How to reconstruct B-end products? Four stages of TOB brand marketing and "Seven" ...

In the B-end products, some old systems may have problems of complicated process and weak expansibility, which need to be reformed. I. Reconstruction background 1. System introduction and transformation goal The system we want to transform is the vehicle networking data monitoring system that the company has been operating for many years. At present, the old system has been used for about 8 years, with many functions, complicated processes and weak expansibility. The goal of reconstruction is to turn the platform into a SAAS standardized service system for the Internet of Vehicles, which not only meets the requirements of the newly issued national regulatory policies, but also provides car body data analysis reports for car factory customers, supports customers' technical transformation and sales forecast, and enhances the core competitiveness of products in the market. 2. Reasons for reconfiguration The early platform didn't have the role of product manager, but the R&D manager took the R&D team and stacked the functions according to the past experience and similar products already on the market. Complex functional logic and poor flow have seriously affected the work efficiency of users. Early development did not leave any documents, and no one understood the underlying logic rules of some functions. 1) Market policy changes during the start-up of reconfiguration: Just in time for the release of the new national standard 4, it is required that the vehicle manufacturer must have its own vehicle networking management platform to record the data of machinery, chips and terminals, monitor the emission data of the new standard and forward the data to the national platform in real time. Changes in users' needs: The internal collaboration process of the car factory is standardized, and we realize that the old platform can no longer meet the existing departmental collaboration standards of users, and the demand for data analysis in the car factory is getting stronger and stronger. Product target change: Some automobile manufacturers also have self-built DMS and CMMP platforms, and customers want to open the data interface to realize data synchronization of the whole platform, which is convenient for management and monitoring. 2) Summary of the problems of the existing platform The old system has obvious ceiling on the data level, unreasonable efficiency distribution and low resource utilization, which leads to many tasks waiting and slow progress. The function design is too conservative, the page and interaction are backward, the operation information is unclear, the division of each module is not standardized, the page repetition rate is high, the process series is low, and the user experience is poor. There are too few index dimensions about parameter data analysis, which can no longer meet the business needs of current customers. Without abstracting the data into a standard interface, it is impossible to complete the data docking with the customer's own platform, relying entirely on manual support. It is hoped that through this reconstruction, the system can be completely reshaped from the bottom core architecture to the user perception layer, including: improving the platform carrying capacity, reshaping the authority system, connecting the whole process in series, improving the user experience and expanding new functions. 3) The team consists of 15 team members who participated in the whole reconstruction project. Among them, there are 2 people in the product, 3 people in the test, 2 people in the front end, 4 people in the background and 4 people in big data. UI is a public resource, not a member of a special project team. Two. Project planning and arrangement The platform has many functions and complicated business. We have carried out the transformation plan in three stages: basic version: the main line process is completed, and the goal is to run the process from the vehicle filing and production of the national government to the risk control management authority, so as to realize the comprehensive management of vehicle information. Standard edition: add sub-modules such as after-sales and maintenance management, aiming at improving sales data, after-sales service and BI data statistics. Realize the monitoring of the automobile production line by the automobile factory. Advanced edition: data empowerment, the goal is to analyze and empower the collected data to help enterprises achieve effective data verification in production reform and sales plan. Because the platform has complex functions and a long battle line, and we hope to migrate a group of users to use it after 1.0 goes online, so as to collect effective user feedback as soon as possible and improve it in subsequent tasks, it is very important to complete the planned tasks on time, which requires us to have clear planning objectives for each version and strictly follow the plan. Otherwise, once there is a problem, the development cycle will be lengthened and the feedback effect of users will not be received in time. If the second phase of the project is revised after it goes online, it will be very tormenting. Iii. The whole process of project reconstruction 1. Business combing Because the old system platform has been used for a long time, R&D personnel have changed several times, and the hidden logic is unknown, so after receiving the reconfiguration task, we will comb the functions and business logic of the whole system together. First of all, we sort out each page by dividing it into modules, and combine our own work experience to sort out some logic in the page, such as where some data come from, what services these data are related to, and the immediacy and accuracy of the data. At this stage, we should break the blind spot of the original system as much as possible, conduct a comprehensive anatomy of the whole system, let it have a clear architectural cognition in our minds, and find out the shortcomings in the process, so as to provide decisions in the subsequent transformation and upgrading. 2. User research Although we have recorded many problems in the process of function combing before, it is most important to understand our real customer needs. Through the analysis of user frequency, daily demand feedback frequency and customer scale, we chose three major customers as our main research users. The investigation is divided into two steps: 1) collecting opinions internally. First, we conduct an investigation within the company. By talking with the core employees of our sales, after-sales service, technical support and other departments, we collect users' problems, needs and the development of related competing products, and sort them out to help us provide basis in the face-to-face investigation with users. 