakthrough and acquire customers in a fission-like manner

The content of the awareness stage is the most important part of our entire content system. The main function of the content at this stage is to let customers know us and have a certain understanding of us.

For us, the target customers of our products and those who hold most of the decision-making power are accountants in small and medium-sized enterprises, and most of them are junior, intermediate and those without professional titles.

At this stage, we need to let the target customers know us. Combined with the pain points of the target customers, we can produce the following content:

1. Useful materials: tax planning, cost control, Excel, etc.
2. Policy information: timely, interpretation, and key points
3. Examination guidance: pre-exam sprint, key analysis, difficult questions and answers, teacher guidance, etc.
4. Practical experience: accounting processing, software usage, tax-related, etc.
5. Work answers: industry-related, daily work, workplace questions, etc.

According to the different job levels of the accounting group, our content can be divided into the following categories:

• Financial specialist: Let finance and tax novices become familiar with finance and tax theories, master finance and tax practices, and professionally solve various practical finance and tax problems;
• Financial Director : Let the intermediate finance and taxation professionals break out of their confinement, learn to use finance and taxation to manage operations, perfectly reduce costs to achieve tax planning, and provide financial analysis recognized by the boss.

As you can see, most of these contents are not very relevant to our products and are based entirely on the needs of target customers. Only through these contents can we cover a wider range of target customers, expand the front end of our funnel, and provide more filterable traffic for the back end of the funnel.

Know what kind of content to produce. Once you have this content, you can start extending various content: articles, courses, pictures, white papers, short videos, etc.

For example, our KOL will produce a course related to the above content for us every week.

Regarding how to recruit KOLs, produce content for us continuously for free, and achieve a win-win project, those who are interested can read an article I wrote before: SaaS WeChat Ecosystem Customer Acquisition (I) 4000 Words Practical Analysis of the Whole Process of KOL Recruitment in the Field: Preparation, Recruitment, Packaging, Operation

In addition to the distribution of these expert content, which brings us long-tail traffic at a relatively slow pace. We will also do some fission based on current hot topics to acquire target customers in batches.

For example, accounting personnel have professional title examinations every year, and professional title examinations are generally conducted in the form of computer-based examinations where questions are randomly selected, so it is very likely that students taking the examinations in different batches will encounter the same questions. This also gave rise to the need for original exam questions.

As the exam is approaching, we have started to create a new round of questions on the original questions for the junior accounting qualification exam. In 2 days, 50 groups were created, with a total of 5,148 people entering the fission groups, bringing in 1,130 "other registrations" at zero cost.

Regarding the review of this fission, those who are interested can read an article I wrote before: 8 "plain language" experience summary of fissioning 50 groups in 2 days at 0 cost

Find a single breakthrough point from the content of the cognitive stage and acquire target customers in batches through fission.

These target customers who have completed "other registrations" through the content in the awareness stage will be deposited in our official account and enter our incubation (Zhiqu Baichuan) system.

Then we can move on to the next stage, which is to cultivate and convert the target customers acquired in the awareness stage through the content of the attraction stage.

04 Attraction stage: customer-centric

The content of the attraction stage is a continuation of the content of the cognition stage. The main purpose of the content at this stage is to make customers aware of our products/services, help them solve a problem that needs to be solved urgently, and then guide them to register for a trial.

For example, financial software does not actually require too much educational cost. It is a must for every company. It just depends on which company and which type to buy. At this stage, the content is more about why to choose us and what advantages we have.

However, marketing automation software, data analysis software, etc. may require relatively high education costs. The content of this stage is more about why it is needed, what specific problems it can help me solve, how long it will take us to see the results, etc.

At this stage, our content will be more closely aligned with the product, for example:

• Customer Cases
• Solution
• Industry Trends
• Signed Articles
• …..

Although the content at this stage is strongly related to the product and the product should be highlighted, we should avoid boasting about our products and should still be customer-centric and produce content that is valuable to customers.

For example, a solution is not just a list of product features and a company introduction that only talks about ourselves; rather, it is a valuable report of "current business diagnosis + future development guide" made for customers in combination with our products.

For example, the basic framework of the solution for the accounting group can be as follows:

1. Career Trends
2. Career pain points
3. Career development path map
4. Panoramic solution
5. Segmented scenario solutions
6. Benchmark customer cases
7. Why book with us?

Through integration, editing and typesetting, we can generate a beautiful PDF for customers to download, which can also continue to bring us target customers.

05 Conclusion

Let’s summarize the content system for B2B customer acquisition.

First, we start from the B2B customer life journey and clarify which stages of the customer life journey our customer acquisition content needs to cover.

Then, we match different types of content to our target customers at each stage, and the same type of content can be presented and disseminated in different forms. Among them, a single breakthrough can be found in the cognitive stage, and customers can be acquired in a fission manner.

For example, for financial directors, articles related to financial and tax management are produced in the awareness stage; and e-books related to financial and tax management solutions are produced in the attraction stage.

In addition, each stage should be accompanied by corresponding traffic. For example, in the content of the awareness stage, customers are unlikely to directly perform "product registration". In this case, we can insert corresponding e-books, courses, etc. in the article to guide them to perform "other registrations".

For example, in the content of the attraction stage, you can directly insert product registration to guide customers to try it out.

Author: Luo Gongzi

Source: B2B Operation Notes