B2B Branding Challenges
Business to business companies face different, more difficult branding challenges than companies that sell to consumers. How you address those challenges can make or break your B2B brand.
Here are a few B2B branding challenges, along with some suggestions for overcoming them:
B2B customers buy for their organization, not for themselves.
Establishing an emotional connection between your customers and your brand isn’t enough to influence their buying decision. To win their business and their loyalty, your brand story needs to address value-driven issues like profitability and productivity. Yet you should not overlook emotion as a motivating factor of B2B buyers—your brand should elicit confidence and trust, to help them know they’re making the right decision when they buy from you.
B2B products and services are more complicated.
Your brand voice must cut through the complexity so that your prospects understand what you have to offer that your competitors don’t. Another issue to consider is that most B2B companies have a highly focused target market—everyone needs toothpaste, but not everyone needs a digitally controlled uninterrupted power supply. A strong, clear brand voice is the key to finding qualified prospects—and to helping them find you.
The B2B sales cycle is longer.
Essentially, you’re selling a relationship as much as you are a product or service, and it takes a while to forge that relationship. B2B customers do more research, require more one-on-one interaction, and involve more decision makers in their purchases. A good brand strategy will ensure consistency throughout the multiple touch points of the extended sales cycle, and will also enable you to target your brand message to multiple stakeholders.
When we take clients through our Growth Catalyst process, we identify and address not only the branding challenges that are unique to the B2B market, but also those that are unique to each client. Let us help you build a customized B2B strategy that will align your business, drive your sales and effectively market your products.