2) Face-to-face user survey Before the actual user survey, we contacted the person in charge of the customer, who helped us understand the departmental structure of the company and sorted out the demands and expectations of various departments for platform functions or business. The interview content mainly focuses on the daily workflow of each department, the collaboration department, the data empowerment needs, and the functions we hope to strengthen in the next design. We also learned some internal technical terms and data analysis and calculation methods of the Internet of Vehicles. During the interview, with the consent of the customer, we adopted the method of recording/taking notes. Face-to-face communication with users, I think, is the most efficient process to understand business processes, so that we can not only clearly know each other's internal working methods, but also realize our shortcomings through their complaints and suggestions, and clearly convey what we want to do to customers, let customers participate in it as participants, and establish priorities according to the urgency of customers' needs, so as to mobilize users' enthusiasm for trial use after the later launch of 1.0 and give us more and more effective suggestions. 3. After the investigation in the early stage of design and review, we spent a lot of time combing and modularizing all the requirements, outputting the business flow chart, defining the scope of requirements, changing the state of the process, and connecting the whole logic in series to ensure that the main process will not deviate when we design the module. In the stages of prototype, interaction and UI design, we are also cautious. In order to ensure the quality of development and design, we will always synchronize our business and requirements with the project team members, ensure that everyone can better understand the business and objectives, and prepare for their later development technology. Review meeting: First, review the business logic and technical realization with business parties, technical support, customer representatives, R&D team leaders and other departments, organize a large-scale review meeting after ensuring that there are basically no major problems, and review with all relevant personnel of the project team to confirm the project progress. For complicated logic and major changes, it is suggested to prepare relevant materials, future expansion and solutions to related problems in advance before the review, which will not only ensure your confidence in the review meeting, but also reassure all parties. 4. Project management process In the process of project development, we will control the progress of the project in the form of morning meeting and weekly meeting, and deal with the deviation of business understanding, problems encountered and problems that need to be coordinated with in time to avoid delays caused by such problems in the development process. The project manager will send emails on the overall progress, problems and solutions of the project to all members of the team before leaving work every Friday, and synchronize with the leaders. In the project testing stage, after the core process runs smoothly, we will carry out internal operation, technical support and some users' attempts on the internal test version. After the other party feels satisfied with the trial in the core process stage, we will launch the official version and inform the customer. Within one month after the launch, we will have a special person to pay attention to user feedback, carry out rapid iterative repair and follow-up task planning, and control the project schedule and time. 5. Data Migration and Synchronization After the new product is launched, the migration of old data should be done step by step. We adopted three ways to ensure the stability of users' data on the old platform, and smoothly transferred the data to the new platform, giving users a period of time to gradually adapt and gradually migrate to the new platform. 1) platform basic information synchronizes static basic information data such as account information, institution information and related basic information, and the storage mode is MySQL database. Because the table structures and fields of the old and new platforms are different, it is necessary to match the data structures of the old and new platforms and synchronize the data through tools or programming. 2) The data of the old and new platforms are synchronized with each other, and the newly generated data needs to be synchronized for a period of time, that is, the data generated on the old platform needs to be synchronized to the new platform until it is completely switched to the new platform. 3) Big data migration Big data environment is divided into headquarters big data environment, privatization deployment big data environment and cloud big data environment. If the platform uses the big data environment of the headquarters, it is not affected and does not need to be migrated; If you used the big data environment of our headquarters before and now want to privatize or use the cloud environment, then you need to synchronize the data of our headquarters to the privatized deployment environment or cloud environment through network synchronization or offline disk copy. Because of the large amount of dynamic data, it needs to spend corresponding network resources and time costs. Such as the previous privatization deployment or cloud environment, it is not affected and does not need to be migrated. Four. TOB brand value As a B2B marketer and marketer, it is not difficult to choose any strategy and tactics. More importantly, what is your decision-making model and underlying logic? So, let's start with the basic logic of the brand: 1. The value of brand to enterprise: brand is the asset of enterprise management, which can be used for value exchange and has room for appreciation; It can help enterprises acquire customers at low cost. Brand is equivalent to bearing the business behavior of enterprises, abstracted as a kind of cognition, and can protect and stimulate the hidden investment of intellectual property rights of enterprises. Now the homogenization competition in various fields is becoming more and more fierce. Enterprises need long-term investment, including production, research, design and service. These will gradually precipitate into brands, so that the industry and customers can perceive unique differences and show their own value. Based on brand equity, it gradually forms a positive cycle of resisting customers' sensitivity to price, imitating the function of a single product and attracting