1. During Covid-19 and remote work, it’s more doable
With Covid-19, there was a sense of panic at first.
Kate says: “I have noticed a lot more interest in brand building since the start of the whole Covid-19 episode and I think, in a way, people fall back on trying to find a solution to their problems. There you are, year after year with your marketing and content programmes. You’re busy working out your martech stack, talking about sales and marketing alignment – all those aspects. But for years, there hasn’t been any strategy.”
Kate acknowledges that many marketers are more focused on their tactics rather than the actual long-term strategy.
She continues: “It’s no surprise that, when Covid-19 happened, suddenly, your plans went out the window. Secondly, so has your audience. They’re all scrambling around, everyone is in the same boat, they’ve stopped being engaged. They’ve stopped going to events. You can’t get a hold of them and everyone is in a panic. So there goes your plan and you can’t even replace it with something else because no one is listening.”
Those that didn’t have a plan had to re-shift their focus, but because there wasn’t a long-term strategy and brand purpose established, marketers might’ve felt a bit lost. For those whose brand strategy revolved around tactics, such as content, they might have felt brand building would be the solution to their problems.
And Kate agrees that now is the time to focus on brand building because, once everyone is back to normal, it’ll simply be more difficult to do with limited time.
She says: “Now is probably the best time for marketers to go through the brand building exercise as everyone is forced to push the reset button.
This is the optimum time to also sit down with your best customers (those that are profitable and already aligned with your brand) and really work with them to understand what makes the relationship – and how else you can work together. They’ll thank you for it and you’ll have a lot of the answers to the strategy questions.”
The fact that you’re even getting feedback from them in the first place will be a differentiating factor from your competitors as well.
2. You can separate strategy from tactics
While a marketer’s motives to focus on brand building might be with good intentions, they simply won’t succeed if their strategy is more about tactics instead of brand.
The first step a marketer should take is to sit down and work out the overarching brand purpose. Ask yourself: ‘Why are you even in the business?’ From there, you can work out your marketing strategy and start to understand what your customers are looking for at a much deeper level.
IMPORTANT: If you take away one bit from this article, let it be this: once you have a brand strategy, do not tweak it once you’ve got it nailed.
Kate explains: “The biggest obstacle is usually the minute you set your strategy, you know exactly where the brand stands, but then people will start deviating. Even the logo and identity you worked out so carefully, in a few months, someone is going to want to tweak it.”
Your brand strategy shouldn’t change if you truly nailed it – not in a few months, not for five years, not for 10 years. Once you work it out, stick with it.
Once you have that sorted, you can define your tactics. Unlike your strategy, you can have a play with your tactics as much as you’d like. Tactics can include content, the way you engage with your audience, the martech you’re utilising and the different metrics you use.
3. B2B can capitalise on the emotional connection
One misconception about B2B is that there is no emotional connection. In B2B, we lead with our services and products. However, in B2C, it’s all about relating to emotions.
With B2C, it’s easy to see the emotional connection from the consumer’s perspective. Why use this brand of toothpaste? It’ll give you white teeth. However, B2B is nothing like that.
Kate says: “With B2B, we’re all serious. We have to talk to buyers and individuals who make decisions based on pride and rationality. And there isn’t really any difference at all in principle and strategy. B2B and B2C are exactly the same – you are selling to a human.”
In fact, research shows that the buyer is even more invested emotionally in B2B buying than in the B2C arena.
She continues: “In B2C, if you buy a toothbrush, and you don’t like the product, there’s a lot less at stake. The decisions you make are rational and based on solutions, but, at the end of the day, if you mess up, it’s going to have consequences on the business, the team andyourself. And, if you succeed, it makes you look good – you get ahead. It’s a lot more emotional than people realise. Therefore, scrap the bit about B2B and B2C being different. Just look at what B2C are doing and try to emulate that because they’ve done it for decades.”
That being said, Kate warns marketers to tap into the emotional aspect only if it aligns with your brand purpose. For example, if your company is saying they’re promoting causes such as sustainability, make sure it aligns with your company’s mission statement. Supporting social causes for the sake of doing them comes off as disingenuous. Make sure if you are supporting a cause, it is embedded within your content. Only then does it feel authentic and is able to make that connection with your customers.
