Why Is A B2B Branding Strategy So Crucial for Your Business?

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a B2B business.

Have you already started developing a B2B branding strategy? If you haven’t yet, then you’ll gain a lot of precious info from reading this article.

This article explains all you need to know about the importance of developing a B2B branding strategy and the rookie mistakes you should avoid when doing B2B branding.

To get started, there’s an important truth you need to know about branding:

“Branding is more than just a logo and a name.”

Too many B2B brands think their job is done after designing a fancy logo and name for their company.

So, if branding isn’t about a cool name or logo, what is B2B branding all about?

The correct answer is it’s about building a relationship and establishing trust with your B2B customers.

The Importance of Developing A B2B Branding Strategy

Many B2B marketers are very focused on short-term sales. But who can blame them?

Getting sales is an immense pressure. On top of that, they have to meet quarterly needs to keep your shareholders satisfied.

These major reasons make it difficult for marketers to meet long-term goals such as brand building and advertising (which you see B2C brands doing since the stone age).

Only just recently, B2B brands have just started focusing more on branding.

So, to grow a healthy brand, B2B brands must focus on a 50/50 split between short-term sales and long-term brand building.

Here are 5 reasons you need to focus on developing a B2B branding strategy.

A B2B branding strategy helps your brand gain a competitive advantage

B2B branding helps position your business strategically in the market.

Needless to say, almost every industry is already very saturated. This means competition is cutthroat.

If you’re a financial advisory firm offering the same services as your clients, then in the eyes of your customers, you’re not going to look any different from your competitors.

So, what you need is to find your USP. Something that makes you special and different from your competitors to stand out in the market.

To be even more precise, this refers to something which your brand does so much better than anyone else in the market. This can be one or more things that your company does better than anyone else.

By doing brand positioning, you can shape the way you want your audience to think and feel about your brand.

If you consistently communicate that your brand stands for something, then people who believe in the same values will flock towards your company and spread the word about your brand.

On the other hand, if you can’t position your brand strategically, then it’s hard to get your best customers to pay attention.

Today, there are already so many companies flooding most industries. These companies probably provide the same products/services as you. So, you need to beef up your B2B branding strategy if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

Developing a B2B branding strategy helps to expand your customer base

The point about creating brand awareness is to build familiarity with your audience.

Yes it’s true; just making a prospective client aware of your brand alone won’t drive revenue. But it is an essential first step in the sales process, wouldn’t you agree?

When people start becoming more aware about your brand, they will tend to cling to the belief that if something is well-known, then it is good.

Just think about it, the big four companies like PwC, Accenture, KPMG and Deloitte.

You might not have used their services before. But would you trust them to service your brand?

Chances are, you would. Why? It’s because they are already well-known across the world.

From there, as your brand awareness continues to grow, then people will slowly start to trust you more. At the end of the day, awareness is essential for every business.

To learn more about brand awareness, here’s an article that you might find really helpful. Click to read the article here.

A solid B2B branding strategy increases your customer’s mental availability

It’s not easy getting your customers to think about your brand as their first choice during their purchase process.

There’s only so much our brains can remember. This is what psychologists call “mental availability”.

So, that’s why B2B owners like yourself need branding to assist your customers in recalling your brand better.

Don’t believe “mental availability” is something that really exists?

Well, let’s play a quick test. Name 7 consulting firms at the top of your mind (without using Google).

Here are a few: PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young.

After naming 4 of these firms, you’re probably struggling to name 3 other consulting firms now.

To help you out, 3 other famous consulting firms also include big names like: Accenture, McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group.

Don’t worry if you struggled to answer. This just goes to show that mental availability is something that really does exist.

Having a Brand Strategist plan a solid brand strategy will definitely put your brand at the top of your consumer’s mind when they make their purchasing decisions.

Why wait? Hire one today! Click here to contact us for a chat about branding.

A B2B branding strategy can help tap into your customer’s emotions

Often you hear B2B marketers focus their branding efforts on logical and rational brand messaging. They often neglect the emotional narrative.

But if you really want to create a successful B2B branding strategy you need to combine logic and emotion in your message.

When deciding which B2B company to hire, your clients don’t park their emotions and personality in a corner when making this decision.

This means B2B clients are also emotional buyers. So, why all this huge fuss about emotions?

Here’s why: once you successfully appeal to your buyer’s emotions, you’ll have a better chance at convincing them to choose you over your competitors. But how does branding help you achieve that?

