Who do you exist to serve?

It’s not unusual for business leaders to desire a stronger and more well-recognized brand in market.?It is rare to come across a sales organization or leadership team that doesn’t express some level of jealousy at today’s most valuable brands – particularly B2C brands – in market today.?People will often tout Apple, Tesla, Google, and Netflix as examples of great brands (which they are!) and want to replicate the brand success of these companies.?

These mass market brands have done an exceptional job of embedding themselves in our daily lives because they connect with us as consumers. ?Everyone understands the “Why” of these brands because they have wide appeal to us – whether we need a smartphone, drive a car, search the internet, or want entertainment in our homes – all of us can connect with the value proposition that these brands bring to our lives.

But a strong B2C isn't guaranteed to become a strong B2B brand

Apple is a great example of this phenomena – they tried to capture a part of the enterprise market with their Xserve server and storage offerings in the 2000s but were unsuccessful in positioning their consumer technology leadership into a compelling reason to buy for business customers, let alone offer the complex support infrastructure that B2B customers require.?As a result, Apple discontinued their hardware in 2011 and the last remaining element – OSX Server – was discontinued in April 2022.

Photo courtesy of cultofmac.com

“First off, corporations are not consumer products. While this may seem to be a blindingly self-evident statement to make, many branding agencies insist on lumping them together as “brands” and both therefore equally susceptible to consumer branding techniques.?The fact is they exist in vastly different worlds.” -BrandingBusiness

My experience at Dell was similar.?Yes, it was great to have the brand behind me when cold calling – because I didn’t have to explain who I worked for, or what the company did.?But it could also be a hinderance, as customers would often take their preconceived notions of what we were able to provide based on their consumer experience.?Low-cost laptops and desktop computers were the first things that came to mind.?In those early days, before the launch of Dell Technologies, it could be difficult to position servers, storage and networking as anything by low-cost alternatives when customers were used to buying those from “enterprise computing” brands like IBM and Cisco.?It took a lot of solid product development, marketing, sales and even acquisitions to turn the B2B division into the powerhouse it is today.

When I was at Avaya, we tried hard to push our brand down-market to capture the wider SME market – but with very limited success.?Our best customers remained those that had bought into our vision for enterprise communications – including large scale call centers, and it was difficult to replicate that success in the midmarket space.

That is why I appreciated this quote from “The Practice” by Seth Godin as it applies to marketing:

“Choose to make work that matters a great deal to someone.?Develop an understanding of genre, work to see your audience’s dream and hopes and go as far out on the edge as they’re willing to follow.”

Because B2B marketing is different

Our products and solutions don’t matter to everyone, but they do deeply matter to SOMEONE.?This means understanding the niche that you serve and being committed to ensuring that the people that you matter to the most are aware of you.?It means being bold enough to ignore the desire to want to appeal to the mass market in favour of being known by the people who will be your best customers.?It means going to a family dinner and not having anyone there understand who you work for – because what you offer is not for them – and that is OK.

?If you don’t believe that B2B brands should focus on being famous only to their potential customer base – let’s try a little test.?Have a look at the list below and see if you can figure out what each of the following companies do:

These companies are some of the largest B2B companies on earth, and yet the average consumer would hardly recognize them. They represent trillions in assets, hundreds of billions in revenue and are successful because they provide continued value for their clients in the markets that they serve.?As stated by Leslie Venetz, Founder of Sales Team Builder LLC:?

“When I first started selling to Fortune 1000 corporations, the thing that surprised me the most was that many of the largest companies were brands I’ve never heard of.?Firms like CK Hutchinson, LaFarge, and WPP took me by surprise. That companies could have 10s of billions of dollars in annual revenue and I had never encountered them was an important sales (and general business) lesson.?Have a look down the Global 2000 list - if you see a company making billions and you’ve never heard of it - well there’s your first step towards identifying the worlds largest B2B firms.”

So is it possible to have a very well-known enterprise B2B brand??

Yes, of course.?There are several examples of companies that have grown to do this well.?Microsoft maintains a very strong consumer and business brand.?Oracle continues to impress with a brand that is well recognized outside of their core markets.?IBM is also well recognized.?

?But I would argue that many of these brands were built in the last golden age of brand value creation – before the mass adoption of the internet, before mass advertising was replaced by online, targeted marketing.?This explains why the list of top B2B brands that also have a B2C presence has remained so consistent over time.

?“B2B brands tend to be more consistent in terms of brand value. Looking at the top 20 B2B brands many have stayed in the B2B ranking over ten years, in fact 14 of the brands in the B2B ranking in 2006 are still in it today and all 20 of the B2B brands from last year are in the B2B ranking in 2016.” -??????Mindi Chahal, Marketingweek.com

In today’s market, where almost 600,000 technology companies are vying for attention in the United States alone, it is more important than ever to remain focused on the market segments that matter most.?

So remain diligent and focused on building a brand that caters to your top customers.?

And the next time you are at a family function and someone asks “Who do you work for?”, be proud of the fact that they haven’t heard of you.?Because when someone does recognize you for what you do – know that you have found a kindred spirit and have remained focused on the most important asset in business marketing – your ideal customer.