Differentiate Your Brand and Create Engaging Brand Experiences in B2B

“It’s time to set your B2B brand apart. The thing is, you can’t pretend that your brand messaging is one business talking to another business. You must recognize that there’s a person on the other side of that message who thinks, feels, and reacts first as a person.” – Kevin Perlmutter , chief strategist & founder @ Limbic Brand Evolution

Why do we assume B2B purchases to be more rational than other purchases? We know our world is not a logical one, so it would make sense to consider that, even in B2B, influence and emotion are major factors. (1) Not just that but how your brand experience makes people feel eventually has the biggest impact on future business – from a long-term perspective, it just makes good business sense.?

This is where brand differentiation also plays a key role. It’s important to realize that B2B is no different from B2C when it comes to engaging on a human level: how you deliver your brand message, how people perceive your message, how they interact emotionally, etc. (2)?

And while there are plenty of ways to create a brand experience that feels authentic for your target audience, one of the most successful (and underused) tactics is that of brand characters. Brand characters have proven themselves to be helpful builders of emotional connections in the B2B space. Just think of the success Salesforce, Hootsuite, and Mailchimp have seen with theirs. (3)?

That’s just one piece of advice though. Our contributors have a lot more if you’re looking to differentiate and spark brand desire in B2B. Read on.

Dear B2B CEO, Your Brand Is Vital to Your Bottom Line

Jenny Sagstr?m encourages B2B brands to tell their brand story to the person behind the business buying into it:

“B2B brands have the power to influence people; done well, they encompass all the traits that make a company special. Your brand is your insurance policy against competing solely on cost, and it keeps you top of mind with existing and potential customers. Add it all up and your brand is instrumental in improving your bottom line! How? Why? Buckle up and let’s take a look.

Your brand is how you differentiate yourself from the rest of the market. Apart from price, it’s how we choose one service over another: United over American. Whole Foods over Safeway. Palo Alto Networks over Zscaler or Atlassian over Asana. Maybe the reason we don’t think brand matters in B2B is that brand was originally used to help consumers pick a product as alternatives increased – think soap and Procter & Gamble. But even in the B2B world, there are very few areas where you face no competition; as a result, differentiating yourself is crucial. Even if you have no direct competitors, keep in mind that your buyer (a CTO, for example), is not only responsible for purchasing say ERP solutions, they are also looking at security, networking, internal communication, and more. Their list is endless, so their attention is limited.

Your logo is part of your brand, of course. But your brand is also your values. It’s how your users feel after interacting with you. It’s how your product looks and works. It’s your mission and your vision. Your brand is the summation of all your parts – including your employees. Without a brand, Coca Cola is just brown carbonated water.

Another thing to consider, your brand is the reason why people come to work for you. Even with the Patagonia-vest recession in full swing, you still have to fight for the best employees who make the greatest difference; the ones that are comparing your offer to Airbnb’s and thinking about how excited they’d be to tell their friends where they work. To paraphrase Professor Scott Galloway, the products you buy and the brands you associate with signal your identity to the rest of the world (and give people a reason to want to associate with you).

Why do we think brand only matters if you’re Apple or Old Spice? Why do we have a belief that B2B purchasing decisions are made more logically than other purchasing decisions? Maybe it’s because, in a logical world, they should be! In a textbook world, you’d buy the fastest, cheapest, best-performing option after carefully evaluating all the factors in, say, a spreadsheet.

Having a strong brand is like an insurance policy. It prevents you from having to compete on cost alone, which we all understand is a losing game. It also means your buyers will allow you the occasional misstep (Hello, Apple Newton!) without losing affinity for the rest of your products.?

But most importantly, a known brand means that when the time comes for your audience to buy whatever you’re selling, you’ll remain top of mind. And that helps push the purchasing decision in your direction.”

Get Real to Differentiate Your B2B Brand

Kevin Perlmutter highlights 3 key ways to differentiate your B2B brand:

“1. Get real about brand strategy

To truly differentiate your brand, it’s important to invest time and resources in clarifying what sets your company apart. What are you incredibly good at and what meaningful benefits do people get from it? I sometimes hear business leaders question the value of brand strategy before they launch a new website, marketing campaign or account-based management program. ‘We don’t have time or budget for that’ or ‘we don’t need that’ they say. Instead, they invest their budget in sales tactics without differentiated or compelling talking points.In my work, the most effective brand strategies come from discovering the intersection of what’s most motivating to both the brand and its audience.

This not only clarifies how you are meaningfully different from any other available option, but it also ensures that it will be conveyed in a way that is relevant to what people care most about. The more alternatives there are to choose from, the more important this is. If your website, pitch decks, sales team, CRM blasts and blog posts are simply repackaging the same talking points as everyone else in your industry, you’re not differentiated. Simply put by Bernard Kelvin Clive, ‘Without differentiation, you have no brand.’