Well, if your customers like your brand, they tend to hold certain positive beliefs about your brand in their minds.

Such customers will even defend your brand against naysayers to the death. (It’s all about psychology, and it’s true. No gimmicks.)

This isn’t surprising, because branding helps to create the right associations towards your brand and evokes appropriate feelings (even if your customers can’t explain why).

From there, you can build a following of clients who believe you are a good brand.

These clients will also become more responsive to your ads messages that tell them to act on their positive beliefs about your brand now.

For these reasons above, branding is important as it helps to make your B2B customers feel good about your brand. It’s not just a B2C thing.

A strong B2B branding strategy helps communicate consistent marketing messages to your customers

Through branding, you can develop a more consistent message to your customers through words, tone of voice, pictures, designs and logo.

Have you looked at a brand’s website and their social media pages and struggle to believe it’s the same company?

For example, their website could have a very minimalist look and feel. But their social media posts are designed with every colour of the rainbow. This is why consistency in your marketing message and design is important.

By focusing on your B2B branding strategy, you can build better brand guidelines for your brand to ensure consistent messaging across all departments in your company.

When there is a high level of inconsistency, it’s easy to recognise the root of the problem. This company either does not follow their brand guidelines or doesn’t have one.

Truth be told, there’s really no right or wrong way to create a brand guideline. But your guideline should at least cover the following fundamentals:
- Overall brand message / mission statement
- Brand voice
- Colour palette
- Logo usage
- Fonts and typography
- Imagery
If you’re interested to learn more about brand guidelines, you can click here to read more.

Rookie B2B Branding Strategy Mistakes You Should Dodge

Here are 4 common B2B branding mistakes you might be making.

Your branding over-emphasises sales

This is one of the most common mistakes among B2B companies.

These are companies who turn every advertisement, social media post and any piece of content into a sales pitch.

While you are promoting your brand, this tactic will drive your customers away because you are constantly shouting about yourself.

More than that, it provides no value to your customers. People will naturally flock to things that offer them value or help improve the quality of their life.

Not setting up your Analytics to track your traffic

Simply having Google Analytics isn’t enough. You need to understand what the data is telling you.

After all, if you don’t use your data then you’ll be operating just based on your gut instincts, which is dangerous.

Without tracking your Google Analytics, you’re also missing out on key information such as your website visitor’s age, location, time spent on pages and topics of interest.

Aside from that, if you don’t use Google Analytics, you won’t know what is your best performing content.

This means you wouldn’t know which content your audience loves to read/watch. As such, you wouldn’t know what to focus on producing.

This will cost you loads of valuable website traffic because you’re producing content that your audience does not enjoy watching/reading.

Google Analytics is your compass. You need to use it to guide your marketing efforts. Otherwise, you’ll be fumbling blindly in the dark.

Failure to maximise content marketing

Content marketing is important to both B2C and B2B businesses today.

Failing to use content marketing to the fullest in your branding arsenal will cost you tons of traffic. Offering only one or two content a month won’t do your brand any justice.

Content marketing must be produced consistently to keep your audiences continuously hooked on reading or watching educational content that improves their lives.

Don’t ignore social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. These platforms are extremely useful for B2Bs to promote their brand and shouldn’t be used only for B2Cs and cute cat memes.

Aside from that, if you don’t utilise content marketing, you’ll be putting less effort into creating brand awareness for your company.

All these things that you are missing out on will cost you tons of sales waiting to be generated.

Don’t wait for that to happen. If you don’t have enough manpower, outsourcing your content creation to an agency can work wonders for your brand.

If you’re interested, you can contact us here to learn more about our services.

Using technical jargon that confuses your audience

This is a cardinal sin which many technology companies make when describing their products, particular processes or IT concepts.

When marketing their products, these companies often speak in their own language and not their audience’s.

Doing this will leave the audience confused, thinking that you’re speaking Greek to them, especially to people who aren’t in the same industry as you.

Aside from that, using jargons to communicate your message to your audience also sounds more robotic and less genuine.

Think about it, when you speak with your friends in real life which of the following sentences will you say more often:

“I love using Macbook laptops. They don’t lag as much as Lenovo laptops.”

“Macbooks have a 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, 8-core GPU and 16‑core Neural Engine. Therefore, I firmly conclude that they have a better processing speed than Lenovo laptops.”

Do you speak like the latter to your friends in real life? Probably not.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t use jargon at all. There is a time and place for using them. Just don’t overdo it.

The key here is to make your message simple and understandable to your audience.