outstanding talents in the industry. The brand equity formed by the industry's understanding of you can help you acquire customers at a relatively low cost in the process of acquiring customers. As a B2B marketer, you should understand that the accumulation of brand equity is a long-term and continuous process, and you must have brand investment in your annual plan, which is not an immediate return. If your marketing plan focuses on activities such as obtaining leads, then you will give the initiative to the business department and the delivery department, because the core of lead transformation is whether the ability of your company's products and services can support the needs of customers. Most B2B companies, whether international or domestic, are iterative and cannot be perfect. You need a home, so that the target customers can know more about your production and research ability, your values, which well-known customers recognize you and have made some well-known achievements. These are difficult to be fully displayed in an activity aimed at acquiring customers. 2. Brand value to customers: reduce decision-making costs. Why do people choose MBB (McKinsey, Bain, Boston) when choosing a consulting company when the budget allows? The most basic reason is that they are the best in the industry, which is not the core issue of the selection. When a customer has a bidding demand, it is definitely no problem to include several well-known enterprises in the industry, saving the time and cost of preliminary research and screening; The specific person in charge also reduces the responsibility of poor selection, reduces the cost of internal communication, and does not need to repeatedly talk about how the strength of this service provider was selected. I chose the best service provider in the industry, but I screwed up, which shows that this matter is really difficult to handle. Although I am responsible, I am not entirely responsible. From this point of view, marketers have to solve two problems: one is case packaging, and you have to let customers feel what you have done and what achievements you have achieved, and continue to spread them in the circle; Another problem is to let the management of the target customers know about you, which is convenient for the internal promotion of the docking personnel. At that time, Longgong Group, as a heavy machinery industrial group, advertised in CCTV and anti-aircraft guns in expressway. These popular communication behaviors don't seem very reasonable. Why are we doing this? Because quite a few decision-makers of state-owned enterprises are not professionals, but political workers, who will be transferred across industries. They don't fully understand who are professionals in this industry, so it is necessary to enhance brand exposure and recognition through mass channels. When inviting tenders for internal procurement, leaders have a certain understanding of decision-making, which is also convenient for the internal decision-making path of the person in charge of procurement. 3. The value of the brand to the government: it is easy to supervise. The bigger the brand, the greater the pressure from supervision. Negative supervision and public reporting will bring more losses to well-known brands, which requires longer-term positive investment to recover, which is why many enterprises are more afraid of 3 15. In this regard, B2B enterprises are generally weak, and the crisis public relations capacity building is the most backward. However, marketers need to know clearly in their hearts how to standardize the management of brand assets and formulate the SOP of crisis public relations in advance when the enterprise reaches a certain brand awareness and influence, pull the boss together to set up an emergency team of crisis public relations, establish a public opinion monitoring system, establish high-level communication channels of mainstream media, and clarify the feedback mechanism and handling methods when different levels and types of crisis public relations appear. V. Four stages of TOB brand development Generally speaking, the role of brand is to help enterprises and customers form a context of value recognition, which usually involves four progressive dimensions: 1. The first stage of the product value stage should convey the image of "the most professional in the industry", so that the target customers can perceive your major simply and intuitively. At this time, the main responsibility of the marketing department is to provide sales materials for business departments, solve PMF(PMF is short for ProductMarketFit, which means that products and markets meet the best point, and the products you provide just meet the market demand and satisfy customers), refine product selling points, and display them in official website, PPT, brochures, etc. , and then do activities, seo, SEM, etc. Usually. This stage is basically the running-in between the marketing staff and the company's business, and it is also the time to test the basic skills of a marketing staff. Because this stage is mainly self-selling, it is very important to adapt to the needs of the industry, the pain points of customers and the selling points of their own products and services. It is necessary to turn obscure professional technical language into marketing language and adult language, and gradually establish the professional image of enterprises. There is a very important point here, that is, marketers must participate in the production research and development stages such as preliminary research, customer interviews, functional verification, etc. This is the front end of the PMF process, so that they can feel the body and output valuable sales materials. Many marketers are selfish. I only do my current job well, and you can export the rest to me. But you should know that the chewed things are basically not nutritious, and there are also the understanding preferences and subjective factors of the former. It is difficult for you to extract very professional content after N times of processing, and the customers are all at a loss, all of which are a bunch of proprietary words. If you want to go far and fly high, this step is inevitable. 