B2B Marketing, 2 Strategic Growth Paths!

This article introduces two new B2B marketing trends, mainly analyzing them from the two strategic growth paths of "influence-based content marketing " and "scenario-based service marketing".

What is Traditional B2B Marketing?

Our understanding is: relationship marketing + functional marketing + low-price promotion .

1. Relationship marketing : It is user touchpoints, which provide limited opportunities for interpretation;
2. Functional marketing : It is the reason for purchase, refining the special selling points of the product;
3. Low-price promotion : It is a means of competition to eliminate the product advantages of competitors.

These are the basic methods of traditional B2B marketing, which are becoming less and less efficient and less and less effective.

Today, we introduce two new trends in B2B marketing:

• First, content marketing;
• The second is the marketing of services.

Since these two new trends are very rich in content and our space is limited. Therefore, we select two strategic growth paths, “ content marketing based on influence ” and “ service marketing based on scenarios ”, to analyze.

Logic 1: Content marketing based on influence

Broadly speaking, marketing has two main functions:

• One is conversion rate ;
• The second is influence.

Influence-based content marketing can have both of these functions at the same time. Let’s take a closer look at three groups of cases.

Case 1. Michelin: Brand influence + tire retailization

Positioning strategy: Michelin started out as a tire manufacturer and is a leader in the global tire manufacturing industry, having held the largest global market share for many years.

Marketing strategy:

（1）Content Marketing

In 1900, Michelin launched a variety of publications including travel guides and dining guides, successfully upgrading itself from functional marketing of tires to content marketing of quality life. Today, Michelin three-star restaurants are one of the most authoritative catering selection lists in the world.

At the end of 2016, Michelin released its first dining guide for mainland China, including: 1 three-star restaurant, 7 two-star restaurants, and 18 one-star restaurants.

It is no exaggeration to say that Michelin is Internet thinking without the Internet .

(2) Regular sponsorship

Michelin is one of the world's largest sponsors of racing sports, especially for top car events such as F1.

(3) Tire retailization

In 2007, Michelin provided tire retailing and overall tire solutions services to FM Logistics, one of the top five logistics companies in Europe.

A tire usage fee is charged based on mileage, and 50% of the cost savings goes to Michelin. The results were very satisfactory, and ultimately saved 30% of costs for FM Logistics in the tire field.

Competition result: In 2017, Michelin product sales increased by 19% , and full-year net profit reached 1.7 billion euros, a record high.

Thinking and suggestions: It is difficult for B2B companies to conduct content marketing. Michelin has taken a unique approach, starting from travel-related products and taking quality life as its theme. It reduces the cost and difficulty of content production, obtains a large number of user touchpoints, and provides high-quality user experience . It indirectly enhanced the popularity, reputation and loyalty of Michelin tires .

Case 2. Trout’s positioning + Li Jiaoshou’s copywriting

Here we give two representative cases:

• First, Trout’s positioning is mainly based on offline communication ;
• The second is Li Jiaoshou’s copywriting, which is mainly disseminated online .

(1) Trout Positioning

Marketing strategy: Focus on traditional publishing to establish professional reputation.

In 1969, Trout published "Positioning: How to Compete in the Age of Homogeneity", in which he first proposed the concept of "positioning".

In 1981, he published the academic monograph Positioning . In 2009, "Repositioning" was launched.

Bringing Industrialization to Consulting Services:

In 1972, Trout systematically proposed the positioning theory for the first time and successfully introduced industrialization into this theory. Propose practical consulting solutions such as the " Four-step Positioning Method " and the " Nine Differentiations ".

Competition results: Trout has provided strategic consulting focused on comprehensive competition to many well-known Chinese fast-moving consumer goods and health care product companies, including Wanglaoji , Dong-E-E-Jiao, etc.

(2) Copywriter Li Jiaoshou

Marketing strategy:

Focus on electronic publishing to establish professional reputation.

Li Jiaoshou, born in 1991, graduated from the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University. He writes an article for the WeChat public account every week. Among them, he quickly became famous due to several popular articles such as "What is the difference between a monthly salary of 3,000 and 30,000", "Why do you write self-indulgent copywriting, the difference between X-type and Y-type copywriting ", etc.

