This week, Bill delves into the often misunderstood world of branding in B2B marketing. Branding isn't just about logos and colors—it's about telling a compelling brand story that resonates with your audience. Join us as we explore how manufacturers can create a brand identity that builds trust, drives engagement, and influences purchasing decisions.
Branding is essential in B2B marketing, not just for the 5% of buyers ready to purchase now, but for building trust with the 95% who aren’t in the buying stage yet. Developing a strong, consistent brand identity ensures that when the time comes, your company will be top of mind.
Key points covered:
• The definition of brand identity and its importance in B2B marketing
• Common misconceptions about branding
• The critical role of brand storytelling and narrative control
• Balancing polished content with authentic, candid communication
• Steps to evaluate and improve your current brand strategy
• Implementing brand standards across your organization
• The impact of branding on B2B buying decisions
Don’t miss out on transforming your B2B marketing strategy. Subscribe to the Missing Half podcast on your favorite platform, leave a review, and share this episode with your network. For more insights, connect with us on LinkedIn.
Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today we're going to talk about branding. Branding is a word that's thrown around a lot and there's a lot of misconceptions about it, specifically when we talk about B2B and manufacturing and marketing. So let's dive right in.
What is branding? Well, let's first start by talking about what it isn't. So it isn't just your logo, your colors, your text, the images you use for your brand. This is a common misconception. We think about consumer product brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, or any of the mainstream brands that we see every day. And we think that branding is just that swoosh logo or their color scheme and their font treatment for their product. And while that is part of a brand, when we look at B2B marketing and manufacturing marketing, we have to look deeper at what a brand is and what it's going to try and communicate to our target audience.
So what is a brand identity? HubSpot defines a brand identity as it's made up of what your brand says, what your values are, how you communicate your product and what you want people to feel when they interact with your company. Essentially, your brand identity is the personality of your business and a promise to your customers. So when we think about that definition of the brand and developing that brand identity, we want to make sure that we're building trust with our prospective audience.
So whether that's our current clients and we're reinforcing our brand promise to them so we can get repeat sales or whether we're repeating that brand promise and developing that brand promise story to prospective viewers and prospective clients. It's about telling them who we are, what we do, where we do it, why we do it, and how we do it. What value we're going to deliver to that audience as they go on their purchasing journey. So when we think about what a brand is, it's more than just those logos, it's more than just the imagery, it's the value of the promise, it's what we're going to deliver at the end of the day.
So when we think about branding and what it is, then we have to understand why is it important? Why is our brand promise, our brand story and our brand identity, why is that important to communicate with our target audience? Well number one there is a story that is being told about your brand in the marketplace one could be no story, right, which there's no nothing's being told about your brand. Number two If we don't take control of that brand narrative if we aren't the ones leading the brand story, not only in at our company, with our marketing team with our sales team with our executives, and getting clear about what that is and getting focused on delivering that consistently, then somebody is going to fill that in. So if a potential purchaser is looking at your company and there are a lot of gaps in the brand narrative they are going to make mental leaps or assumptions about your company that may or may not be true may or may not be beneficial to you winning that business. So we have to recognize that there is that gap that we have to control.
And third, the next piece of it is when we look at that brand story is we want to make sure that we actually are proactively coming up with a plan to make sure that we are in control of that story. So if there's a negative or a vacuum around the story or if our prospective audience is filling in their own story or thirdly or where we're controlling the story and developing that narrative and cultivating it and nurturing it over time, we really want to evaluate where our company is and what our brand narrative looks like.
So let's also talk about how is our brand delivered. So our brand is delivered, our brand story, our brand identity, our promise and our value is delivered to the market digitally every day, whether it's on our website, whether it's in our videos, our content, through our sales reps, through sales literature, at trade shows, in any way that we communicate to our potential audience our brand story is being perpetuated in the market. And whether that's a social media post today that goes out on your LinkedIn feed, whether the owner, founder or a C -suite executive is posting a thought leadership piece about the company or tying some lesson they've learned into what the company is doing, or whether it's an event that occurs at one of the locations or factories, the brand message is being communicated to the audience.
And while we can't control every message and we don't want to be controlling to the point of stifling creativity and the personality and culture of the company, we do want to consider developing some standards and identity around who we are and how we want to communicate our promise and our values to the market.
Another aspect that we want to consider when we're looking at our brand is our target audience. If we get really clear on our brand identity and our brand standards, but we don't consider our target audience as a mutual partner in bilateral communication around that brand story, then we're going to fail. Ultimately, brand communication is bilateral. We want to not only recognize who we are as a company, but we also want to recognize that target audience. And it needs to be two way communication. We can communicate our brand promise in a way that is understood by our target audience. And not only is it understood, on the face or the definition of our brand, but is understood in terms of how we deliver our promise to them specifically, to that target audience. Whenever we're looking at our branding, it's important that we not only look at ourselves, but we also look at that target audience and make sure that both boxes are checked, that we're looking at both sides and it makes sense in both ways.
