Founder IP creation: a magic weapon for B2B low-cost customer acquisition

In the To B business sector, the influence of the founder's personal brand is increasingly becoming the key to gaining customer trust and acquiring customers at low cost. This article explores in depth how to build a successful founder IP, from the importance of IP to content planning to operations and conversion strategies, providing comprehensive guidance for founders and operators of To B businesses.

If you want to build an IP for the founder of a To B business, the prerequisite for success must be that the founder takes the lead, and the founder needs to have a certain understanding of IP building, otherwise it will not work.

A good founder IP is actually an amplifier of product trust. Compared with the sales side, the founder’s explanation of business management, product concepts and company values ​​will definitely be more effective in gaining customer trust. It can influence customer decisions to a certain extent and help product conversion.

Therefore, founders of To B businesses, or even SaaS agency owners, can try to create a founder's IP account. Bosses and operation colleagues who are doing or preparing to do so are also welcome to communicate with us.

01 What stage is suitable for doing it?

In fact, every stage is suitable for doing it, but different stages have different ways of playing.

A few days ago, a friend posted a ranking of the influence of Douyin entrepreneurs’ IPs in the group. Basically, they are all top entrepreneurs in the industry. In fact, for mature companies, they do it more for brand voice.

However, for To B businesses in the early to mid-stages of development, the influence of the founder’s IP becomes particularly important if they want to promote their business.

For To B businesses in the development stage, the goal of IP creation is to obtain sales leads and cultivate customers in the private domain.

02 Account Positioning

The core of To B business is to build customer trust and convey the company's product value and business philosophy. Therefore, you don't need to carefully build a persona. As a company founder or agency boss, you only need to present your ideas and opinions to customers.

Therefore, whether you are in the company, visiting customers, training, or attending industry conferences and salons, you can choose topics and output them. For founders of To B businesses, having thoughts and opinions is a good IP.

It is important to note that you should not blindly follow any hot topics. Always remember that the purpose of your account is to acquire customers and build customer trust. Although some hot and controversial topics may bring you some traffic, they cannot bring you leads.

Don’t post content that is not related to business. I have seen some video accounts of software agents, and the data of life-related content is very good. However, customers don’t want to know your hard work, they only care about what value you can bring to them.

03 Platform Selection

When it comes to choosing a platform for IP, I would first recommend Video Account.

Although video accounts have a trend of development in the public domain, their greater value lies in reaching and disseminating in the private domain, which can help our business obtain traffic and accurate lead conversion at a lower cost.

The main public domain platforms now are Douyin and Xiaohongshu. In fact, these two platforms are not very suitable for IP creation for To B business. There is already very little natural traffic on these two platforms. You either need to layout business-related keywords or spend money on advertising.

For most To B businesses in the development stage, it is recommended that you put your limited budget into more precise distribution channels rather than spending it on the founder's IP.

As for video accounts, the creation of accounts can rely on the customer base within WeChat and the spread and reach of the sales end, which is more friendly than public domain platforms in terms of account creation and dissemination.

04 IP Operation

IP operation includes content planning, topic selection, content creation and how to do a good job of dissemination.

1) Content Planning

Of course, for founders with strong output and expression capabilities, they may not need to do content planning. They can also produce good results by focusing on the selected topics. However, for To B business founders and IP operators, they still need to have a clear plan to find the shooting style and content direction that suits the boss.

Before planning content, you can research some industry accounts or vertical accounts to see what series of content others are doing. List a few and discuss with your boss to determine the approximate content plan and shooting frequency.

2) Topic selection

You can create a topic sharing document (a quick complaint: most bosses probably won’t fill it out), or create a topic group, and throw any good topic ideas directly into the group (the simplest way is that we had such a group before, and just throw good content into the group). Whether you are a trader or a boss, you can throw good ideas directly into the group and organize them every day or week.

3) Content Creation

If you are a trader, it is best to just give an outline for content creation. As the founder IP himself, he will have his own thoughts and insights. If he directly reads the script, the effect will not be good.

Because as an operator, the understanding of business, management and industry is definitely not as good as that of the IP itself. Of course, we can use some AI tools to optimize the content as a reference suggestion.

4) Dissemination

Communication needs to be promoted by the founder IP himself to be more effective. As employees, most people will execute the things that the boss takes the lead in the group, whether it is performance or coping. If the content is good, sales will also be more proactive in forwarding it.

05 Conversion

Whether it is product trial spots, free physical books, or collecting materials or registering for courses, there are many ways to convert. As long as you can create good content, conversion will not be a problem.

Final Thoughts

A high-quality IP is of great help to the development of business. Whether it is acquiring customer leads or cultivating customers, good results can be achieved at a lower cost.

However, the creation of a founder's IP is a long-term project. It is impossible to see immediate results with just one or two videos. It is not easy to persist. In the early stage, pay more attention to account data and positive feedback from interactions so that you can persist.

If you are interested in content related to founder IP creation and plan to create an account, we can set up a special founder IP creation exchange group where everyone can discuss and grow together.