More Than a Logo: 3 Indispensable Tips to Help Build Your B2B Brand

Think “word processing,” and you will likely picture the familiar white Microsoft W on a blue background. When considering large investments with a frequently steep learning curve, today’s B2B consumers rely on the perception of a strong brand to help them make critical purchasing decisions. Careful planning will help you build your B2B brand into a powerful tool.

All too often, companies dive into social media without much thought. Build a website? Check. Establish accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook? Check. But without a clear picture of the target customer and specific communication goals, these efforts often fail to deliver much value. Get off to a solid start with a few essential B2B branding tips.

1. Establish Your Target Audience

Before you start talking, know who you are talking to. Engaging military contractors involves a much different approach than building relationships with boutique retailers, for instance. Develop a picture of the types of companies you want to reach so that you can tailor your conversation accordingly.

Begin by answering some basic questions about your customers. Where are they located? How many employees do they have, and what do their revenue numbers look like? What problems do they want to solve? Who makes the purchasing decisions? What social media platforms do they use? Do they go there to find information, to make connections or to buy and sell?

With the answers to these questions and others, generate a detailed customer profile. Once you know who your customers are and where they live in the digital world, you can begin to build your B2B brand strategy.

2. Define Clear Objectives as You Build Your B2B Brand

As a first step toward building a strategy, determine what you are trying to accomplish with your communication. On the surface, the answer seems simple. You want to generate leads, of course. However, in the B2B environment, the leads come only after you develop a relationship of trust with your customers.

Take time to clearly outline your business goals and then build communications objectives around those goals. For example, if you want to expand your business reach in the public health sector, you need to establish yourself as a thought leader in that area. That may involve publishing regular posts on your own blog and contributing content to other industry sites.

3. Engage Customers with Storytelling

Even in the B2B realm, emotions play a significant role in driving purchasing behaviors. In fact, a study by Google and CEB showed that emotional connection in a B2B sales process counts even more than business value. Specifically, buyers place a high value on emotions such as confidence and trust. And stories generate emotion much more effectively than spreadsheets.

As you craft your story, think less about what you want to tell the customer and more about what they want to hear. Know what they need and use a story to demonstrate how you provide that value.

For instance, you could bore your audience with a detailed post about how you used the latest in artificial intelligence technology to develop a lead-generating chatbot. Or, more effectively, you can show them a real-life example of just how engaging a chatbot can be. Same subject, but with a much more powerful effect.

Need Help to Build Your B2B Brand? We’ve Been There

As a successful B2B company, eMazzanti knows how important it is to build your B2B brand. Our award-winning digital marketing team can help you implement a comprehensive digital strategy to find and engage your target audience. From custom website design to digital ads, email marketing and SEO, we have you covered. To learn more about how to make better decisions and grow your business, contact us at info@emazzanti.net or call 1-866-EMAZZANTI.

Download Article PDF