B2B BRANDING

Branding has been going on ever since companies have existed. Branding simply means creating a strong brand. In the past, you put a large billboard along the public road and placed a nice, full-page advertisement in the newspaper. Later, TV and radio commercials were added. But for several decades now, we have been living in an online world, where those kinds of classic forms of branding undeniably lose their power. Yet branding remains invaluable, especially in an online world.

A strong brand?
Branding is different from simply advertising. Branding, and certainly corporate branding, is not about promoting your latest promotion or your most beautiful product, but about putting your brand in its power. That power can be anything: the lowest price guarantee, a quality stamp, or really understanding your customers. Ultimately, it’s about getting consumers to get a feel for your brand and feel connected to it. That they know what your brand stands for and feel appreciation for it. But does that connection still exist in an online world, where comparison sites are springing up like mushrooms and the majority of all eCommerce sites seem interchangeable?

Branding more important than ever
Importance of branding – competitive distinctiveness
The answer may surprise you: in today’s online market, branding appears to play an important role than ever before. That has several causes.

One of the main causes is the increase in competition in the online world. Where in the past you only faced competition from industry peers in the same shopping area, you now also compete against the Amazons of this world. The importance of having a strong, distinctive brand has only increased.

A second cause is the ease with which consumers can now conduct their own comparative product research. Wandering around fifteen shops looking for the lowest price used to take you half a weekend. Nowadays it means fifteen minutes of surfing. It is therefore more difficult to build customer loyalty; if the neighbor turns out to be cheaper, your customer will find out much faster. It is therefore less obvious that your customers will eventually become regular customers. Unless they recognize your brand and have developed a preference for it.

“Picture says everything”
“Branding goes way beyond having a logo designed or a website made. “It’s about finding your corporate identity. Creating a brand experience that fits your company and your goals. you and your goals. For example, if you want to put your company back on the market, you also have to start from the sector in which you are active,”. “On the basis of that identity, you then determine the branding, the image with which you give the right first impression. Because image, especially today, says it all.”

Benefits of good branding
Good branding can therefore be invaluable for those who do it the right way . Branding initially means a significant marketing investment, but it eventually pays for itself.

First, a strong brand increases customer satisfaction. After all, if you do it right, your products and services perfectly match what your brand promises. Branding helps enormously in building customer loyalty. With you, a customer knows that he gets what he pays for. In the end, good branding leads to a preference for your brand among customers, and therefore convenience. Customers no longer look for alternatives forever, because they know they have come to the right place. You take away the choice stress that the online world can bring for customers, and that is appreciated. They trust you and do business with you blindly, which of course pays off in the form of more sales.

That is the importance of branding in an online world.

As said above, is well known by now. But should they also do branding , the overarching effort to consistently portray the company as a trusted brand? Doesn’t that brand awareness and positioning automatically follow from the many marketing efforts? Or is more needed? What then? And what not?

Communicate consistently with all noses in the same direction
Elements of such a branding exercise may include:
Formulating a purpose (‘why do we exist?’), mission (‘what do we want to do?’) and vision (‘where do we want to go?’).
Launching a new logo and a consistent corporate identity to support the purpose , mission and
Formulating a corporate story , an explanation in which you situate your company against the background of its own history and the evolutions on the world stage.
Launching a motto or tagline for internal use.
Launching a motto or tagline for external use.
Launching a concept or brand that summarizes your range of products and services.

Not every one of these elements is absolutely necessary, the practice is especially important to get all noses in the same direction and to communicate with the outside world in a consistent way. Above all, ensure great coherence, not a multitude of brands, sub-brands and slogans. After all, inconsistency and fragmentation lead to confusion and ambiguity, both internally and externally, and therefore to a less strong brand.

Close with a broad campaign
The branding exercise is concluded with an internal and external presentation of the brand. Certainly this aspect is completely different in B2B than in B2C. A brand for the consumer market is launched with an advertising campaign full of material intended to entice the public. A B2B brand aims at trust and is therefore launched with a campaign that radiates that.

Branding versus marketing
Branding is actually a specific part of marketing. B2B marketing efforts showcase the company’s expertise in all its various guises. They also directly or indirectly promote the products and services that the company offers. The marketing of a B2B company is therefore a multi-colored patchwork of initiatives ranging from the organization of events to the publication of a continuous stream of valuable online content.

It’s all about trust
For B2B companies, this general impression is at least as important as it is for B2C companies. But other demands are made on this general impression. After all, there are no impulse purchases in B2B, so you won’t achieve anything with the kind of trendy seduction tricks that B2C branding and marketing are full of. In the musical Cabaret , artist sings ‘Money Makes the World Go Round,’ but in a B2B context you can safely add: ‘Only Trust Makes the Money Go Round.’ That is why B2B branding is often more demanding than B2C branding: you have to position your company as the most trusted brand in the specific market in which you operate and you also have to support and monitor that status in the long term.

A strong brand is worth gold
If you succeed, the reward is great. You gain greater brand awareness and can enjoy an emotional advantage throughout the purchase process. Existing customers show greater loyalty, the competition becomes smaller and the sales process may be shorter. Moreover, you can more easily negotiate premium prices with higher margins. So good branding is just as important for generating leads as it is for retaining existing business.

B2B-branding als booster
But the question is, of course: how do you develop such a strong brand? In the introduction we already asked the question whether the much coveted brand awareness does not automatically follow from the many marketing efforts? That is only partially so. B2B marketing itself is relatively slow. With content marketing, for example, you gradually and step by step work on your reputation as a reliable source of information and in that way also on your name as a potential supplier of products or services. Without a strong overarching story, this is a difficult and sometimes unsuccessful process. A branding exercise, if properly prepared and executed, can support and boost that reputation-building process.