|
B2B Branding: the key principles
You and your business brand
The difference between your character and self image in personal relationships and your brand in corporate relationships comes from ‘transferability’.
Brand, because of its profile and public standing, should be transferable - that is, people should have a sense of the company and what they can expect from it without having to get to know your company personally.
Think of the public persona and reputation of a high profile individual a celebrity. People have a sense (or at least think they do) of who a public persona is, and what it might be like to know them on a more intimate level.
Let’s have a look at those key principles and tools.
The buyer's perspective
From the buyer's perspective, brand acts like an insurance policy. A brand on the side of a soda can says, “I'm going to taste the same every time." In clothing a brand on a tag or label says, "even if you don't have taste, you're still in fashion."
In B2B sales, the buyer often doesn't know what he wants or what she's buying. As a result, a brand says, "Even if you don't know what you're buying, you can count on us to help you work it out in a way that's going to benefit your company... and oh, by the way, we helped others and they kept their jobs - or got promoted."
A B2B brand, from the buyer's perspective, is insurance for the buyer against needing to know everything before they buy and it insures them against risk after buying.
The seller’s perspective
The basic purpose of a brand from the seller's perspective is to help educate the potential buyer and reduce the impact of price on the purchasing decision.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi deliver the desired effect. Consumers regularly pay more for a Coke than for other soft drinks. But will a CEO really pay more for a service because it comes from a well-known company?
The answer is ‘yes’.
The largest consulting firms - Accenture, IBM, PKMG - even in these difficult times extract greater margins than lesser known competitors.
Doubters of brand value will argue the real reason behind the greater margin is better quality of service, or reduced risk based on track record. No doubt, these come into play. At the same time, staff from these companies will attest that the differences are not as great as might be imagined.
The bigger difference occurs at the margin - and in terms of "permission".
Part 3 – The five things buyers let companies with good brands do |
