You need a good company brand to create a healthy employer brand. There’s no shortage of information on how consumer branding and employer branding influence each other. Unfortunately, much of this analysis provides an incomplete picture. Most of the insights that exist are geared primarily towards the B2C space.
What if your business is focused partially or entirely on B2B customers? How do you create a branding strategy that’s effective with your target audience while also encouraging prospective job candidates?
In this article, we’ll explore what B2B branding is, how it’s different from B2C branding, and what you can do to create a strategy that works for your business.
B2B Branding: A New Understanding
Until fairly recently, B2B branding was significantly different from B2C branding. In many respects, it still is.
However, as it has become easier to access information about brands, their reputations, and customer insights, some of those differences have begun to disappear. Like their counterparts in the B2C space, B2B branding experts have had to adopt more personalized, sophisticated, and social-media-friendly tactics.
At the same time, it’s important to recognize the clear differences that do exist. This understanding is key to creating B2B branding strategies that work. Surprisingly, B2B branding requires much more complex personalization than what we see in the B2C sphere.
This disparity exists because B2C marketing usually focuses on a single decision-maker. That’s not the case in the B2B market.
Remember that the buying process in B2B is much more complex. There may be numerous decision-makers, and each of these individuals has a unique set of needs, biases, and criteria that branding must address.
At the same time, a good B2B branding strategy must also create a clear and impactful value proposition that hits home, even before any detailed messaging is created.
Common Misconceptions About B2B Branding
The biggest misconception about B2B branding is that it doesn’t need to focus on feelings. This notion couldn’t be further from the truth.
Ultimately, in B2B marketing, you still present your company and its products to other human beings. Your branding must create the same positive, emotional response that you would expect from a successful consumer brand.
Some common misconceptions about the differences between B2B branding and B2C branding include:
- That B2B customer personas consist of professional attributes alone
- That B2C customer personas must focus on personality and individual needs
- That B2B branding is limited to pricing and product differentiation
- That B2C branding is about making an emotional impact and driving impulse
These misconceptions can lead management at B2B companies to believe that they should prioritize sales to the detriment of branding. Worse, some come to think that branding simply isn’t important at all.
All Branding is Emotional
It doesn’t matter if a decision-maker is a consumer selecting a product for personal use or a buyer representing a major corporation. They are still people with emotions that impact their decision-making processes in some way.
Additionally, there is no longer a clear line dividing between the business and personal spheres. Products and services that make life easier and more productive on the job lead to less stress and worry elsewhere.
You can’t simply determine what is or isn’t important to a person based on their job title.
The key difference is in how emotion is used. For example, in B2C marketing, you might use nostalgia or indulgence to create an attractive brand. For B2B branding, you have to connect the practical with the emotional.
Say your company offers products that speed up manufacturing processes. That’s the practical side of things. In emotional terms, you provide products that help ensure financial security, decrease stress, and offer more time for doing high-value tasks.
Strategies for Meeting Your B2B Branding Goals
How do you create and execute a successful B2B branding strategy? This process requires a combination of research, planning, content creation, and employee engagement.
B2B Branding Research
Any successful B2B branding strategy will be based on objective research. Research is the only way to truly develop an understanding of your customers’ needs.
Your research should also include efforts to gain insights into your company’s reputation from the perspective of current customers, prospects, and even your employees.
Create a Strong Messaging Platform
Here, the term messaging platform doesn’t refer to a technology used to communicate with your audience. Instead, it’s a high-level definition of your brand.
Your messaging platform should describe what your company does, who it serves, its values, and its mission. Your messaging platform is foundational and will act as a cornerstone for all other branding efforts.
Develop a Content Strategy
Since the buying cycle in the B2B space is generally longer than in the B2C space, it’s important to provide a reliable stream of content that informs customers and gives them valuable insights at every stage.
The key here is to have a clear content strategy and use a content calendar to ensure that you deliver high-quality content on a predictable schedule to keep clients and prospects engaged.
Create an Employee Engagement Initiative
It isn’t just members of your sales and marketing teams who communicate your brand to the outside world. Everyone in your organization does it all of the time. Your goal is to ensure that they have the tools and training to understand and communicate your branding messages.
Remember that not every worker has the benefit of understanding your branding or even understanding what branding is supposed to accomplish. That’s why this training needs to be wrapped into your employee onboarding.
Fortunately, if you successfully get your team members to understand and buy into your branding efforts, you can turn them all into true brand ambassadors.
