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

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 not to play there. Can it be that B2B just isn’t that well understood by a broad enough range of marketers?

Or, is it because B2B companies themselves don’t see the value of marketing as a profit-generating function and therefore don’t pay it much attention? That view was endorsed for me a few weeks ago when a highly intelligent MD – with a postgrad degree in marketing, noch al – asked me what B2B meant. Er, well, it means Business-to-Business, as opposed to Business-to-Consumer… 

There’s also a view among many marketers and agencies that B2B is boring. That it’s somehow more fun, interesting and challenging to be marketing washing powder or fast food rather than autoparts or earthmovers.

B2B and B2C: what’s the difference?

This type of thinking – that somehow B2C is dead sexy and B2B is dead boring – strikes me as odd.

Fact is, business marketing is certainly very different to consumer marketing. For me, there are two Big Differences that make B2B much more fun, interesting and challenging than B2C. 

The first Big Difference comes from this pretty accurate generalisation: B2C deals with frequent, low-price purchases; high volumes; simple products; and rapid sales cycles. 

For the vast majority of our purchases, when you and I buy things there’s not a lot at stake and we don’t give it much thought. A recent minibook, B2B Marketing for Dummies sums this up very neatly: 

 “You don’t bring in a consultant to help you choose the right toothpaste; you make a decision in seconds and go for it – I’m backing crystals over stripes and blast the consequences! Consumer marketing experts contend with that level of customer involvement in a world full of fast-moving consumer goods and we wish them well.”

In complete contrast, B2B generally deals with infrequent, high-price purchases; low volumes; complex products; and long sales cycles. 

A global car manufacturer doesn’t say ‘These brakes from StopQuik are really neat – we’ll buy ‘em for every car we make.’ (Well, hang on, maybe Toyota did…) 

If you’re buying four earthmovers at R25m a piece, you’ll go through a much more involved process than, say, when buying your next car. And there will be many more people in the decision making process. 

The second Big Difference: the fact that many more people will influence the buying decision. In B2B, end-users – the people who buy and use your products – are only one part of an overall market that may contain many different elements: distributors and wholesalers; solution-providers; specialist consultancies or professions; support and service providers; financial analysts; commentators in the media; standards boards and statutory regulators; industry associations; user-groups; and the general public. 

Because the B2B marketing function is targeting companies as opposed to individual consumers, there are also different influences within an end-user’s organisation, each with their own distinct requirements that need to be fulfilled by your products and services. 

In B2B, each component of the overall market is an audience for marketing’s messages. The diversity of the audiences means that you can’t have catchy, one-size-fits-all brand messages. ‘Brighter than bright’ may work for BriteRite washing powder in supermarkets, but ‘Just dig it’ won’t help you sell earthmovers in the world of mining or civil engineering. 

B2B brands have to work harder, accomplish more than B2C brands

A B2B brand has to build positive perceptions across the full range of audiences who influence business buying decisions. This is a complex task. You need a clear understanding of the market’s composition and you need to create and deliver messages that are relevant to each audience in the market. At the same time, the brand has to be cohesive, it has to have unity. 

Even though there needs to be a variety of relevant messages, they need to be perceived as part of a single brand. To do this, B2B marketers typically create a few Core Brand Messages that concisely highlight the key features of their products and services. 

A product or service has a fixed set of features. Until the product or service is altered, the feature-set stays the same – and so do the core brand messages. But what does change are the outcomes produced by the features for different audiences. B2B marketers look at how these features translate into outcomes that are relevant for each audience within the market. 

Influencing market perceptions: relevance, relevance, relevance

Having defined the market’s audiences, B2B marketers 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, positive perception 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?  

For example, high levels of reliability that cut your earthmovers’ downtime is a message for a sales director at a road-builder – we can do the job quicker and at a lower cost than our competitors. But reliability is also a message for the road-builder’s FD – lower cost-of-ownership and higher ROI (return on investment). 

Earthmovers with low carbon emissions might not be a compelling message for the operations director, but will sit really well with the environmental media and the consultants conducting an environmental impact study on that proposed new superhighway. And so it goes on: matching messages to audiences by creating the right message for the right people. 

B2B marketers: much closer to the market?

For me, this is another of B2B’s big attractions: there is a real need – and practical opportunity – for on-going contact with people from different audiences within the market. Discovering how they benefit from a product or service is real hands on, person-to-person stuff and it gives B2B marketing a breadth of appeal that is perhaps absent from B2C.

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

Mapping audiences and their connectivity within a ‘sphere of influence’ is the first step in creating a marcoms strategy that gets the right messages to the right people 

Using the sphere to motivate buyers 

Marketers can use the sphere of influence to target the bullseye – the centre of the market that contains buying decision makers – BDMs. 

