I talked to her in March about her approach to B2B marketing and how she has delivered some of SA’s most innovative and arresting B2B marcoms, positioning her company as a real thought leader in its field and generating unprecedented positive response from her market.

B2B’s double hard-sell: internal, external

Most B2B marketers have to wear two sales hats: one for their colleagues and one for the market.  With only a few exceptions, I’ve had to sell the marketing function to every senior exec I’ve worked alongside, whether they’re a consulting client, a fellow employee or working for an external vendor or partner. 

I’m not talking about selling them new ideas for a particular marketing activity, I mean selling them the entire concept of B2B marketing: what it achieves for the bottom line and how it does that. If you take them through a formal presentation of the function and its objectives, they’re usually happy to acknowledge that getting the right caps for a golf day and arranging the Christmas party ain’t top of your list. 

Everyone’s a marketer…

When it comes to marketing, it seems everyone’s got an opinion that they’re keen to share – even those who’ve never even met a customer, let alone dealt with a buying decision maker. This is because some of our outputs are such a visible representation of the people we work with and the ‘commentators’ are motivated by a desire to see the organisation thrive. Surely, that’s it? 

But sometimes it’s a matter of letting the baker do what the baker does best and marketers often need to be very firm on this. I wouldn’t dream of questioning someone’s choice of accounting software or suggesting that we shouldn’t use that type of robot welder. Why? Not my field of expertise and I know zip about it. Now, what was it you wanted to tell me? 

Selling to the C-Suite: know your competition

Stubbs’ target market is relatively small and commercially sophisticated. Within current and prospective end-users of outsourced supply chain management, it’s a typical C-suite audience and their attention is in demand from direct competitors plus a whole host of unrelated vendors selling everything from ICT solutions to environmental consulting. 

The audience’s attention is being fought for by so many vendors simply because big buying decisions lie in their hands.

B2B marketers really do need to be aware of this and to recognise that what we are really competing for is the C-suite’s time and their focus.

The big question then becomes: how do we get that time and focus? 

Know what you’re selling

Kate says that Barloworld Logistics are selling the application of original thinking based on a sound understanding of supply chain management: “We sell our thinking, particularly in terms of problem-solving within our field of expertise. We consider ourselves to be real thought leaders and innovators. It’s what defines our whole approach to managing your supply chain. As a marketer, it’s my job to engage buying decision makers on that basis.” 

I was so impressed by how Stubb’s does this that I featured an example on The Long Hello last year. The ‘Puzzles’ campaign with direct marketing agency, Wunderman, struck me as being really arresting, innovative and motivating. 

What really impressed me was that a B2B company had taken such a radically different approach to positioning their brand. I thought at the time that I would’ve loved to be a fly-on-the-wall when the concept was presented internally. Hold on to yer hats, boys! 

Stubbs says, “It certainly raised some eyebrows.” I bet it did …

Relevance and creativity

Anyone who reads the specialist trade and business press is aware of just how dull a lot of its B2B advertising can be. And yet these advertisers are all competing for the same thing: the time and focus of the C-suite in other businesses. 

It’s not that this audience doesn’t have time to focus on things that will contribute to the continued success of their organisation – that’s the very essence of their jobs. 

What they don’t have time for is stuff that they perceive as having no relevance to aiding that success. Big difference. And one which is overlooked by many B2B marketers: why should I take time to focus on you? 

Stubbs is not one of those marketers: “The whole puzzles campaign was driven by the imperative of making you stop, think and respond. As problem-solving innovators, we need to get decision makers focused on our thinking and encourage contact.” 

Campaign results have been outstanding, motivating high levels of direct, executive response. Stubbs says, “It initiated C-Suite contact on two levels. Many executives and their colleagues, friends and families were so intrigued that they wanted the puzzles’ answers or to know they’d got them right. Professionally, it opened doors for our experts to interact with executives who had a highly positive perception of the brand.” 

Building brand relationships

Long sales cycles are commonplace in B2B and Stubbs says that her company typically works with cycles of 18 months. “For our market, managing the supply chain is a critical component of their business. Making changes to existing processes or switching supplier are high-impact decisions which require careful planning and consideration. This takes time.” 

