The subject of branding attracts a lot of professional attention these days, not just within the consumer sector, but increasingly amongst businesses further along in the value chain. Despite the growing interest, B2B brands are not as highly regarded as their consumer-facing relatives and often play just a supporting role in the business.
There are many different reasons for this. Some come with the territory and are therefore inescapable. All too often however, the constraints are self-imposed by management that doesn’t recognise what branding can contribute. As Accenture concluded in a 1000-company study, many B2B companies are under-marketing themselves. Could your company be one of them?
Inherent constraints
Marketing to business customers is noticeably different from consumer marketing, both in terms of media, message and style. In some respects this constrains the way that B2B brands can express themselves:
Scale. The economies of scale that mass media have brought to consumer marketing typically don’t apply to the B2B space, where target audiences are much more limited in their numbers. Brands have to find less public ways of reaching people and hardly ever get to meet the limelight.
Balancing personal and professional. Whereas B2C brands are free to talk about any aspect of their customers’ personal lives, B2B brands must carefully balance the personal interest of the buyer with the interests of the company he or she represents. To avoid conflicts, most brands steer a safe course and position themselves on professional rather than personal benefits.
Complex decision-making. Compared to a consumer purchase decision, which can be intuitive and impulsive, a business decision is more complex and typically involves a number of different decision makers and influencers, who usually are professionally trained to do so. B2B brand communications therefore tend to be more considered in their tone of voice and more educational in their message.
For these reasons B2B brands are bound to communicate in a way that is less visible, less individual and less emotional. This may explain why B2B marketers sometimes find it hard to get their agencies to commit the best talent to their brands.
Unrecognised potential
- Although most professionals are aware of the limitations, few actually realise that marketing to business customers brings opportunities that are in many ways greater than for consumer brands:
- Reaching business audiences is often easier because they can be more precisely targeted and – once approached – feel professionally obliged to consider alternative propositions.
- As they are fewer in numbers and can be more easily targeted, there is more opportunity for brands to personalise messages. Online communications and CRM increases these opportunities.
- Whereas most consumer brands rely on one-way, long-distance communications, B2B brands tend to be supported by a great deal of personal contact, which can be more effective in building loyal and committed relationships.
- Compared to a consumer purchase, a business purchase typically carries a greater risk, with longer-term implications. Buyers are inclined to pay a premium for ‘peace of mind’. What B2B brands have therefore lost in terms of involvement, they can make up in reassurance. No one ever got fired for hiring IBM, for example.
- The value of a business purchase tends to be higher, which means that the potential contribution that B2B brands make may be as valuable as consumer brands, even if their influence on the decision-making is more limited.
B2B brands therefore have the potential to build relationships that are as meaningful to customers and as valuable to the business as consumer-facing brands are. For most business suppliers and service providers however, these relationships are not so much created by the brand as by the sales team. They see the brand merely as a door opener; it is their job to develop the relationship. In practice therefore, brand management often means little more than preparing the sales support materials.
Owning the relationship
The contribution that a talented sales representative or relationship manager can make to the business is widely recognised; not only in converting the first meeting into a sale, but also in nurturing the customer relationship in order to generate repeat business, hopefully over many years. The latter tends to be more profitable, as the cost of sales is lower. A great deal of value is therefore locked up in the relationship with existing customers. Unfortunately this value is at risk each time a representative leaves.
A company can significantly reduce this risk by ensuring that customers relate to their brands as much as their representatives. To do this, the organisation must take responsibility for every point of contact with its customers, from the usual print and online communications, trade shows and corporate events, to product performance or service delivery, correspondence, telephone calls and personal visits.
All of these ‘touch points’ must project a coherent picture about the business – the brand. This way, the brand not only sets the right expectations amongst prospective buyers but also drives satisfaction amongst existing customers as their experience meets or – even better – exceeds these expectations.
When customers can recognise the brand in the style and language in every piece of communications, in the ambiance of the sales environment, in the design and performance of every product or service, as well as in the way that people treat them in person or on the phone, they begin to relate to the brand rather than any particular individual.
Sharing the responsibility
All this implies a fundamental change in the way that the brand is managed. Instead of being a support function to the sales team, the brand must now be orchestrated across the entire organisation.
This involves many other departments than marketing, such as human resources for motivating and rewarding the right behaviour; IT for ensuring that any customer facing technology delivers a positive brand experience; product development for exploring how future products or services can support the brand image; corporate communications for co-ordinating brand messages between audiences as well as the finance department for managing a decent return on all these brand investments.
Making it happen
Given the involvement of so many different parts of the organisation, it is critical that everybody has the same understanding of the brand. This can be established on a number of levels with different means. The most commonly used brand management instruments are:
- Definition. What the brand should stand for. This idea can be captured in a few statements, covering what benefits people can expect from the brand (the brand’s promise or value proposition) and what it should be like to deal with (personality and values).
- A framework: how the brand should be expressed visually. This covers the visual clues that help people recognise the business such as the logo, symbol, typefaces, colours and style of photography and illustration.
- An identification system: a structure expressing how the different parts of the organisation are identified in relation to the brand, covering each of the business areas, divisions, functions, products and services.
- A mechanism: for speaking the same language, covering the use of slogans, standard descriptions of the business, product and service nomenclature and overall tone of voice.
- Standards: of behaviour, covering the ‘dos’ and the ‘don’ts’. Some of this will be codified and some will be conveyed by the style of leadership and company culture.
- Performance metrics: covering the key indicators of success, allowing for a fact-based evaluation of brand investments with representatives from different areas and functions in the business, led by a chairman with ultimate authority over the customer experience.
These instruments not only help orchestrate a coherent brand across the business and therefore protect the value represented by its customer relationships, they can also help save money.
With a focused brand idea, communications will be more effective. Better co-ordination between departments means less reliance on costly external campaigns and better use of existing touchpoints that had been neglected before such as product manuals, invoices etc. And above all, it will allow the organisation to tap into the discretionary energy of its people, motivating them to work towards a common goal: to give customers a rewarding experience.