2. In the second stage of successful case publicity, establish the image of "the most successful case of service" and solve the first * * * knowledge of multi-decision makers such as business and technology. When the company has developed for a period of time and accumulated some benchmark cases, it has entered the second stage of amplifying verifiable resources, which requires case packaging, customer testimony and white paper, and is suitable for some live content and city salons, adding more weight to your brand assets and completing the stage of brand recognition. This has different requirements for marketers. In addition to refining, it is also necessary to transform the customer's demand for this industry, including his evaluation of you, into something new, and then do diversified amplification through live broadcast and salon. After completing the above two stages, the enterprise will basically form an independent marketing department, which is also a turning point for marketers to further complete their work from passive to active. Most of the work in the above two stages can be done independently by the marketing department, and then the marketing work of many enterprises will enter a bottleneck period, and a senior marketing manager is needed to solve the communication and coordination problem between industry resources and internal resources, do the most important brand asset integration, fill in the gaps through repeated research, prepare for the first customer decision-making level, and expand the brand influence. Generally speaking, the integration of brand assets will involve brand identification system (VI, SI, CI, etc. , including IP peripherals, etc. ), the penetration rate of industry cognition (winners list, the proportion of customers' active inquiry, etc.). ), and customer recognition (NPS, satisfaction, recommendation rate, the proportion of customers willing to stand on the platform, etc. ). According to the business characteristics of different industries and enterprises, key indicators can be adjusted and screened. After consolidation and comparison, you will know what level of passive work has reached before. 3. In the third stage of advanced cognitive co-frequency, we should become the most convincing enterprise for decision makers, solve the problem of internal decision-making pressure of KP, and help it quickly pass through the internal decision-making process. This is mainly aimed at enterprises with KA business. If it is PLG mode, this stage may come later. The decision-making mode of KA business will be more complex and rational, involving more horizontal and vertical personnel. At this time, marketing needs to understand the customer's business logic, operational logic and so on. , so as to communicate with senior management and non-technical department personnel, resulting in * * * sound. For marketers, it is necessary to unite internal and external industry big coffee, infiltrate the senior management circle and influence them with high-level business content and rhetoric. The usual means are brand launch conference, KOL platform, brand academy, circle marketing, joint marketing and so on. Many enterprises have developed to a certain stage. When choosing a market leader, what matters is whether he has done anything before, whether he has done digital marketing, whether he knows people in many industries, and whether he can help me get more customer examples. But from my understanding, when an enterprise reaches the third stage, if you want to have influence on some executives in the industry, I think it is very important for you to choose this person, besides his background and ability, his understanding of the logic of the business itself, and whether this person can talk directly with brand executives and talk about some business things together. Because only with this ability can we really influence these characters in the third stage, otherwise the work will be the same as before, except that this person is more experienced and has more resources, and the cost you spend may be relatively lower. That's all. Consolidate the first two stages again, but in fact you still can't reach the third stage. Many enterprises have developed into business schools and graduate schools at a certain stage. This is the purpose. I spend a lot of money to invite people who are not directly related to business growth to do research, usually write books, arguments and analyze cases, just so that one day they really have the ability to do it when they need to have a direct impact on customers' executives or bosses. Because the boss is well informed, can you do it? Do you have knowledge of this industry? Is your theory high, right? In fact, he can hear. 4. Brands lead the industry. In the fourth stage, enter the "industry's most * * * word of mouth" period, solve the problem of customers' sense of security and pride, and let customers who have chosen and are ready to choose you feel that their decision is correct and their choice is industry-leading. This level is more about the recognition of values and the ability to verify the spillover of their own brand influence. Basically, enterprises have entered the leading ranks of the industry at this time, so we need to consider how to create topics that affect the industry, integrate ecological resources to make a big industry cake, and carry out employee education, public welfare investment, IP destruction, brand concept and values output, customer experience management, etc. In this industry leader stage, enterprises can make rules with their own resources to guide the layout and development of a brand-new industry and become "creators". In your field of making rules, it is difficult for someone to beat you, and only you refuse. Reaching this stage is related to the strength of the company, and the company itself can at least achieve the top in the industry, so it is possible for him. If the current situation of this enterprise is that the comprehensive strength does not meet the requirements in all aspects, but the slogan is loud, it is easy to bite yourself. TOB is a normalized business with a small circle. If you say that you are not strong enough, you don't brag, you just smile, and word of mouth may be difficult to reverse in the future. Sixth, the TOB brand landed seven times. At what stage of your business, do things at that stage. On this basis, further strategic combination optimization will enhance existing brands. How to break through the brand strategy is a key point. In this process, I found that the dimension of brand is not enough. Brand+industry is a feasible development strategy, which eventually forms the theory of "seven ones", which is also a feasible path from top-level brand design to empowerment business. Brand processing industry for enterprises, that is, brand strategy should be directly related to business, in order to go all the way from the highest brand positioning to your actual business growth. 1. A clear corporate brand positioning, confirming its own track, customers, boundaries and value points, and providing basic product promotion materials. For B2B enterprises, I personally think that starting from reality, we can simply answer what is the positioning of our own enterprises from three points: (1)