One way that Barloworld Logistics encourages long-term interaction with the brand is through an annual survey that examines industry trends, challenges and influences. Conducted by Frost & Sullivan, this year’s supplychainforesight focuses on ‘Growth in Adversity’ and addresses the role of supply chain strategy in enabling recovery from recession. 

Almost half of the nearly 400 respondents were CEO’s or senior execs and 23% of the companies surveyed were multinationals with revenues of over R5 billion. It’s real C-suite stuff and is treated accordingly by both respondents and readers. Stubbs sees it as, “An integral part of the brand that positions us as an authority in the minds of senior executives within our market.” 

Brand relationships are a living thing

Stubbs releases the survey with a media briefing just prior to its national launch. “We then host breakfasts in Durban, Cape Town and JHB on three consecutive days. Respondents and the market in general are invited and we arrange for industry leaders to give us their view on supply chains in SA as well as their interpretation of the results.” 

“We support this with reports on our site plus a dedicated site at www.supplychainforesight.com” 

Once the main launch is complete, Stubbs runs industry-specific launches. “This year we had an FMCG & Retail breakfast and an Automotive evening session. These are more focused interactions and typically result in good engagement and discussion. Once again, we invite industry leaders to voice their opinion on the survey results and to give us their view on what is happening in supply chains in SA.” 

Positive response to the brand

Barloworld Logistics received a special merit award at the Logistics Achiever Awards for the survey’s contribution to the industry. Stubbs says, “Even competitors quote the survey and it is frequently used internationally to benchmark the industry. We receive emails and calls thanking us and requests to focus on specific topics in the next survey. We encourage this type of response so that we can include common focus areas in the next survey.” 

Reinforce your relevance

The company hosts breakfast meetings with execs from the same discipline – HR, Finance, Operations – as well as after-hours sessions to introduce new service offerings or ideas for very targeted audiences. Stubbs’ goal here is to strengthen industry networks and brand relationships by facilitating knowledge sharing and engagement on topical issues.

The road ahead?

Stubbs sees it like this: “Continually finding new and relevant ways to engage our audiences. We must understand clients’ needs thoroughly in order to create relevant, interesting messages that break through the clutter. Messages also need to be simple and clear. Find creative ways to facilitate engagement and relationship building that is commercially beneficial for both parties. Focus and relevance is key. And make sure it’s enjoyable for everyone involved.” 

Way to go, Kate.

Wunderman, Johannesburg:
Debi Loftie-Eaton, Managing Director. debi_loftie_eaton@za.wunderman.com

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Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

Brands mean ownership

We can all recall an ad that lost its link with the brand: “Great! Clever, sharp, funny, hard-hitting. What company was it?” Or, even worse, ‘What was the product?’ No brand: no ownership.

In B2B marketing, branding is about saying: we own this product or service and, most of all, we own the positive contribution it makes to our customers’ success.

It may also be about saying: we own the outcomes produced by its reliability, its short lead-times, its quality, its support, its maintenance and its future development. All of these things are ours: this is what we represent.

B2B branding is the work of building associations between a company’s ownership of the brand and their ownership of what the brand represents. These associations are not created by logos or slogans. They are solely about the associations created in the market around ownership: who owns what and what it is they own.

Strong brands build business

Marketers understand that brands are symbols, something which represents something else. Brands can evoke powerful associations and allegiances. In their most potent forms, we may love them or loathe them - think of national flags and sporting emblems.

Weak brands – those with little or no meaning - are particularly common in B2B as opposed to B2C marketing. When it comes to cans of baked beans, there’s one brand for me. I’ll go beanless rather than break that allegiance. But is the same true for a company buying a baked bean canning-plant?

The answer is yes: a B2B brand can generate such far-reaching, consistent associations of trust, fulfilled-expectations and satisfaction that customers simply won’t look anywhere else – won’t even consider another canning-plant supplier.

Trust, satisfaction and fulfilled-expectations. These are imperatives in your market’s relationship with your brand: that your products will match past experiences or proposed deliverables.