Bring scientific explanations into marketing.

The achievement that Li Jiaoshou is most proud of is that he can use the principles of cognitive psychology or human sociology to explain specific phenomena in advertising. He is always able to establish very complex connections between things and provide easy-to-understand scientific explanations and logical frameworks.

Competition results:

When the article "What is the difference between a monthly salary of 3,000 and 30,000" became popular, Zhou Hongyi invited Li Jiaoshou to provide copywriting consulting to 360.

Within half a year after the article "Why do you write self-indulgent copywriting? The difference between type X and type Y copywriting" became popular, about 2,000 companies came to discuss cooperation, including almost all domestic first-tier companies. The efficiency and effectiveness of this content marketing is extremely amazing .

On December 19, 2016, Li Jiaoshou's company was acquired by Baidu for RMB 100 million , and he became the youngest vice president in Baidu's history.

Suggestions:

① Trout’s positioning and Li Jiaoshou’s copywriting both successfully achieved category upgrades

Trout initially started out in advertising psychology, then upgraded to competitive strategy, and finally promoted himself as a strategic positioning consulting service provider.

Li Jiaoshou also started from a very narrow scientific field of copywriting, upgraded to marketing services, and finally became a strategic consulting service provider.

② Own marketing characteristics

Trout has two major characteristics in his marketing:

• First, focus on the promotion of key cases to enhance commercial credit;
• The second is to review some companies’ content marketing.

Its success stories are also very well-known, and usually success requires large-scale advertising investment .

It is not easy to find traces of marketing in Li Jiaoshou’s own marketing. There are also two major features:

• First, he lacks the classic case of Trout;
• Secondly, he plays to his strengths and avoids his weaknesses, focusing on the analysis of marketing methodology based on personal IP.

This kind of content marketing is very down-to-earth, and more importantly, the marketing cost is very low . Therefore, in the Internet circle, people with young age are very famous.

③ Applicability to the times

The main theories of management today were all proposed in the last century, and Trout is no exception. This has led to Trout being more adapted to the industrial age and lagging behind in its applicability to the Internet, especially mobile Internet . Li Jiaoshou is equivalent to a native of mobile Internet , and his methodology is naturally adapted to mobile Internet.

Of course, compared with Trout, Li Jiaoshou still needs more time and practical cases to optimize and iterate the theoretical framework.

Case 3. Jiguang Big Data

Industry influence + business consulting

Positioning strategy: China's leading mobile big data service provider.

Marketing strategy:

① Industry Report

Aurora Big Data often releases reports on various industry topics based on the data from its own platform. It has attracted a lot of media attention and spread, and established industry influence.

②Industry exhibitions/conferences

Participate in various industry conferences, such as: participating in CJ 's B2B venue exhibitions, and expressing opinions at many industry conferences. Then, spread it through various media to enhance the status of the industry.

Competition result: Aurora Big Data was listed on Nasdaq on July 26, 2018. Currently, the market value is 1 billion US dollars .

Additional reading : Participating in industry conferences/exhibitions and publishing big data reports are standard practices for many B2B marketing campaigns. For example, Sensors Data, iResearch Consulting , etc.

Logic 2: Scenario-based service marketing

As mentioned above, marketing has two major functions:

• One is the conversion rate;
• The second is influence.

So, does scenario-based service marketing have both of these functions?

Let’s take a closer look at three groups of cases:

Case 4. Ele.me

Heavy decision-making service

Positioning strategy: China's leading food delivery service platform.

Marketing strategy:

When Ele.me was first promoted to merchants, it encountered three market segments at the user awareness level:

• One is user perception with light explanation . That is, the merchant already has a takeaway business and a takeaway service team;
• The second is user perception of heavy interpretation . That is, the business is a husband-and-wife shop, there is not even a computer in the store, let alone the need and budget to use a computer;
• The third is user perception of moderate interpretation . Between mild and severe.

At this time, Ele.me did two things:

• The first is the right thing to do in both the short and long term;
• The second thing is something that is correct in the short term but incorrect in the long term.

① The right thing to do in both the short and long term: to provide computer services to merchants who require heavy explanations.