2. Get real about emotional brand benefits

To truly differentiate your brand, it’s important to be specific about the unique impact that you have on clients’ businesses. What are the most desired benefits that clients get from you and how does it make their lives better? I work with a brand that provides businesses with a SaaS solution that is truly unique and has transformational impact on the businesses that use it. Historically, however, their brand messaging has been relying on a lot of industry jargon about helping businesses be more successful.

Due to the familiar and non-specific language, what the company does and why it matters was very unclear until salespeople got into a room with potential clients. I was told, ‘people don’t really understand what we do until they see a demo.’ My curiosity was, how many potential clients are you not getting because you lose their attention before the demo?

Now, we’ve eliminated the jargon and replaced it with language that is much more specific about the transformational impact that this SaaS solution has on a client’s business. This approach is more emotive and effective because brand messaging now overtly shares the outcome of eliminating one of the biggest challenges that these businesses contend with, instinctively sparking their desire to find out more.

3. Get real about emphasizing customer experience

To truly differentiate your brand, it’s important to recognize how much brand experience plays a role in customer desire and loyalty. How does your brand experience make people feel and would that be a compelling benefit for others who want the same experience? Often, differentiation isn’t about the things you offer, it’s rooted in the style of service you provide, and the feelings your clients get as a result of interacting with you. Proven by Forrester over and over again, ‘emotion is the largest driver of brand loyalty’. How your brand experience makes people feel has the most impact on future business.

I work with a brand in the IT services space. They do the same things as many of their competitors. What sets them apart, however, is their customer experience, which is designed specifically to address people’s frustrations with many other service providers in their field. So instead of emphasizing their service offering, their brand messaging is now focused on the experiential benefits that their clients are so happy with – incredibly fast response and resolution times, accommodating client schedules, proactive guidance to prevent future problems, and enabling clients to focus on running their business without disruption.”

Brand Characters Are Building Emotional Connections in B2B

The use of characters as a communication technique is very common amongst B2C brands, but what about the B2B space? Doug Main talks about the advantages that come from using characters in B2B and how it’s different from B2C brands:

“Whether selling to other businesses or consumers, companies need to create buy-in. For some organizations —? depending on the product —? that’s relatively easy. But for others — particularly those operating within crowded markets such as connectivity, telecoms, or software where it can be more difficult to achieve cut through — they need an edge, a differentiator that not only puts them in view of their customers, but one that keeps them front of mind. This is where characters can really come into their own.

Go Compare and Compare the Market are examples of two prominent businesses which have used mascots to improve brand recognition, recall, and prominence. They also showcase two different approaches to characters — while one is a family of fictional meerkats, the other is a real person. While relatively unrelated to the products in question, both have become synonymous with the brands.

By playing on human traits — and giving each character the opportunity to further share unique characteristics through audio — these brands have become multi-dimensional. What started out, simply, as a pair of financial comparison sites has become relatable and engaging. The companies are now perceived to have personality — a description that perhaps wouldn’t be typical of organizations dealing in financial comparison.

But, while a common technique for B2C brands, the B2B market has proved more reluctant to embrace the concept — despite it having proven fruitful for brands that have taken the leap, as the following examples show.

A discreet example in the B2B space is showcased by Cloud Gateway — a company providing organizations with the ability to build the digital foundations needed for success. In this instance, characters are used in a professional capacity with different personalities to showcase and differentiate between various service offerings. Here, the mascots tread a fine line between professionalism and personality – offering an increased element of relatability without moving too far away from what feels acceptable for the industry.??

Likewise, customer relationship management (CRM), software-as-a-service (SaaS), brand Salesforce has a variety of mascots which help to add personality to its proposition. With SaaSy as the very first character, and Astro hot on its heels as a popular and welcoming introductory ‘face’ for customers, they are each complemented by a team of ‘friends’. These additional characters take on varied roles — while some help to exemplify the characteristics of different departments within the business, others are representative of values related to the customer experience.?

Collectively, these characters aid the business in communicating its mission, values and offering — but in a more personable format. And thanks to its mascots, the Salesforce social media channels take on an identity that is, perhaps, unexpected within its space — creating not only a point of difference, but also a channel of increased interest for clients.?

Hootsuite, a social media marketing and management dashboard, and Mailchimp, a marketing automation and email marketing service, are further examples of B2B brands which incorporate mascots within their communications. Showcasing how mascots can be utilized successfully, but perhaps to a lesser extent than in the case of Salesforce, the characters remain recognisable features of their offerings — which visually sets the companies apart from their competitors.”

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