What is your brand?

Think of the brand as a reflection of your company in a mirror. You hold the brand up to the mirror and it reflects everything the company represents. You don’t see the brand staring back, you see the company.

When the CEO holds the brand up to this mirror, what do they see? Is the same image reflected when production, finance, sales, distribution and marketing look in the mirror? Rarely. In fact, very rarely.

There are probably as many different reflections in this mirror as there are people looking at it. The brand becomes such a confusion of images that it’s meaningless. No matter what the company is selling, the brand may as well be symbolised by a blue potato eating a camel. 

Market reflections: how B2B brands are created

In B2B, the overall market may include distributors and wholesalers; solution-providers; specialist consultancies; and support and service providers - as well as end-users. In addition, there may be financial analysts; commentators in the media; regulators; industry associations and user-groups.

Each of these represents a ‘market reflection’ – the way the brand is seen by individual audiences in the market. And it is these reflections that give a brand its identity. Unlike B2C, in B2B, a brand’s identity is created entirely by the market. Not by comms agencies or graphic designers, but by something much more in tune with commercial reality and its latest trends: the market. What it sees is all that matters. In B2B, the market gives you your brand.

B2B markets become confused and uncertain if the reflections are unclear and inconsistent. So people draw their own conclusions. They create their own associations, set their own expectations and decide for themselves how much they trust the brand and what it represents.

Consequence? Ownership of the brand is lost and your credibility is cut to shreds. Sales fall, margins get squeezed and market share shrinks. Bad. Very bad.

Weak brands build business barriers

This loss of brand-ownership and market-credibility is a formidable, ongoing obstacle to building sales, margins and loyalty. It consistently generates perceptions in the market that have no relation to what your company actually represents: ‘Oh? I never knew it could do that.’ ‘I didn’t realise you guys knew anything about this.’ ‘What? You mean you can handle this too? ‘Oh yes, I know XYZ Inc. They sell those potatoes that eat blue camels. Er, don’t they?’

Are they talking about us?

More than ever, market reflections - that diversity of associations made by the market with the brand – are what influences a company’s ability to increase sales, retain customers and protect margins. And this influence is increasing as more lanes keep getting added to the ‘information superhighway’.

For example, there is rapidly-growing interest in social media as a way for people to share their experiences about B2B suppliers and products. And this goes both ways, companies are joining the discussion on the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in order to present their brand-messages and interact more directly with their markets.

So, it’s now more important then ever for B2B companies to ensure delivery of a credible, relevant and compelling reflection of the brand to each audience in their market. As B2B companies become more and more visible to their markets, it has to be true that the brand is your real business.

Be the brand. No, it’s not a cliché. It’s seriass: be the brand

Brand management is not the business of designers and communications agencies. Yup, you heard that one right. It’s not that designers and agencies produce poor or inappropriate work. Quite the reverse. It’s just that they have no influence over how clients build and maintain trust and satisfaction, or how they fulfil customers’ expectations. That’s not their job. As a B2B marketer, it’s yours.

In his book Ackoff’s Fables, the eminent management consultant, Russell Ackoff, describes a problem-solving process he calls ‘idealized redesign’. Although not specifically related to branding, the process is certainly relevant for a company that wants to ‘Be the Brand’:

“Assume that the entity (ie the brand) that has the problem was destroyed last night, but everything else remains the same. Redesign that entity so as to eliminate the problem that faces it. The redesign is subject to only two constraints: first it must be technologically feasible, and second, it must obey the same externally imposed constraints (eg the laws of the land) to which the current system is subject.”

“In addition, it should be designed so that it can 1. improve itself by learning from its own experience, 2. adapt to a changing environment, and 3. be improved by being redesigned again in the future.”

B2B marketers can use ‘idealized redesign’ to define how their brand should be reflected in the market. They can start the process by asking the (rather long) question: what market reflections will attract and retain customers and maintain margins?

The answers will provide a stimulating roadmap for your company’s development as we move deeper into 2010 and a period of slow, cautious growth in B2B markets. The economy may be improving but negative memories of recession will definitely remain and strongly influence B2B buying-decisions.

