b2b according to Kotler, or a Biometric System for Kamenskaya.
Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee
Mohammed Ali
Advertising for washing powder, yoghurts, sanitary pads and beer (despite all the obstacles and restrictions on the advertising activity of manufacturers of one of the most popular drinks) has occupied wide and other screens — agencies are happy with such clients and are ready to fight for their budgets without sparing their lives.
As for b2b market companies, for them such approaches mean shooting a cannon at sparrows.
For them, advertising flows should be point. What is happening in this area now?
On the one hand, advertising agencies are not particularly fond of highly specialized clients: a lot of trouble, but the money will be less than from sellers of mass-market goods.
On the other hand, until recently, the companies of the b2b market themselves did not particularly need the services of advertising agencies.
Moreover, some of them did not even have a marketing department, and the functions of advertisers were performed by heads of departments and divisions.
Indeed, this is more than justified when the main sales in the company occur due to existing or developed connections.
However, the situation has changed, and things are now going uphill for those companies that were able to reorient themselves in time and fully use all the possibilities of market mechanisms to attract customers.
A buyer in the b2b market — what is he like:
a) literate (often more literate than the company's sales manager);
b) more or less constant (i.e. not a one-off);
c) there are not many buyers;
d) the buyer is inert;
d) largely dependent on the needs of their buyer;
e) sometimes personally interested.
Literacy
You are unlikely to convince a buyer of goods on the b2b market with promotions like “buy 100 pieces, and you will receive the right to participate in a lottery, the winners of which will be able to take part in a lottery…” – he is not naive.
If a buyer reads an outright lie (which a non-specialist might not have noticed), he may turn away from the authors of the advertising publication forever.
This buyer is interested in specific information about the product: its functionality, the benefits of purchasing this particular product, warranties and technical support.
He has been a master of the Internet for a long time, and even if you have not done so, he will definitely compare your products by price and characteristics with other offers on the market.
The buyer is more or less constant
because his current activity is related to a specific type of goods. That is, he is constant in that buying is his current need.
And by and large it doesn't matter to him from whom. Thus, the tasks in organizing sales are reduced not only to finding a buyer, but also to retaining him.
Any little thing that makes his life easier to some extent can influence the buyer's choice: delivery to the door, quick release from the warehouse, convenient location of the supplier's office/warehouse, a cup of tea, a responsive manager, a TV in the waiting area, a magazine with beautiful pictures, a polite secretary.
Often, the buyer is ready to overpay for confidence in the quality of the product/service and the reliability of the supplier
There are not many buyers.
The number of potential clients on the b2b market is usually finite, it is quite easy to count them, create a database and work with them personally. But this is where the buyer's inertia comes into play.
Inertia.
The peculiarity of the b2b market is that the purchased product requires further development, configuration, installation.
And the product itself can be quite complex.
Thus, when buying, for example, complex equipment of a specific brand, you need to have a corresponding specialist on staff.
And every day this person begins to understand more and more about one specific brand, perhaps no longer the best of those available on the market.
However, finding the same specialist for another brand is often more difficult than correcting the shortcomings in a product that has already been studied.
Fear of change and fear of the possibility of swapping one thing for another force buyers to tolerate the shortcomings and negligence of long-term suppliers, sometimes they are ready to tolerate even the complete failures of their partners chosen many years ago, perhaps by accident.
The buyer depends on the demands of his buyers.
The choice of the buyer in the b2b market largely depends on what the next buyer prefers.
«I will buy what my clients will buy from me» — in this way, by forming requests from end consumers, you can force the intermediate link to buy the goods you need.
The buyer is sometimes personally interested.
Oh! This probably shouldn't be written about!
Kickbacks and bribes to suppliers, hired directors and other interested parties — this is not about us.
However, this, in principle, vicious system can be directed into a civilized channel.
Many companies officially declare schemes for encouraging sellers by the buyer.
That is, if a seller offers a buyer two practically identical products from competing companies, some suppliers prefer not to increase discounts, but to conclude additional contracts with the buyer's employees.
Promotion tools
Many have probably seen how masterfully one can wield a chisel and how uselessly another can.
In promotion, everything is about the same: there are tools, of which, by the way, there are not so many and they are, in principle, known.
The trick here is how to use them and how to handle them wisely, namely:
How and in what exhibitions to participate?
How effective are industry media?
Do they need to be paid for informational articles?