At that time, the price of a computer was about 3,000 yuan. Ele.me assembled its own PCs, which reduced the price to 1,500 yuan and reduced the purchase cost for merchants. We copy some pirated movies for businesses every week, help them install software, and perform regular virus scans, which greatly reduces the businesses' usage costs and increases the additional income from computers.

Therefore, Ele.me first became a computer service provider and then a food delivery service provider . Carry out scenario-based service marketing to continuously expand the B-end market.

② What is right in the short term but wrong in the long term is to give up building your own logistics.

Merchants who provide light explanations often have logistics partners. As a result, Ele.me gave up building its own logistics for a period of time. Although this reduces operating costs, it also lowers the height of the moat.

Meituan is now focusing on " Meituan takeaway , everything is delivered quickly", this is because the first core competitiveness of the local life service provider is the logistics capability of 30-minute delivery. It was not until Meituan entered the food delivery market in a big way that Ele.me realized that merchant development was not the most important issue, but logistics capabilities were the core. Therefore, the Hummingbird Logistics Platform was developed.

Competition result: In the end, Ele.me was acquired by Alibaba for US$9.5 billion . Perhaps, no one in the Ele.me management team, including Zhang Xuhao, realized that computer service providers were once a classic in Ele.me's B2B marketing.

Case 5. G7

Single user benefit point

Positioning strategy: Industry-leading smart Internet of Things company.

Marketing strategy: focus on a single user interest point.

G7's entry point is very narrow, and its speech system is very precise and scenario-based.

• Scenario A : When G7 is not used, one dispatcher can reasonably dispatch 5 vehicles;
• Scenario B : When using G7, one dispatcher can reasonably dispatch 50 vehicles.

At the "single user interest point", efficiency is increased 10 times , and the effect is visual, greatly improving the efficiency of B2B marketing.

Competition results: G7 has now surpassed the marketing stage of a single user interest point and grown into a comprehensive Internet of Things platform. The network effect has become a relatively large moat. The G7 platform serves more than 50,000 logistics companies and connects more than 600,000 vehicles. The total financing amount exceeds RMB 3.2 billion . Its clients include JD.com , Tmall , Meituan, Deppon, SF Express and other companies.

Case 6. IBM

Business Concept

Positioning strategy: A global leading cognitive solutions and cloud platform company.

Marketing strategy: IBM’s technical service capabilities are very strong, but it is even stronger in the packaging and promotion of business concepts .

for example:

• On Demand
• Smart Business (e-Business);
• Cognitive Business (the latest launch).

Nowadays, the keyword "cognition" has almost been monopolized by IBM internationally, and it believes that the next business theme is cognitive business. Behind this business concept is IBM's unique B2B service. For example: The core of cognitive business is IBM's unique DeepQA system.

This system can help customers use big data systems for large-scale learning and build their own cognitive systems with artificial intelligence based on target reasoning.

Competitive results: In the first quarter of 2018, IBM's cognitive business solutions division brought in $4.3 billion in revenue.

Additional reading : A week before Christmas in 1997, Huawei's Ren Zhengfei visited IBM President Lou Gerstner to learn about IBM's advanced management experience.

On August 29, 1998, the first batch of 50 IBM consultants moved into Huawei. It is rumored that Huawei hired IBM for consulting services at a total cost of more than 4 billion yuan.

Summarize

(1) Traditional B2B marketing = relationship marketing + functional marketing + low-price promotion

in:

• Relationship marketing is about user touchpoints;
• Functional marketing is the reason to buy;
• Low-price promotions are a means of competition.

(2) Two major trends in modern B2B marketing: content marketing + service marketing

(3) Influence-based content marketing

We explained the strategic growth paths of brand influence, professional influence, and industry influence. Among these three strategies:

1. Industry influence is a standard feature of all companies;
2. Brand influence is a standard feature of large enterprises;
3. Professional influence is closest to conversion rate and cash flow.

(4) Scenario-based service marketing

We explained the strategic growth paths such as heavy decision-making services, single user interest points, and business concepts.

Among these three strategies:

1. Single user benefit points are the most widely used;
2. Heavy decision-making services have the deepest moats;
3. This business concept is only for large companies that want to make big investments, and it is the most difficult.