Why is a B2B Brand Strategy Important?
Even the most successful organizations need a plan that clearly describes their activities and objectives while allowing for flexibility and quick adjustments. Companies across sectors must constantly adapt their strategies. Without a plan, it’s difficult to innovate and understand your brand’s impact.
Inconsistent branding and messaging can also confuse your audience, making it crucial to exude trust and credibility to build long-term customer loyalty and brand love. These days, B2B customers are expecting innovation and flexibility, making a well-thought-out brand strategy even more critical.
Four Steps for a Successful Brand Strategy
1. Define Your Brand Identity and Personality
Brand identity is how a brand sees itself and wants others to see it. This includes core values, mission, vision, and personality. Every brand strategy starts with the question: “Why?” What does your company represent, and why is that important to your customers? Whether your organization aims to solve a common problem, streamline business processes, or make your industry more sustainable, this drives your “why.”
This applies to everyone within the company. Knowing and communicating the values of your internal organization is essential. Let these values be reflected in everything you do to contribute to a strong brand mission and market position.
Get started right away: Organize a workshop with your employees to (re)define and strongly articulate your company’s core values. Ensure these values are integrated into all aspects of your business operations.
2. Know Your Target Audience
Recent findings by HubSpot show that only 42% of marketers have basic demographic information about their audience. Moreover, they have even less insight into what social causes their current or potential customers care about, let alone their general interests.
Conduct regular research to define your target audience, leveraging focus groups and a results-oriented marketing team to analyze your data and develop specific customer profiles. Communicate the same core message but adapt your communication to the channel and target group to reach everyone.
Get started right away: Schedule regular interviews, surveys, or informal catchups with customers to understand their needs, interests, and pain points. Use this information to develop more targeted marketing campaigns and messaging.
3. Show Your Added Value and Explain Why Your Company Matters
In today’s market, it’s crucial to clearly communicate your company’s value, highlighting the unique benefits and solutions your brand offers to your target audience. Show potential and existing customers what your company has to offer and tell them about it in plain language.
With targeted communication and carefully crafted content, customers should understand why they should choose your company as a partner. Use your website to clearly communicate your story and show how customers can benefit from your product or service. Send value-added emails that avoid the spam folder. Ensure your social media channels are active and share regular updates that reinforce your brand identity.
Get started right away: Optimize your website content by adding specific case studies and testimonials that demonstrate how your product or service solves problems and adds value to a partnership.
4. Choose a Human Approach
While your focus should be on your business strategy, don’t lose sight of the human element behind engaging with your target audience. This should be the case for any B2B or B2C brand – it’s all about B2H – Business to Human.
Strategies that focus on the “human” aspect tend to perform better. Behind the suits and C-suite titles are real people who spend their free time scrolling through Instagram, listening to podcasts, and those who appreciate brands jumping on a good social media trend. To be successful in this endeavor, the customer profiles built off the suggestions in point 3 will allow you to adapt initiatives and messages to the needs of your customers as your strategies evolve over time.
Get started right away: Invest in personal interactions with your customers. Sending regular personalized emails or sharing interactive content on social media encourages real conversation and builds a bond with your audience. Offer small additional services or tools for free based on your customers’ needs; this also fosters customer loyalty.
Need help with a good brand strategy? TEAM LEWIS can help you get started.
The perfect marketing mix finds a balance between business and relevance by communicating your authentic brand identity in creative yet consistent ways. This will help you differentiate your business in the market and build lasting relationships with customers and partners. Because B2B marketing isn’t boring, it’s limitless. Whether you want to launch a new product or strengthen an existing brand, developing a solid brand strategy is guaranteed to help you move forward. Looking for experts to support you with that? Get in touch today.
