Channel or B2B Promotions
Almost every time when people talk about business-to-business commerce, the first thing comes to my mind is Alibaba, since this is where I learned the term--B2B. But another interesting thing I’ve noticed recently is that in digital age, B2B has become more like a platform rather than a business model.

Take Alibaba as an example, as a B2B international group and sourcing destinations of many small business owners, it has officially transformed into online trade platform to serve more needs. Alibaba has been actively promoting cross-border shopping, which also provide foreign merchant more opportunities to enter Chinese market. During last year, Alibaba opened up to foreign suppliers with the addition of twenty-four South Korean brands through its “Direct From Overseas Markets” program. In this way, foreign brand could reduce costs and face up with the vast number of sell/consumers directly. For those small business merchants, it would be difficult for them to establish a fine cooperation and mutual-trust relation with foreign suppliers in a long distance. But through Alibaba, they could get better source to develop their own business within limited principal. Alibaba’s platform allows for resource maximization, and makes the small businesses do more with less.

Also, I noticed that in today’s marketplaces, B2B is used in the context of communication and collaboration. And this is a point when content marketing comes into play, and serve as an active role in the B2B relationships. It may not a classic case, but I think TED Talks is a good example in here. I believe this TED is an excellent example of how companies can use video as part of their content marketing strategy. Video is a simple, clean way to capture what experts are thinking, feeling and saying about their field. Short footage with powerful words from the speakers makes