So when it comes to branding initiatives and implementing brand standards across your organization, there are several tensions that can occur in the process. The first tension is that we as marketers and the C-suite get very tired of our branding way before our intended audience does. We often hear this in the marketplace from clients and others that they're tired of seeing the same old thing, the same message. Well, if you get the message right and it is truly about who you are and what you do and where you do it and why you do it and your value that you're delivering to the market and your promise that you're keeping with your intended audience, the reality is that shouldn't change very much over time. So we have to recognize that we have to be consistent. We can't get tired of our own brand messaging. We have to make sure that we are saying it over and over and over again.
The second tension that comes after we look at our own selves being tired of our branding is that we have to balance polished versus organic or candid content. The most effective content that is available for us as marketers to use to activate audience is candid conversations, is authentic interactions at the factory, in the boardroom, in someone's office, on an interview, something like this, in a podcast. Those are the most engaged and viewed interactions and are seen to build the most authority. Well, there's a tension there between that organic and candid production, between that and your polished and completely crafted, not cobbled type of brand communication.
So we have to figure out how to balance those things. One, we have to be creative and we have to keep things moving and we have to be candid and build that authority. We have to make sure that we're constantly evaluating the way we're doing those things against that brand standard and that brand identity to make sure that we continue to control that narrative and allow ourselves to deliver the communication around that brand promise to the target audience.
A third tension that exists when we look at branding is that we have to recognize the brand communication has to be about who we are today as a company. Our brand is not who we want to be five, 10, 15 years from now, even 18 to 36 months from now. Our brand is about a promise we can deliver today. We can be aspirational. If we want to add complexity, we can talk about who we are today and what we're striving to develop towards tomorrow, but we cannot over promise and under deliver.
One of the, and we're going to talk about this in a future episode and develop some content around it for you guys, is if we focus on aspirational branding, if we focus on the company we want to become or who we want to be in the future, and we communicate that as our brand promise, we will have tremendous fall off with the marketing team and then almost zero adoption by the sales and customer service teams.
The reason being is marketing will go out and communicate this brand promise. Sales will be stuck with backpedaling on the fact that, yeah, that's where we wanna be, but we can't deliver that today. And then ultimately customer service is going to deal with the backlash of the customer saying, well, marketing said this, sales kind of backpedaled, and then the real delivery was not what was promised in the brand messaging. So we have to be very, very careful that we communicate the brand we are today. And if we offer aspirational brand communication, aspirational promises for the future, that we clearly identify those so as not to confuse the prospect, the viewer, with who we are and what we do today and what promise we can deliver on.
So we've defined what branding is, what it isn't. We've discussed some of the tensions that exist when we're dealing with our brand message. So let's talk about a tactical plan or a step-by-step plan of how we can deal with our brand as it exists today and then develop a plan of how we move forward to be more effective in branding in B2B and manufacturing marketing.
So number one, we have to evaluate our brand as it exists today. And this is a step that's often overlooked. We need to take a step back and not think about it from our company perspective. We need to go out and consume our brand in the market just like our viewers will.
Sometimes that can be done with your internal team where you go out and actually, and this is almost funny that we have to say this, actually look at your website, actually watch your videos, look at all of the content that you develop and distribute and lay it on a table, lay it on screens, whatever you need to do or whatever tools you have, and just really take a hard look at it and start to identify consistent elements, consistent communication or inconsistent communication and identify where the gaps and opportunities are for improvement.
Sometimes it's valuable to have an outside firm or a third party do this work. And this can be as grassroots as just looking at the material that you have and doing, you know, just a view it and respond and analyze approach. Or you can go to the point of having client interviews, current clients, prospects, et cetera, and going into the marketplace and seeing how you're perceived in the market by other folks.
So there's a wide range of ways you can approach that process, but we have to take stock of where we are today. We shouldn't just jump in because if we just jump in, usually what we've seen happen is we move immediately to aspirational brand communication. Here's where we are and this is where we wanna be three years from now, this is our business plan. Well, that's a business plan, not a brand communication. That's not evaluating the current promise that you are making in communicating to the market today.
So once you've evaluated that current situation and you have a clear idea of how your prospects and current clients and the market is viewing you is aware of your brand promise today, the next is to really get into a now and then analysis where we're looking at, this is our brand now and this is where we want our brand to be. And then beyond that, here's our aspirations.
So we look at, here we are now, here's where we want our brand to be. And it needs to be, once again, focused on the promise of what we can deliver today, not the aspirational portion, which is kind of your third stage, which is where you're heading. So identifying those gaps, identifying what you need to fill in and how you need to better communicate your brand promise is an important step in this process.
