Big bang or slow reveal with your B2B brand launch? ??- Part one ??

Article by co-founder and director of Shaped By Nick Farrar.

Your B2B tech product might be a game-changer making people starry-eyed over how it’s going to make their life better, but it won’t get to if they don’t know about it. As a tech marketer, you know how tough it is to stand out. It’s a crowded marketplace, where propositions and products can sound the same to the people who buy. Carving out something that is ownable and truly unique to you is hard, but not impossible.

However, your brand and how you apply it creatively is an ownable way to differentiate yourself.

Depending on where you are in the journey, launching a new brand or breathing life into one is something that can pull you out of the clutter. It’s an opportunity to differentiate through your design, your approach, and your tone.

We know better than most that a brand launch can be an exciting time (say hello to Shaped By), but let’s face facts, it’s easy to blow your budget on it without blowing anyone away.

?? So how do you approach it?

As always in marketing, it depends! What’s your current situation and what’s your purpose for the project? Are you new, a start-up, scale-up, or established brand? Is it a full rebrand, brand refresh, or brand development?

The budget doesn’t dictate the quality of output, but it does dictate scale and approach. If you’re looking to make a short-term impact, then one well-considered piece of launch activity to your main audiences will be better than spreading yourself thin trying to stretch the budget and internal resources that simply aren’t there.

Really consider the brand and the emotional side of it. Can you push it to be a bit bolder by bringing your stakeholders on a journey with you?

There is an undeniable link that lies between the amount of creativity applied to a business problem and the success of its outcome. It’s a drum that’s been banged for a while now. A strong brand and effective creativity aren’t nice-to-haves, they are an absolute must for business success.

?? The good, the bad, and the ugly

You need to create some hype when launching with an orchestrated approach. Again, depending on your objectives there are many ways you can do this, whether it’s a keynote speech, PR, advertising, a social media campaign, email marketing, etc.

Initially, your biggest audience is your internal one. First things first, throw the naff merch in the bin. We love useful things. A beautifully written and designed brand book that covers the vision and values of a brand is not only a stunning way to reveal a brand internally, but it also provides a way to easily refer to your values and vision whenever you might need to.

We’re not merch-haters, but we do believe in quality over quantity. Make it something that people want to keep, and make it relevant to your brand. When we launched the Shaped By rebrand, we created high-quality notebooks embossed with our logo – elegant and useful.

People also then have something tangible they can start using, meaning they’ll immediately own the new brand. This is vital, as they’ll need to get to grips with it as quickly as possible.

Brand pages on your website are also a great way to take people (both internal and external) on a journey exploring where you’ve gone and why. You can introduce the brand, the visual language, your vision, values, and what it means to your teams and your customer.

It’s also great for attracting future talent. Couple this with more practical items like a digital asset library where people can access the tools they need and set brand guidelines that encourage creativity and the visual exploration of your brand rather than a set of prescriptive rules.

Ready for launch? ?? Not quite! ?? Watch this space for part two... ??