Hey B2B Tech – let’s make your brand work for the bottom line

THE FIVE KEY PRINCIPLES TO MAKING YOUR BRAND EFFECTIVE FOR THE BOTTOM LINE

It’s tough out there right now. It has never been harder (or more important) for brands to stand out in the B2B tech industry.

From above, you’re facing increased pressure to deliver revenue to shareholders as inflation, interest rates and recession drive a renewed focus on profits.

From below, it’s getting harder and harder to identify and reach potential customers as a result of stringent privacy regulations, the phasing out of third-party tracking cookies, and the rising costs of digital advertising.

This makes it all the more vital that businesses use every tool at their disposal to lower the cost of acquiring new customers and increase brand recognition at every possible moment.

Unfortunately, the brand itself seems to be the tool that’s most often missed.

Go big or go home

Distinctive Brand Assets (DBAs) are a tried and tested method for recall and driving ROI. We all know this.

In a recent article for Creative Moment, I talked about what B2B tech can learn from consumer advertising and how we can start to reap the same rewards that DBAs provide.  But with the well-publicised tech industry downturn of recent months, it’s time to double down.

Buying decisions in B2B tech are driven by insight, a holistic business need and it often requires a significant investment. Focusing just on the need to be ‘distinctive’ is perhaps trivialising the value that we see brand assets delivering for our industry.

Introducing Effective Brand Assets for B2B Tech success

We need to think about it more holistically than just a clever design that sticks in your mind – we need to think about the brand as a creative tool for engaging customers.

So perhaps it’s not traditional DBAs we need but effective brand assets – EBAs, if you will.

Effective brand assets can be a logo, sound, mascot or they can be a tone of voice, topic or theme, or even a customer experience. It’s not just about a recognisable brand asset, but an effective way to bring your brand to life and that can play out in multiple ways across design, production and content to land with customers.

I believe there are several key principles to identify and create the tools that makes your brand not just distinctive but effective in the buying cycle.

Key principles for developing effective branding and delivering results:

• Ground your brand in your values and your value proposition. Brand personalities that are removed from these can seem listless and inauthentic. A powerful, distinctive and effective brand is one that resonates strongly with the value you provide to customers and your approach to providing that value.
• Stand out from the pack. In every vertical you can find brands that follow the pack. From high fashion to high tech, over time all brands start to look and sound the same. This lays the foundations for unique, distinctive brands to be even more effective and memorable among business users.
• Don’t be afraid to take risks. In the B2B world, meeting SLAs and delivering on promises is non-negotiable. But there’s nothing in those SLAs to stop you from being creative and looking good while you deliver! Brand and creative are a brilliant chance for B2B businesses to exercise their freedoms to look and sound however they want.
• Learn from the power of user experience – In the past decade we have witnessed a user experience masterclass as social media platforms, news outlets and apps have all optimised their user interfaces and experiences to minimise friction and increase user satisfaction. We’re all human and we all prefer to use and interact with brands that feel well designed for our needs and preferences. Good design and good branding is good user experience.
• Think beyond the traditional ‘brand’ lens. Branding is more than design or messaging. It extends to how you execute the brand through campaigning, production and content. Get creative – no matter what part of the funnel you’re in – about how you bring your brand to life to make your brand truly effective.

We’ve seen the value this can deliver for our clients – both internally, from a piece of real-time data led employer brand unifying 5,000+ employees globally and externally, from creative storytelling and production making the success of frontline workers synonymous with a collaboration tool.

But don’t just take our word for it. Just look at Salesforce’s Astro, Cisco’s Bridge to Possible or Intel’s unique sound – they’ve led the industry on using their brand assets and effective campaigning to influence buying.

So, do you want to be the next tech giant? Are you ready to find your EBA?

Join us for the B2B brand renaissance.