Recommendations on Building a B2B Matchmaking Platform

B2B matchmaking platforms are a rapidly evolving sector that enables entrepreneurs to make good money. In this article, you’ll find valuable recommendations for people who want to build a product of this type.

Choose a Niche

“B2B matchmaking platform” is a too general definition. If you don’t target your product at a narrow segment, it would probably fail to take off. Plus, it would need to contain too many functions and the price of its development would skyrocket.

The market generates steady demand for platforms that connect the following types of individuals and organizations:

• Startups with ventures and investors
• Product companies with service providers
• Businesses with other organizations or individuals and organizing events

If you focus on one of those, you’ll have higher odds to succeed.

The better you understand the peculiarities and demands of your target audience, the better you can allocate your resources. You’ll be able to decide whether you need outstaffing or can cope on your own.

These are just a few examples of sectors that you might want to concentrate on because they definitely need B2B matchmaking platforms.

• IT and software development
• Media and advertisement
• Energy and utilities

After you segment your potential users by sectors and business models, you should be able to estimate your approximate market share.

Analyze Your Competitors

The competition among B2B matchmaking platforms is fierce. To design a successful product, you should get to know the weak points of your rivals. If they fail to offer solutions for certain problems, you should do it! Also, you need to make sure that you’re not building an exact replica of an already existing platform.

Here are the brief descriptions of real-life B2B matchmaking platforms. This information should help you to understand how different such businesses might be.

• A platform helps to create long-lasting relationships between large corporations and agile startups, relying on an AI matchmaking algorithm. In addition to their digital platform, the team behind this company has designed an instrument that corporations can employ to track startups. Besides, this business helps technology companies, SMEs and startups to launch partnerships and collaborations. To achieve this goal, it relies on an international network of agents.
• The second example is a brokerage, growth and consultancy service company. It allows tech startups to connect with organizations that are looking for advanced technology solutions. This B2B matchmaking platform provides 24/7 access to its network of startups and established organizations in two cities, located in two different countries.
• Another platform provides lucrative opportunities for startups, SMEs and board members to connect and collaborate. When it comes to startup development, it offers full-cycle expertise for all stages, from fundraising to scaling. This one targets a very narrow audience — so at the very beginning, its chances to succeed were rather slim.
• This platform offers a free sales channel to startups and established businesses. There, they can find matching service providers and begin to collaborate. This one caters only to companies and doesn’t allow freelancers to join. To ensure that only medium and high-quality organizations enter the platform, there is a serious pre-screening and review process. This business differentiates itself from all the others included in this list by offering a B2B matchmaking marketplace where organizations can get listed and search for customers. Plus, companies can submit their products there. This platform takes a 10% commission fee after each successful transaction from a customer.

On the Internet, you can find dozens of other examples that might inspire you.

Think of Which Expenses You Could Reduce

The development of a B2B matchmaking platform includes the following cost items:

• Product market fit analysis
• Design
• Development and quality assurance
• Support and maintenance

To optimize your expenses, you should get rid of excessive functions. Consider leaving only those that are absolutely necessary and those that give your product a competitive edge. Here is the list of those features that you’ll hardly be able to do without.

• Sign-up and sign-in page
• User dashboard
• User and organization management
• Filtered search and connection
• Calendar and event planning
• Map and location management
• Notifications

And here are examples of additional functionality that you might either include or omit, depending on the specifics of your product:

• CRM integration
• Private and group chats
• Custom organization profile management
• Advanced admin panel functionality
• Export/import of documents
• Polls, report generation, tracking

If you omit a certain feature, discuss it in advance with your development team how easy it will be to add it later and how much it might cost.

Omitting or simplifying a function is not always synonymous with sacrificing. For instance, the shorter your registration form, the better. If you ask your new users to share a lot of information about themselves at the very first step, it might demotivate them. Ideally, you should let them sign up via social login. To access the full functionality of the platform, users would need to complete their profiles with their personal data.

Promote Your Product

To attract people’s attention to your B2B matchmaking platform, use the following communication channels.

• SEO and content marketing. They will help you to build a web presence and boost your brand authority.
• Advertising on LinkedIn and Facebook. There, you should target segmented audiences.
• Collaborate with business advisors, consultants and other influencers who actively communicate with their followers. They might either be interested in cross-promotions or you might want to pay them.
• Visit offline conferences, meetups and other events to talk about your product.

To save time, start building your marketing strategy when developers start building your platform.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, this information came in handy, and now you have a better vision of how to develop and promote your B2B matchmaking platform. The sooner you begin to work on it, the more lucrative niche you should be able to occupy.