Should you spend time looking for your place on the pages of business publications?
How to present the company on the Internet?
Should you participate in blogs and forums?
How to conduct a presentation or partner seminar?
What does personal work with potential buyers give?
How effective is sponsorship?
Why do you need PR?
You can entrust the work with these tools to your own company's employees or an advertising agency.
The main thing is that they remember the goal: not only to notify the audience about the existence of the product, but also to make them buy it.
Of course, all these tools cost money.
The size of the promotion budget can be calculated in different ways, and for each company it is undoubtedly individual.
To roughly understand the level of expenses, you can try to calculate the advertising costs of competitors.
You can allocate a certain percentage of the budget for promotion or as much money as you can afford.
At the same time, even if the budget turns out to be modest, this does not mean that the card is beaten. Where does such confidence come from?
Practice shows that not all funds are spent correctly.
Including those companies that, it would seem, have eaten a dog in this business, and more than one. The reasons for throwing money away are rooted in the habit of certain advertising media that may have once been innovative, but have lost their effectiveness over time.
However, the reasons for betting on the wrong horse can be different.
And such incidents happen even to famous companies. Anyone who has seen at least one film in the series about police officer Kamenskaya has probably noticed the eyeball recognition and identification system installed at the entrance to the MUR.
Product placement is a great thing, but probably not for biometric access control systems.
It must be assumed that the entire budget was spent on the film.
A few years later, when a sufficient amount of similar equipment appeared on the market and when the consumer was ready for it, this system is not sold anywhere.
And in this context, one should not underestimate the chances of success in conditions of a minimal budget, but with a creative approach.
On the other hand, yes, creativity takes the city, but one should not rush into the breach.
Unconventional ideas are certainly wonderful. However, sometimes they turn into something like “art for artists” and cease to meet their original goal: increasing sales.
What is the point of a beautiful idea, even if it has won an advertising festival award, if it does not motivate people to buy the advertised product?
And another very important, but often overlooked point is consistency.
One of the major companies in the security market once built a stand in orange colors at an exhibition, printed booklets and catalogs in green, and advertising modules in gray.
An opposite example: by choosing the slogan «In orbit of new achievements», one of the companies implements the idea of space on all advertising media.
For example, in a wall calendar, each month corresponds to a constellation, nebula or other space object, the distinctive feature of which is its exclusivity or highest degree: the heaviest, the most distant, the largest, etc.
The advertiser's mission
Competitive struggle has never been distinguished by loyalty.
It is enough to recall Mr. Gvozdikov, the hero of the well-known novel Media Sapiens, who staged a terrorist attack in the metro and a raid on Georgia as a way to survive in the industry market (in this case, in the political one).
As for an advertiser working in the b2b market, for the company to prosper and for personal success it is enough to apply the above to the existing experience and knowledge in the field of advertising, and also to take into account a number of specific features.
Those who are too concerned with questions like “this is contrary to network etiquette”, “no one has done this before us”, “this will hit competitors too hard – they will do something similar”, it is better not to engage in advertising.
There are many other professions where traditions and morals do not interfere with proper work.
For an advertiser, it doesn't matter what quality the product is or how competitive it is. An advertiser is like a lawyer who doesn't care whether the defendant is guilty or not.
The purpose of a lawyer's work is to achieve the minimum (or better yet, an acquittal) sentence for the defendant.
The purpose of an advertiser's work is to achieve the maximum possible under the existing conditions.
The work of advertisers in most cases is not appreciated on merit.
The manager perceives the advertiser as a person wasting money. This impression is primarily due to the fact that b2b markets have deferred demand and it is extremely difficult to track the effectiveness of advertising investments.
Every day and every hour, the advertiser must prove his case.
By doing his job well. Better than others.
More noticeable.
More unique.
So that everyone around says: «How well you did it!»
Everything that is not prohibited by law and the manager is allowed
Advertising in the b2b sphere is like strong nails and a hammer in the hands of a master.
The sharpness of the nail is creativity — what gives publicity, what catches; the hands of the master give direction to the nail, i.e. adjust the positioning; the hammer firmly drives nails into the minds of potential consumers, and this is done due to the mass and intensity of appeals to the target audience.
However, advertising can only bear constant fruit if it is based on a competent pricing and dealer policy, the company has a full set of documents and certificates necessary for work and is focused on long-term cooperation with its clients and partners.