While very few things are certain in the world of B2B marketing, I have heard the following three statements pretty much universally agreed upon by every sales and marketing executive:
So how can a marketing executive battle these universal truths?
One of the things that I’ve seen working but too often not practiced is leverage across marketing channels and activities.
Here is what I mean by leverage. You have a White Paper posted on the web site? Use it as an offer in an e-mail or telemarketing campaign; Presenting a web seminar? Make sure to promote it if you’re going to a tradeshow a couple of months or a couple of weeks earlier; Have a customer case study? Pitch it to a trade magazine; Running an e-mail campaign? See if you can leverage your partner relationships to reach out to more people.
There are so many opportunities for such cross-channel leverage, that the difference between taking advantage of them or not can spell a significant difference in results and the return on marketing dollars.
But it is more than just the short-term results that are at stake here. Every piece of your marketing mix is part of your branding. In the B2C world, branding is manifested in packaging, advertising, and image. In the B2B world, your branding is also your ideas, the success of your customers, and the support of your partners. Weaving these elements into your marketing activities in a consistent manner engraves your brand into the minds and the hearts of your target market.
Nonetheless, using the same material over and over again can become downright obnoxious and actually damage your brand. Doing it in a way that makes sense to your customers is the art of creative B2B branding. And it’s a way for you to fight the universal truths of B2B marketing and create more with less (i.e., your budget).
PUT IT TO PRACTICE
Here are some simple things you can do to turn your marketing activities into brand-building foundations:
- 1) Make sure your message is consistent.
Write down the one thing you want people to remember about your company. Make sure it comes across in every piece of communication. You can use different ways to communicate the message, but it has to come across loud and clear. To take a page from the B2C world, take a look at Nike. Whenever you see a Nike commercial, the message is clear – Just Do It! – and it comes across loud and clear even before any words are ever mentioned.
In the B2B world, take a look at i2. The message is clear: Value. It starts with the tag line – Powering the Bottom Line – and it continues with the home page of the website and virtually any piece of communication, down to the closing words of the “About i2” statement at the end every press release: “Established in 1988, i2 is the only software solutions provider that measures, audits, and reports total value provided to its customers, with a mission to deliver $75 billion in value by 2005.”
2) Make consistent use of key terminology.
Choose the key terms that best describe your brand – your market, your product offering, your customers, your technology – and use them consistently to drive your message. If you sell a better mousetrap, don’t call it a “Mouse Killer” in one place and “Domestic Wildlife Management Tool” in another place. I know we all like to be creative and invent new terms every now and then, but remember the rule: the more different terms you use, the less memorable each one is in the minds of your audience, and the less likely that they will remember any single one of these terms.
3) Leverage and link to provide a journey into your brand.
This is where we climb back on our soapbox: leverage and link. Once you’ve made sure that each piece of communication embodies your message and brand, you can use these pieces to create a whole picture of your brand in the minds of your target audience.
There is no better place than your website to communicate your brand message. You probably already use every piece of communication to drive visitors to your website. However, people tend to wander, and visitors can click out of your website quicker than they’ve clicked in.
Once you have them on your site, you want to weave your branding web around them and keep them there. Provide your audience with multiple links to content that reinforces your message and your brand. You don’t have to provide hundreds of links. Six to twelve links to relevant but different content on your site will help provide your visitors with their personalized path to exploring your brand.
Eran Livneh is the founder of MarketCapture (http://www.MarketCapture.com), helping software companies enter new markets, introduce new products, and increase market share. Eran is also the publisher of the MarketCapture Newsletter (see past issues and subscribe at http://newsletter.MarketCapture.com).