Once you identify those gaps and you really dial in your brand identity as it is today and where you want it to be in the near term without becoming aspirational, it's time to start developing some standards. And those standards can be developed in a number of ways through style guides, through communication guides, through developing what success looks like. And that can be from your own materials or from other brands that you look at and say, okay, we would like to look like this, or we feel they're doing a good way of communicating that. And that can be in and outside of your industry. But developing a list of what success looks like so that you can establish in all the participants' minds, a North Star. This is what we need to do to communicate this promise to the market.
And once you establish those guidelines, it will take a process of actually developing different content assets, different collateral, and different videos, different social posts that are consistent with that. So you're not only showing what success looks like from a third party or from the market standpoint, but what success looks like for your organization. And this takes time. This won't be a 30 day process. A roadmap or calendar for something like this to create realistic expectations is probably 12 months, two to three months to get the plan right. And then the balance of the year to start to implement and refine and impact all the communication in the company to move them to that proper brand identity communication in the market.
The next phase will then be to really make sure you're permeating every area of your company. So getting with the sales team and reviewing the brand material, reviewing then some of the collateral that they use. Maybe it's their brochures, their emails out to clients, phone conversations and scripts for prospecting. All of those touch points need to be looked at and compared against the brand standard to see if they meet, exceed, or do not meet the brand standard. And once again, this takes time. This takes a lot of legwork to get the buy-in, but it's very important that every stakeholder and specific departments aren't siloed and doing their own thing, but everybody buys into that brand standard.
When we're taking brand standards to different departments, we can take this from a top-down approach or just kind of a push approach where we have a Zoom call, provide some resources, maybe a meeting, and introduce the concept to our team members in various departments. Or we can take it to a further step where we actually provide guidelines and work with them, with copywriters, to work on those scripts, to work on recasting the sales literature, working on recasting trade show booths, videos, or whatever tools they're using in their sales enablement function.
Some organizations choose to also deal with this, with their customer service teams and take it a step further and make sure that their brand communication permeates everything that occurs in the customer service function. The extent to which you drive the brand standard throughout your organization, the extent to which you can touch every department, every person involved in the company will be the extent to which your brand promise is consistently communicated in the market without variability. Variability is introduced when we have people in the company who are not participating in the brand standard communication. And that's where the promise gets fuzzy, and then the intended audience doesn't fully understand or consistently understand your promise to the market.
So why is it important for us to worry about branding in B2B and manufacturing marketing? Why should we care? We aren't consumer product brands. Well, let's go through a couple of statistics here. 70% of buyers want a repless experience. They don't want to talk to sales reps until they're really far along on their buying journey and have an understanding of the product, of the solution, of the service, of the solution, whatever you're offering. And they have a recognition that you can solve their problem. 71% of B2B buyers consume multiple pieces of content. So they want content around their purchasing decision. And this is content they want to share with their colleagues and the buying team. Well, if we do not have content that is on brand message that is consistently communicating our promise of the value that we deliver, we are not going to be as effective as a competitor who does.
84% of B2B buyers said that the winning vendor's content had a major impact on the purchasing decision. Once again, if we don't have our content that is branded properly, that consistently communicates our promise and our value, we are going to lose to competitors. And here's one that we talked about recently is social media. 50% of B2B buyers said that social media interaction and social media content about a company's brand influenced their purchasing decision. Branding is so important.
And something we talk about a lot here is the 95-5 rule. Only 5% of your target market is in market. They're buying today. The other 95% is not in market. They're not in a purchasing mode. When we actively communicate to our total addressable market, 100% of the market, we have to recognize that asking them to book a meeting or book a call or buy now is not going to be effective because 95% of the people we're communicating are not in that mode.
So we need to build our brand promise. We need to communicate our value to them. Establish authority around who we are, what we do, where we do it, why we do it, our unique value proposition, our mission, vision, and values, so that whenever they move into that 5%, whenever they're ready to make that buy and start that consideration process, hopefully they've already seen a lot of our brand communication. They've already been exposed to a lot of our content. They've seen us on social media. They've seen us on videos. They've been referred to us by other colleagues or other competitors in the market that they've seen interacting with our information with like shares or reposts.
This is all part of the process to make sure that whenever they move into the 5% we are brand aware to them and they consider us as an authority that could solve their problem. Then hopefully they're going to reach out after consuming that content and start a conversation with our sales team to have an opportunity to close that sale.
So today we've talked about branding. What it is, what it isn't, and why it's important for manufacturers and B2B marketers. We talked about some tips and tricks. We talked about some tips and tricks and methods of dealing with your brand. We talked about some tensions. And we also talked about a roadmap for how to get it done and how to implement it in your organization. We also talked about some statistics that tell us why this is important and why we need to be focused on brand standard implementation in our business today.
Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Like, subscribe, or comment. Thanks and have a great day.