Brand building for consumer goods came out of advertising and developed as a science from there. The major driver of advertising spends in the last century were consumer goods. P&G & Lever led the way with spending tremendous amounts of money on advertising aimed at prodding the different stages of consumer behavior with ads aimed at product differentiation, product trial, product adoption and finally brand loyalty. Advertising was crucial and it’s effectiveness was gauged by measures of top-of-mind awareness, brand recognition, brand recall and intent to purchase.
That worked, and still works, for consumer goods today. But, what about the other industry sectors like service, technology, finance and B2B? Mass advertising cannot build a brand for a $250K service contract that one business enters into with another business. With the proliferation of new message delivery systems via the Internet and the shift in influencing power to this medium, a different model needs to be adapted by B2B firms for their brand building efforts.
Selling B2B products is a different proposition altogether. The sales cycle is longer, the contract value is usually in millions, the B2B relationship usually is long-term and more personal, the customer base is small and products tends to be customized for different customers. It’s no surprise that brand building here is a combination of reliability, service, quality, effectiveness and competence. Other than the organization-to-organization relationship, there are very few intangible benefits as opposed to consumer marketing. Here are some tips on how B2B firms can build their brands in today’s digital world.
1. Build a Corporate brand: B2B sales are essentially supplier-manufacturer or licensor-licensee or shared IP relationships. It is important for a firm to define it’s core values incorporating the high quality, superior service, strong reliability etc and stress the same while building a corporate brand. HP, Cisco, Marriot, EMC, Oracle have built strong corporate brands – it goes without saying that their brand creates an image of quality and value. A good way for a typical B2B firm to build credibility would be to use past customer referrals, trial demonstrations and trial installations, product sampling and simple, good old-fashioned hand holding.
2. Build the brand image at every customer contact: A B2B firm needs to ensure that it has a comprehensive brand building plan at every point of customer contact. Customer experiences build a B2B brand. The idea is to create positive customer experiences where ever the brand is in play like events, seminars, news releases, email, customer support and other customer touchpoints. Every opportunity to interact with the customer should be viewed as an opportunity to build the brand image.
3. Live the brand’s promise regularly: Hire a brand manager to build your B2B brand but do not forget that your brand’s ultimate success relies on everyone in the company (including the CEO) living the brand’s values on a regular basis. For e.g. big-ticket sales are almost always concluded on a CEO level. Sometimes, the sales pitch begin at C-Level (pun unintended) with mid-management providing the necessary ammunition and support as needed. Technology company CEOs are usually very high profile and branding savvy – they’re present at trade shows, they’re available at meet-and-greets and check in on big customers once in a while.
4. Deliver a consistent global brand message: Ensure that the brand’s core values are maintained everywhere it is sold. If localization needs to take place, variations can occur as long as the brand message is consistent with the overall brand image globally.
5. Stand by the brand’s 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.
6. Measure success the right way: Traditionally, we relied on Madison Ave and business school professors for techniques to measure brand building effectiveness. Unfortunately, most of those models apply to B2C brands. Brand awareness, brand recognition and brand recall will not cut it for a B2B brand.
Instead, use techniques to measure customer-perceived value, customer satisfaction, customer retention and customer advocacy. Customer perceived value is typically done by surveying your customers as well as clients you’ve pitched to. Have weighted values in place for each perception attribute and map the same to understand how your brand is perceived with respect to your competition. Customer satisfaction is a combination of both external surveying as well as internal analysis where you analyze every marketing activity that touches the customers and obtain an understanding of how satisfied they ware with the activity. Ditto with the other two metrics.
A reliable brand has power and value in the industry which in turn influences the perceptions of the brand’s customers and competitors. For a B2B brand to move to the farthest end of the customer AIDA process where it has reached the level of brand acceptability, it’s not just the brand manager who takes responsibility for this. Rather, the entire organization is responsible for delivering the brand message, supporting the brand’s values and building the brand’s credibility.
It’s important to take note of every tip given as corporate branding is an essential part of a business’ lifeline and growth. Thanks for the post.