For marketers, this means it’s essential to generate brand reflections that are not only credible, relevant and compelling but also highly reassuring to each audience in their overall market.

Visit Marketing Mix – South Africa’s magazine for intelligent marketers.

More on brands and branding:

Brands build business      Outcomes make the difference      The Long Hello: building brand-relationships

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Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

The minibook addresses key issues that anyone working in marketing may face with B2B brands. It’s easy to understand and uses clear examples of the challenges and solutions in a logical order. 

B2B Marketing for Dummies ends with Ten Top Tips for success in B2B marketing:

Be patient. Remember that people in business don’t buy on impulse – they carefully consider purchases and consult multiple stakeholders. 

Consider your Web of Influence. Always create a map of your market to help you make the best B2B marketing decisions. 

Be thoroughly strategic. Establish how your brand distinguishes itself from the rest of the pack with a brand planning process that leaves no question unanswered. 

Be focused. Create a strategic proposition that makes your brand irresistible over the competition. 

Prioritise your market. Use the Web of Influence to pinpoint the decision makers who’ll give you the best return for your marketing investment. 

Be choosy. Don’t waste time and money on marketing placed in the wrong channels. 

Be positively different. Show people their working world in a way they’ve never seen, and they’ll want to know more. 

Have multi-dimensional ideas. Remember that you need to satisfy many different stakeholders, so you need creative ideas that are flexible. 

Make the most of your website. Ensure that your site caters for all of your customers and tracks their activity so you can use that information for constant improvement. 

Tap into social media. Don’t get left behind – use social media networks to influence your markets! 

B2B Marketing for Dummies was produced by IAS b2b Marketing and John Wiley & Sons, publishers of the ‘For Dummies’ guides. Download a copy at http://www.b2bfordummies.com/

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

Promoting the business, professional and technical magazines published by McGraw Hill, the message is as fresh and relevant today as it was fifty years ago: sales start before your salesman calls.

In July this year, the Business Marketing Association staged a ‘live’ version of the ad 

‘The Man In The Chair – Live’ is well worth watching because it tells it like it is: B2B customers and markets need to know about your company, what you are selling, how it will help them and why they should believe you. And all of that comes before even considering to buy from you. 

The leopard cannot change its spots

In other words, basic characteristics cannot be altered.

Oh, yes they can…

The spots on these ‘leopards’ were changed to fingerprints as part of brand re-positioning for clients demonstrating biometric-based access control solutions at Europe’s biggest corporate security show in 2006.

This was just part of a campaign to influence market perceptions of biometrics – to alter highly-sceptical attitudes by encouraging a conservative, risk-averse market to re-evaluate its opinions of this emerging technology. 

The Biometric Leopards: altering market-perceptions of fingerprint biometrics

Fingerprint biometrics are pretty hi-tech products. Three years ago, the buzz around biometrics was fully-focused on the technology and its futuristic, sci-fi aura. And all the world’s biometric brands positioned themselves in this way - happy to be associated with hi-tech images of eyes and fingertips embedded with electronic circuits and binary code.

No wonder people felt alienated and threatened by the technology…

The concept of the biometric leopards was generated by three objectives:

• move away from a high-technology focus and the market’s ‘me too’ clutter
• emphasise the human, non-threatening aspect of biometrics
• highlight the technology’s ease-of-use for widely-ranging applications 

As with any big promotional event, a fourth objective was to produce a ’show-stopper’ – something that would differentiate the clients from all other exhibitors and generate as much visitor-traffic as possible.

Why leopards? The clients were both South African companies looking to build European sales by leveraging their world-class experience with large-scale, corporate access control solutions in southern Africa.

Take the high-ground. And hold it

The biometric brand in question, Sagem, and their biggest distributor, Ideco, have continued to use biometric leopards and their variants at South African events since their 2006 debut, securing hi-visibility and exceptional visitor-numbers at trade shows like Electra Mining and Securex. They are also used as part of the ‘living’ brand at roadshows, product-launches and even presentations to analysts and investors. 

