Compared with the numerous marketing tactics of B2C companies, the way of acquiring customers for B2B companies is much simpler. Many B2B companies acquire customers through search engine advertisements and information feed advertisements.

The advantage of search engine advertising lies in the precise collection of interested customers. When a user searches for relevant keywords in a search engine, the user’s needs have been preliminarily described. Users are looking for specific solutions.

With the popularity of the mobile Internet, companies have begun to use information flow advertisements on various platforms to promote to people who “may need it”. Enterprises hope to cover “potential target groups” through advertisements that are effective for users and can solve business problems, and awaken user needs with service/product advantages.

Compared with the customer acquisition effect of search engines, clues from information flow advertisements are still in the demand mining stage. This requires B-side sales to analyze the business scenario of the enterprise, disassemble the business pain points of the enterprise, and provide practical solutions based on the real business scenario needs of the enterprise.

But whether it is search engine advertising or information flow advertising, the marketing expenses of enterprises are getting higher and higher. At present, companies are exploring how to reduce costs and increase efficiency, how to achieve accurate customer acquisition, how to reduce customer acquisition costs, and improve the quality of business opportunities.

Unlike C-end enterprise marketing and promotion, which pursues mass communication and hopes to increase coverage, B2B enterprise marketing and promotion most hope to penetrate the industry and establish a good in-depth communication mechanism.

The decision-making link of the B-side business is complex, the decision-maker is not unique, and the decision-making is more rational. In the process of B2B cooperation and communication, there will be multiple roles and departments such as the corporate CEO, corporate management department, business department, legal department, and financial department. At the same time, procurement, approval and other processes need to be completed. This link is relatively long, and the average decision-making period is greater than 30 days.

Therefore, B2B enterprises need to make efforts in the dimensions of professional level, service reputation, industry influence, etc., to enhance the brand’s awareness and competitiveness, so that all roles and departments of the target enterprise feel professional and trustworthy when contacting the brand.

With the popularity of concepts such as “content is king” and “content marketing”, most companies have gradually realized that pictures, texts, videos and other media can deliver valuable information to users, which can attract users, impress users, and promote sales. .

Although there are many differences in business logic between B2B enterprises and C-end, the audience of B-end business is still “people”. Relevant data shows that more than 90% of users will search on the Internet before purchasing, and enterprise employees need to obtain more information in depth before submitting demand reports and seeking support from internal resources of the enterprise, and complete surveys related to demand and service supply.

Based on this, B2B companies can produce systematic content, display brand professionalism with diversified marketing information and marketing materials, enhance brand credibility, and achieve low-cost customer acquisition.

How B2B companies do content marketing

Most companies believe in the power of content, and believe that the higher the quality of the content, the better the company’s branding effect will be. Based on this, most companies have set up official accounts on platforms such as official websites, official accounts, video accounts, Douyin accounts, and Zhihu accounts, but most of them lack systematic marketing ideas. Most of the content between accounts is moved by translation, lack of channel differences, and the content dissemination is limited by platform rules and has not been effectively disseminated, and effective content acquisition has not been achieved.

B2B companies think from the following perspectives in content marketing.

1. The content must meet the needs of the target enterprise scale and development stage. Generally, B2B enterprises will divide target customers into large enterprise customers, medium enterprise customers and small and micro enterprise customers according to their scale. Enterprises of different scales have different needs for products/services, and content design and output need to be combined with the current development needs of customers.

2. Define the role of the target audience and provide valuable content. Corporate CEOs pay attention to the empowerment of business cooperation and the reliability of brands. The business leader pays attention to whether the product/service can be implemented, and pays attention to past successful cases. The technical person in charge pays attention to the connection of system information and whether the technical level is leading. The person in charge of purchasing is concerned with the price/performance ratio and so on. When producing content, enterprises should pay attention to designing content topics based on the target audience of the content, and also consider the content presentation channels. For example, the CEO of the company may pay attention to interviews and brand promotion endorsed by well-known media, and the technical person in charge may browse professional forums/content platforms from time to time. The person in charge of the business may pay attention to the dynamics of competing products and friends, and the enterprise can customize the content and distribution channels for different decision makers to maximize the customer acquisition effect of the content.

3. Make good use of the channel rules and conform to the channel characteristics B2B companies need to conform to the content characteristics of the channel platform when doing content marketing. Short video platforms emphasize the impact and memory points of content. The WeChat platform values ​​the depth and originality of content. Information platforms value hot topics. Professional channels focus on topic selection and quality. When acquiring customers through content through different channels, it is necessary to adjust the content and optimize the title based on the browsing habits of users of the channel to improve the exposure effect and achieve customer acquisition.

4. Ensure the quality of content production. When producing content, the marketing team of B2B companies should not only focus on observing industry trends and analyzing market demand, but also need to establish an effective feedback mechanism with sales. Understand the latest business pain points and needs of customers, and complete content production through smooth internal collaboration to ensure that the content continues to be attractive to potential customers. The marketing team can invite other colleagues to complete content output together, such as inviting the sales team or customer success team to share industry insights and customer service experience, which can also help the sales team acquire customers and achieve sales goals.

5. Regular data analysis. If B2B companies want to acquire customers through content, they must do a good job in the statistics and analysis of business opportunity data. Some companies focus on data such as the number of viewers and the number of reposts when analyzing content. Enterprises should understand the customer acquisition performance of each channel and count the customer acquisition capabilities of different content.

Summary

Content production is a “right but hard thing”. The most important thing is to regularly produce content, evaluate performance, and continuously optimize content to attract more potential customers with higher-quality content and bring continuous business opportunities for enterprises.