Selecting Brand Association for B2B SaaS

Companies perform better when they devote 20% of their marketing budget to brand building from day one. In the last article, I shared a controversial opinion that they perform better not because of the media effect but rather that it forces the company to pick a brand association that their campaign should convey. Which can (and should) should be used even in performance campaigns and sales.

While it might seem trivial, choosing the right association, communicating it clearly (and sticking to it for many years) is challenging.

Let's dive into the first step: how to pick the right brand association for your initial campaign.

Buying Situation

The situational context that drives the need for the purchase isimportant, beacuse your brain associate different brands to different contexts. Common buying situations are called Category Entry Point - CEP (read more about CEPs in the original paper from Ehrenberg-Bass Institute ).

Our goal is to build useful associations between your brand and the category’s core buying situations. However, they can be already dominated by bigger brands.

For new brands it is easier to look for a situation that isn't "owned" by any specific brand. For instance, a less common needs like “I need an email product recommender” can be less competitive than "I need recommender".

To determine if a buying sitaution is big enough, I use search volume as a litmus test and estimated deal size.

Case Study: Algolia chose the smaller CEP “internal search engine” and built the association “Algolia = search as a service.” This CEP was common across many verticals, making it easier to establish the association since other brands weren't focusing on it.

Bigger brands can aim for broader CEPs like “I need to improve my platform,” or cover multiple CEPs - Look at the Salesforce's Trailblazer Campaign covering building the association across category entry points.

Needs/Criterias

But many clients want to go after the common category entry point that is competitive and already strongly associated with bigger brands. I understand that they don't want to niche down. So I am adding another layer.

Different buyers have varying needs or criteria that shift their associations to the CEP.

Let say even if you choose a competitive CEP like “I need a recommendation system,” you can still focus on specific associations within it - like scalable recommender vs. cheap recommender would trigger differt brands in your mind.

Map out the important criteria or needs for buyers in the buying situation. Note that different buying situations can share similar needs.

Competitiveness

Evaluate the level of mental competition and the actual credibility of competitors compared to us (Can we outperform our product in specific criteria?)

Let's stay in the recommender engine space. Biggest mental availability have the biggest players like Amazon, Google, and Azure.

We can't beat them in scalability but they are viewed as expensive and difficult to use when customization is needed (e.g., Amazon Personalize with Apache Avro schemas for custom rules).

This gives you an opportunity to communicate the ease of use or price.

And in fact there is a "semi category" of cheaper, easy to use but not customizable and thus worse performing brands.

Point of parity

For some buyers communicating the ease of use is also associated with low customization/worse results as it is common in the semi category.

I learnt the hard way when you want to stay relevant for enterprise deals (and fight with dominant brands) you need to also communicate the points of parity with dominant brands (attributes which are necessary for it to be considered within the same category) while pushing the need that is not dominant.

Summary: Picking the One Association

I like the 3C framework: Commonality, Competitiveness, Credibility by Jenni Romaniuk

Choosing the CEPs to invest in is a process of elimination: eliminate the poor choices so that the viable ones remain.

• Commonality: How common is the CEP and the criteria in terms of market size?
• Competitiveness: Is it owned by a strong brand?
• Credibility: Can your product deliver the promise?

Pick the category entry point that is not dominated by a big brand if possible. If not, choose the criteria/need people do not associate with the dominant brand.

So in a nutshel

??Big market potential buying situation + no dominant brand → Go for it!

??Still relevant buying situation + no dominant brand → Good for a start.

??Occupied by the dominant brand → Not suitable for a small brand

Coming Up Next:

How to validate your choices and avoid common mistake. By going through this process, you'll determine:

• The essential needs and industry must-haves (points of parity)
• How competitors are perceived, improving your sales battle cards
• The associations to communicate

Just doing this exercise can help you win more deals.

Stay tuned for insights on effective communication in two weeks!