The fact that bright young women – with only minimal training – can demonstate the brand’s hardware and its associated software at such events has done a great deal to break-down perceptions of Sagem biometrics as a high-complexity technology that only exists in sci-fi movies.

Repositioning across all marcoms channels: building brand-cohesion

As mentioned earlier, the biometric leopards only form part of the overall strategic re-positioning. A great deal of work was also done on re-branding, and a couple of examples are highlighted a little later in this post.

In terms of re-positioning, it was important to build strong relationships with the media – in particular, relevant trade and market-related publications as well as the business press. A key objective here was to position the brand as a thought-leader and trusted ‘educator’ whilst reinforcing the ‘human’ image in preference to a pure technology focus.

Consequently, a range of media was encouraged to broadcast these messages editorially – from specialist security media through to those focused on key industry sectors within the market. Equally important was editorial coverage and support in publications targeting specific management functions within potential end-users: HR, finance, IT, SHEQ and facilities management. 

There was also communication and dialogue with all the other components that go to make up the overall B2B market – VARs, professional consultants, wholesalers, installers, market analysts and industry associations.

And then there was the competition: 

In terms of competitor-strategy, we ring-fenced the brand’s exclusive position as representing the technology’s ‘human’ appeal: accessible, non-threatening and, perhaps most importantly of all, appropriate right now.

Influencing market perceptions: reinforce the brand’s positioning at every opportunity 

To strenghten the on-going, ‘human’ positioning of fingerprint biometrics, images of hands are used as recurring themes in various print-formats – advertising, brochures, posters and banners:

Re-positioning the brand in the widest-posssible market 

Back in 2006, the access control market regarded biometrics as an exclusive technolgy that was limited to ultra-secure applications – associating it with the sort of security solutions that confront Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible or something featured in the latest Bond movie.

This perception was so strongly-entrenched that it created a major barrier to biometrics’ penetration of the access control market. Something had to be done to alter this perception – to highlight the fact that this brand of biometrics has ‘universal’ applications:

The concept of ‘universal’ applications for the brand is reinforced by the graphically-positive slogan: ‘Everyone, Everytime, Everywhere’. And it is used repeatedly as a core brand symbol across as wide a range of collateral and media as possible.

Positioning for bottom line results: brands do build business:

• 50,000+ Sagem fingerprint readers now deployed across southern Africa
• Controlling access for some two million people
• Huge diversity of applications – from nursery schools to gold mines
• Ideco is now the world’s largest distributor of Sagem fingerpint readers
• Market share for biometrics in southern Africa: 80%+

After all, the leopard can change its spots… 

More on B2B branding:

Brands are dead. Brands are now more important than ever      Brands build business

The Long Hello: building brand relationships

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

Think of the brand as a reflection of your company in a mirror. You hold the brand up to this mirror and it reflects everything the company represents in the market. You don’t see the brand staring back at you, you see what the market sees.

When an end-user holds the brand up to this mirror, what do they see? Is the same image reflected back when VARs, consultants and the media look in the mirror?

Very often, there are as many different images in the mirror as there are people looking at it.

And this lack of brand-cohesion creates confusion and uncertainty in the market, weakening the brand by creating mis-perceptions of what it represents.

Building perceptions of success

One of the cornerstone posts on The Long Hello looks at how B2B brands should be making a major contribution to the bottom line by creating compelling associations in the market:

Brands can generate such strong associations of trust and fulfilled-expectations that customers simply won’t consider another supplier.

B2B branding is about saying: we own this product or service. It may also be about saying: we own its reliability, its short lead-times, and its quality. We also own its support, its maintenance and its future development. But most of all:

We own the positive contribution we make to customers’ continued success.

Are they looking at us? Identifying the market’s composition

B2B marketers understand that their market is like a jigsaw – many pieces go to make the whole.

Of course, this little jigsaw is far from complete. 

A typical B2B market may also include distributors and wholesalers; support and service providers; user-groups; financial analysts; standards boards and statutory regulators; industry associations and the general public.  And it will almost certainly include different ’stakeholders’ within each individual customer, such as finance, sales, production and distribution.

