B2B branding: a profit-pumping heart
This post first appeared as an online article in Marketing Mix, South Africa’s magazine for intelligent marketers.
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 [...]
B2B marketing: what’s the story in South Africa?
This post first appeared as an online article in Marketing Mix, South Africa’s magazine for intelligent marketers.
Based on the content of SA’s marketing press, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there is only one type of marketing happening across the country: B2C.
Perhaps this is because marketing peeps don’t get the concept of B2B and choose [...]
Mapping audiences in B2B markets: building a marcoms strategy
B2B markets are complex structures consisting of different audiences that influence customers’ buying decisions. Marketers need to understand who these audiences are, how they influence one another and the significance of their influence on buying decisions.
Mapping audiences and their connectivity within a ‘sphere of influence’ is the first step in creating a marcoms strategy that [...]
B2B Marketing for Dummies
IAS b2b Marketing, winner of Agency of the Year at the UK’s B2B Marketing Awards 2009, has created a concise guide that highlights how to deliver the right B2B messages to the right people at the right time.
The minibook addresses key issues that anyone working in marketing may face with B2B brands. It’s easy to understand [...]
A B2B message from The Man in the Chair
It might be hard to believe, but the print ad below is 50 years old.
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 [...]
B2B fundamentals: ignore them at your profits’ peril
‘Adaptive Brand Marketing: Rethinking Your Approach in the Digital Age’
That’s the title of a recent research report from Forrester, and here’s an extract from its Overview:
Today’s brand marketing organizations are ill equipped to handle the world of “always on” marketing in the digital age…
Over the next five years, Adaptive Brand Marketing will shift the [...]
Re-positioning B2B brands: a quick case study
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 [...]
Market reflections: managing B2B brand perceptions
What are ‘market reflections’ and why do they matter?
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 [...]
Creativity in B2B marketing. Are you serious?
Well, actually, yes, we are.
Imagination, inventiveness and originality. Add the concept of ‘vision’ and you are on the path towards innovation – creating new, improved ways of doing things.
This spirit of innovation is generally hailed as a ‘good thing’ in the development of products and services. It certainly doesn’t seem to get actively frowned upon – so [...]
The Long Hello: building brand-relationships in B2B
People come and go. Brands endure.
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 [...]
