When it Comes To B2B Branding

When it Comes To B2B Branding

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It’s perfectly appropriate – and necessary – to toot your own horn from time to time as part of your B2B branding efforts. Whether it’s an impressive media placement or a web traffic milestone, implement proof points illustrating why your organization is a thought leader into marketing communications.

Market the brand

Achieving and building on name recognition is the key to brand success. Get your brand message out there consistently and continuously through PR, advertising, and networking. Take advantage of every positive opportunity and be careful not to associate the brand with anything potentially negative.

Your branding effort must permeate your entire organization and communicate through all marketing channels with one voice, in the same tone, and in the same style. In other words, your brand image must be consistent and constant across all channels of communication, including:

• Print, online, and broadcast advertising

• Print, online, and broadcast media

• Internal publications

• Indoor and outdoor signage

• Web site and Web marketing

• Print collateral

• Packaging

• Merchandising

• Point of purchase

• Phone system

• Uniforms

• Delivery vehicles

• Trade shows

• Events

• Promotional items

• Employee, industry, shareholder, community, and government relations

• Sponsorships

Identify your brand's differentiator

Once you're sure you have a high quality product, decide on the singular distinction for your product that is most important to your target market. Put a lot of thought into choosing this differentiator because you want everything you do to reinforce that singular distinction in the market. If your brand is not first in your category then consider creating a new category where your brand can be first.

Stand by the brands communicated values: Use the brand value proposition as the key driver 0f the company’s strategy, operations, service and product development. Simply said, deliver what your brand promises. For e.g. It always aggravates a client to be told that a certain functionality that he thought was included in his $500K CRM deal is not part of it and would cost him an additional $50K. If your brand promises quality, reliability and competence, be sure that your team stands by those values and delivers them all the time. In this case, rather than aggravate the client and see your future sales pipeline dry up, negotiate the additional cost by provind more services or adding more features for free or in the end, or simply absorb it. Better to face a hit of $50K than lose $1M in future business.

Intel is the ultimate ingredient brand. Zero sales to end consumers yet Intel built a consumer demand pull for its chips that required every PC manufacturer to incorporate them and to advertise Intel Inside on their products and in their ads. Other ingredient brands include Goretex, Teflon and even the Boeing 787 Dreamliner (as a differentiating ingredient for early adopter airlines).

GE and Microsoft are hybrid brands with some direct-to-consumer sales that have helped to build the reputations of what are primarily B2B firms. But these enterprises, although selling to businesses, want to be in touch with end consumers, with their aspirations and their needs. That is a source of competitive advantage in driving their innovation agendas.

The above were two examples quoted in relation to B2B branding.

 
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