But it is a starting point for building an overall picture of the market.

Influencing market reflections: relevance, relevance, relevance

Having listed the reflections, marketers perhaps then need to ask some questions in the market:

• how does the brand reflect itself to each component of the market
• how relevant are your marcoms to these individual components
• what needs to change in order to achieve a consistent reflection of the brand

Relevance is crucial because it builds credibility and confidence. And relevance is all about outcomes - the outcomes that are produced for each component of the market: what does this brand do for me? 

You have to talk to the market

In order to identify what is relevant, you need to get out of the office and talk to the market. Writing in Marketing Magazine about the core skills of great marketers, Mark Ritson sees this as:

the fundamental starting point for any great marketer: get out of your office and spend time in the places and spaces where your consumers experience the product, no matter how senior or ‘important’ you consider yourself.

For a more detailed look at how to create relevant marcoms:

Marketing is not about selling. It’s about buying

Outcomes are the differentiators      The role of Value in B2B marketing      Getting real in B2B

Leveraging B2B’s buying motivators      Building brand relationships: The Long Hello

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

One reason why marketing doesn’t always pull its weight in B2B is that there is often such a strong emphasis on relationships with customers. Developing and sustaining these relationships can shift attention from managing the brand’s relationship with the overall market. And this can undermine the potential to strengthen sales, margins and customer loyalty. 

B2B is all about relationships. Isn’t it? 

Yes it is. But which ones? The ways in which a B2B company is regarded by the market as a whole can have a powerful influence on buying decisions. 

The impact of this influence on buying decisions is proportional to the complexity and cost of a company’s products and services. As complexity and cost rises, so too does the influence of the overall market. 

Looking beyond the sales relationship 

Galen de Young of prominent American agency, Proteus B2B Marketing, says, “Growing your existing business with a particular customer or client may very well be about cultivating the relationship, but getting customers in the first place is not.” 

“Relationships with prospects will almost never swing a sweet deal your way. If your ability to get in the door – to get to the table – relies upon your relationship with the prospect, you might get the job if your price is the same as your competitors’. If your price is higher, your prospect might say he’ll give it to you if you can get your price in line. Is that really what you want?”

Looking at the market as a whole: the world beyond customers 

An earlier post looked at the commercial significance of ‘market reflections’ and how these can be positively-influenced by consistent, relevant brand-messages. In addition to direct customers or end users, B2B markets often contain many components:

• distributors and wholesalers
• overall solution-providers
• specialist consultancies or professions
• support and service providers 
• user-groups
• financial analysts
• commentators in the media
• standards boards and regulators
• industry associations and the general public

Each of these represents a market reflection - the way the brand is seen by individual components of its market.

Brand-based relationships: opening doors, protecting margins, maintaining loyalty

The idea of ‘The Long Hello’ is to cultivate market reflections that continuously reinforce consistent, positive perceptions of your company. 

And this positioning can only be achieved through marcoms that deliver brand-messages that are relevant to each component of the market.  In terms of the results this approach delivers, Galen de Young from Proteus puts it this way: 

Properly positioned companies don’t have to sell. They merely have to facilitate the buying process.

“If your company is well positioned in the marketplace – if it’s seen as being one of the leading suppliers of specific solutions and a company for which there are few credible substitutes in the market – you’ll not only get to the table quickly and easily, you’ll be proactively invited.”

“You’ll also protect your margins. Profit margin is a function of positioning. Properly positioned companies don’t play the low-price game. They don’t have to. Their prospects see them as having something different. Their prospects don’t have to be convinced; their prospects want to buy.”

Read the full Proteus article

Related posts: 

Recession marketing. No such thing?      Brands are dead. Brands are more important than ever

Marcoms: leveraging B2B’s buying motivators      PR & B2B. The perfect couple

Marcoms: outcomes are the differentiators

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

Creating a market-identity

A lot less has been written about the importance of brands in B2B as opposed to B2C, and yet the authors quoted in the previous post, ‘Brands build business’ suggest that brands may be more important in B2B than they are in B2C.

My experience is that brands are more important in B2B because they have to convey more information and be more credible to more audiences within their market.