Our goal is to ensure that each audience has a positive influence on the centre, that their opinions will confirm the validity of our brand messages and motivate consistent buying decisions. 

It’s about driving accurate perceptions of the brand into the place they matter most: the world of BDMs. 

Populating the sphere 

The graphic highlights some of the audiences typically found in B2B markets. It could certainly contain others, such as wholesalers and agents; the general public; and special interest groups or lobbies. 

Any audience within the overall market that influences the centre – either directly or indirectly via another audience – should be included within your sphere. 

Having populated the sphere, it’s useful to look at how the audiences are connected and how they might influence one another. 

Assessing the significance of the influence 

To understand this, marketers need to be talking to the centre – the BDMs within the customer base. As mentioned in other posts on The Long Hello, marketers need to get out and about amongst these people and find out who is influencing their decisions and why this matters. 

This is important because customers are not identical – buying motivators will vary from one customer to the next. There will certainly be some generic, commercial influences in terms of the Five Factors of Value, but there will also be some (surprising) variations in the degrees of influence exerted by different audiences within the overall market. 

All of this information can be mapped-out on the sphere. You may find that individual customers warrant their own sphere – a dedicated map that details how buying decisions are influenced and made within that particular company. 

Who’s influencing the audiences? 

Just as marketers need to know who’s influencing BDMs, we also need to know how brand perceptions are being created within individual audiences. There’s more ‘fieldwork’ for marketers here in terms of meeting these people and building an ongoing understanding of how they relate to the brand. 

In particular, marketers need to be alert to any variance between brand perceptions and brand messages. If the two are not aligned, then you need to act in order to adjust this imbalance by using the appropriate tools in marketing’s portfolio. And these soundings and adjustments need to be taken on a continual basis in order to ensure that perceptions in the overall market are in line with the brand messages you are delivering.

Related posts:

Managing brand perceptions

Brands build business

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. 

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 discussion from the classic four P’s - now table stakes rather than differentiators - to permission, proximity, perception and participation.

Wow. It’s all over for us veteran marketers 

Unless we can kow-tow to all things digital, perhaps we should follow these Four P’s: Pipe-down, Pack-up, Push-off and Perish.

But, there is some good news…

Although most marketers understand that ‘Price’ isn’t everything, it seems that in the future it will mean nothing at all. I hope we get there immediately. If not sooner…

Now, I haven’t read the 17-page Forrester report, and at $499 for a print-it-yousrelf pdf, I don’t think I intend to. But a man whose marketing views I admire has apparently read it: Mark Ritson has this to say in Marketing magazine:

In my opinion, it’s a disgraceful publication. It’s not that I disagree with many of the points made in the piece; it’s the way it recommends the wanton obliteration of some of the central concepts of marketing as a purportedly sensible response to the challenges of digital marketing.

According to the report, the term ‘brand managers’ should be replaced with ‘brand advocates’. What a load of unhelpful bollocks. We have spent 70 years establishing the term ‘brand manager’ as a commonly accepted and respected function within many organisations. Just as we get there, Forrester wants to knock it all down and replace it with a fluffier, camper alternative.

Blunt, but as ever, right on the money.

My thanks to Lucy Barrett & Mark Ritson for kind permission to use material from Marketing magazine.

More about fundamentals in B2B marketing:

The Man in the Chair – well worth watching on YouTube      Getting real in B2B – what do you represent?

The WOMsta Monsta – Social Media and B2B      Don’t trample the rules – six principles for B2B

Cultivate consistent customers, prevent price pressure - CCC & PPP: the two objectives of B2B marketing

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

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

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 why so with B2B marketing?

Why is so much of it mired down in the mundane, coma-inducing repetitions of obvious product shots, tedious feature-lists and tired, meaningless slogans?

Because it doesn’t have to be…

Original thinking and the bottom line 

An earlier post exemplifies what I reckon is outstanding B2B marketing: Wunderman’s work for Barloworld Logistics delights me because of its relevance, its arresting power on the page and because of the type of response it is generating for the brand.

More importantly, this is what Kate Stubbs, General Manager Marketing at Barloworld Logistics says about the campaign:

The understanding of logistics and supply chain management is really just about logical thinking and problem-solving. This campaign has generated a large amount of direct response for our brand – we’ve successfully boosted brand awareness and enquiries, as well as differentiated ourselves in this competitive market.

Pictures of po-faced truckers standing cross-armed next to big rigs would not have done that.

So, hats off to Wunderman and Barloworld Logistics for producing results through innovation. 

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

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