In B2C, USPs can be honed down to a single, sharp slogan: ‘Whiter than white’. B2B can’t do that in such a catch-all way because one size does not fit all. There are many more influences at work in a B2B market than there are in B2C.

A B2B brand must reflect characteristics of its identity that are relevant to each audience within the market.

Once were warriors…

Some big B2C brands are having to reassess their ‘umbrella’ branding. For example, car manufacturers are finding out what happens when their branding becomes too catch-all and too simplistic.

On 20th October, The New York Times pointed out that during 2009, “only about 20 percent of car shoppers stayed with the same brand when they purchased a new vehicle.” Apparently, twenty-odd years ago, a whopping 80% of American car-buyers stayed loyal to their brand.

In the NYT article, James Farley, Ford Motor Company’s head of marketing, says that today’s car buyer has little use for nostalgia: “I can’t tell you how many car clubs I have been to where they own old Mustangs and vintage T-Birds, but they drive Camrys.” He partly attributes such high levels of churn to the fact that: “Brand loyalty has shrunk because of widespread improvements in the products. The ‘trust factor’ is more or less the same for most cars.”   Read the NYT article

In a similar vein, the Financial Times reported on 25th October that GM and Chrysler are radically re-thinking how they approach their brand-promotion. Both companies “have launched far-reaching reviews of their marketing strategies in the latest sign of carmakers adjusting their business in an economic downturn that has crippled their industry.”   Read the FT article

In both articles, the underlying theme behind these ailing brands is the lack of focus on customers…

B2B can be better than that

An earlier post looked at the importance of brand ownership:

In B2B marketing, branding is about saying: we own this product.

It may also be about saying: we own its reliability, its short lead-times and its quality. We also own its support, its maintenance and its future up-grading. Most of all, we own the positive contribution it makes to the continued success of our customers’ business.

All of these things are ours: this is what we represent.

Building brand identity: start with market relections

What the market sees reflected by a brand is really all that matters. In B2B, the market may well include distributors and wholesalers, overall solution-providers, specialist consultancies or professions and support and service providers - as well as direct customers or end users.

In addition, there may be user-groups, financial analysts, commentators in the media, standards boards and regulators, industry associations and the general public.

Each of these represents a market reflection - the way the brand is seen by the individual components of the market. And it is these reflections that give a brand its identity – in B2B, a brand’s identity is created in the market.

Matched messages or mixed messages?

B2B marketers need to craft their brand messages so that they are relevant to each market reflection: messages should be matched to audiences – not jumbled-up in a mixed-bag that people have to rummage through to find what’s relevant for them.

And one size is unlikely to fit all because products, services and processes produce different outcomes for different elements of the market.

Successfully communicating these outcomes in a relevant and targeted way is what strengthens brand-identity and, consequently, more clearly differentiates one B2B brand from its competitors.

More on B2B branding:

Brands are now more important than ever      Brands build business     

Recession marketing. No such thing?      The Long Hello: building relationships with B2B brands

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

It’s a fact: strong brands drive B2B markets

By Kevin Randall and Monica Wasiljew
Movéo Integrated Branding

To stay alive and flourish in highly competitive environments, business-to-business (B2B) companies spend more time and money on R&D. Suppliers focus on making their products smarter, faster, and smaller and more cost-effective and reliable than the competition. They also find ways to improve and add services so that they provide customers with a complete and satisfying experience. Marketplaces are constantly changing, so companies have to adapt in order to stay ahead.

But how can these B2B companies truly differentiate their offering and be relevant to customers over the long-term? This is where brands come in.

Brands matter in B2B markets. In fact, they may matter even more in B2B than in B2C.

Cut though clutter

Brands matter because the B2B marketing communications world is characterized by numbing sameness, commoditized feature wars and laundry lists of product benefits. In other words, there is a sea of noise, parity, clutter and dullness. Branding allows a producer or owner to distinguish their goods or services.

Branding today is a strategic tool that helps the supplier cut through the morass of the market, get noticed and connect with the customer on many levels and in ways that matter. A strong brand becomes the customer’s ’shorthand’ for making good choices in a complex, risky and confusing marketplace.

“… connect with the customer on many levels and in ways that matter”

For me, Kevin and Monica at Movéo Integrated Branding are 100% right when they talk about branding as being a B2B company’s connection with the market. And it needs to be a strong connection – as strong or stronger than any connection the competition may have.

Strong brands put money in the bank.

I’ll let Moveo explain this bottom line statement with an example from the same article:

“Founded in 1891 and based in Fort Worth, Texas, Acme Brick is a manufacturer of bricks that are sold largely through the building trade.

A good portion of their $1.5 million marketing communications budget goes into image building and strongly branded tactics, including partnerships with professional sports celebrities and teams, PR, charity events and outdoor boards. In 1995 they introduced an unheard of 100-year product guarantee (3 to 5 years had been the industry standard) to further differentiate Acme. Their brand-building efforts have paid off. Acme is the dominant brand in the area for both homebuilders and buyers. A 1998 survey of homebuyers showed Acme had achieved 84 percent brand preference when no other supplier was above ten percent in their regional market. In fact, Acme estimates:

• Their brand is worth an extra ten cents for every dollar’s worth of Acme brick sold and $250 in incremental revenue per home.
• Approximately $20 million of Acme’s annual $200 million brick sales is a return on the investment that Acme makes yearly in brand-building.
• There is a 13-fold return on an average annual marcom budget of $1.5 million.

If a brick can be successfully differentiated then almost anything can be branded to create value.”

How very true. Strong brands do build sales, margins and customer loyalty. Period.

Read the full Moveo article

More on B2B branding:

Brands are dead? Brands are now more important than ever

Outcomes make the difference

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

B2B collateral covers a wide range of material and there’s a summary of some key bits at the end of this post – seems a bit dull to start with a longish list up-front.

Especially when the damage this stuff can do is so much more interesting…

Producing collateral: be careful what you target

Working backwards from the customers’ experience is a powerful way to guide the entire process of producing collateral that actively supports the brand. Does this stuff actually represent what a B2B company contributes to its customers’ continuing success?

Or is it all just an aspirational wish-list, based on how companies would like to be seen and acknowledged in their market?

Fragmentation: dangerously bad for brand-consistency

Nothing weakens a brand more than inconsistency. Poor delivery of expectations and the consequent erosion of trust is one of the commonest examples: we have all been attracted by a piece of brand-communication and then repelled by the actual purchasing or ownership experience.

Equally, inconsistency across different types of collateral dilutes the brand’s impact in the market. What the brand represents becomes unclear and less credible.

Some things change, some don’t

Collateral plays a vital part in delivering and reinforcing consistent brand messages. Think of the number of e-mails that are sent. Just on their own, they create a constant opportunity for highlighting brand messages, strengthening market reflections and encouraging further interaction – ‘Go to www.xyz to see the latest about…’

Core brand messages change infrequently. For example, logos and slogans remain fairly constant and should form the cornerstone of all collateral – the logo on an e-mail should be same as the logo on a delivery note and a website. Also, the format and content of collateral like corporate brochures remains fairly constant because of cost and the constraints of production.

In contrast, digital collateral offers the opportunity to maintain high levels of relevance around the core messages. Presentations, websites and e-mails can all be used to deliver ‘instant’ messaging that addresses current issues relating to products and services, forthcoming events, opinions and developments within the market.

Singing the same song?

Achieving collateral consistency is not an easy task. The amount of work and associated costs will depend on how a brand is currently represented across each of the components. However, maintaining consistency should be a lot easier than achieving it in the first place.

In terms of presenting consistent branding, the following list covers most of the collateral used within B2B marketing:

• Sales brochures
• Presentations
• Business cards
• Product data sheets
• White papers and case studies
• Press material
• Corporate profiles and brochures
• Annual and financial reports
• Quotations, tender submissions, RFI’s
• Invoices, credit and delivery notes, warranties, contracts
• Posters, signs, banners
• Websites, e-mail, multi-media material
• Display material, flyers and handouts
• Promotional items

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line