A B2B buyer's decision to purchase has anywhere from 6-10 different stakeholders on it and typically takes 6 to 18 months to close a sale.
Brands that rank among the top 3 for recognition when the product type is mentioned (unaided category awareness) have an 81% chance of making it on the shortlist, while all other brands are competing for 19%.
In this article, we are going to explore the diagnostic models, stakeholder alignment process and financial measurements required to build an effective, measurable branding strategy for B2B business.
The Financial Value of a Branding Strategy for B2B Business
A strong B2B business brand isn't there just to present themselves as professional and credible, but rather to act as a financial instrument that can minimize buyer risk and maximize the memory of the B2B business brand during the complexity of a B2B revenue cycle.
According to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, 95% of B2B buyers will not physically be in the market at all times and therefore, the number one priority for any B2B company's brand strategy is to create mental availability for buyers before they begin searching.
The commercial impacts of creating mental availability are quantifiable using market data. A McKinsey & Co. study shows that companies with brands in the top 25% for brand strength will achieve a 2X multiple on revenue compared to brands in the bottom 25% for brand strength.
Additionally, Gartner estimates that B2B companies with above-average brand strength will incur a 23% lower cost of customer acquisition (CAC).
These statistics make it clear that while positioning, differentiation, and brand identity may have once been viewed as abstract marketing constructs, they are now the key inputs into win rates, pipeline velocity and ability to command a price premium in competitive categories.
Separating Strategy from Identity
The single largest area of misalignment between B2B brand strategy and product or service branding is the tendency for companies to confuse visual identity with their branding strategy for B2B business. Logos, color palettes, and typography are all important, but they are at the end of a much larger strategic process.
The modern B2B brand is best described as a Metabrand: an experience that flows through the website, sales materials, technical documentation, product user interface, customer success interactions and billing system.
Before any type of asset can be created, the brand needs to have a strategy defined, including its target audience; the exact problem being solved in the marketplace; where it will be positioned within a market category; and proof points that support the strategy being followed. At some point a brand must independently evaluate its current position against specific failure situations to determine if it requires a brand positioning framework or a rebranding effort.
Fixing Problems and Identifying Brand Gaps
Before embarking on a new brand positioning framework or rebranding effort, a company should first understand what the specific commercial problem is that they hope to address.
Simply changing the brand to fix a product issue or broken sales process represents wasted capital. Companies should evaluate their current position against a specific scenario of failure.
Weak enterprise credibility: While a company has built products to support large businesses and has a very strong product offering, it does still have an identity associated with being a small or immature startup.
Technical translation failure: A company has great product utility, but because of the confusing value proposition received by an economic buyer, technical evaluator and end-user, it ends up losing sales.
Naming/portfolio overlap: As a company continued to enhance its offerings by acquiring additional tools or building new functionalities, each tool had various naming conventions, which ultimately resulted in multiple messages and confusion as to how best to cross-sell to its existing clients.
If a company is experiencing any of the above problems, then the issue is structural in nature. To effectively develop the brand's strategy, it is critical to perform an in-depth analysis of the market clarity, product truth, and current state of the customer base.
The Brand Algorithm also outlines how enterprise buying cycles can take from 6 to 18 months and that different roles are part of this decision-making committee and that a generic message will not speak to all roles simultaneously. A CFO will evaluate risk and cost while a lead engineer will evaluate integration capabilities and technical debt.
The Brand Algorithm has shown how as much as 30% of Millennial and Generation Z buyers will involve 10 or more external influences in their buying decisions and how to manage the narrative for these distributed groups is necessary by mapping the message architecture to the buying committee. Below is a summary of stakeholders, their primary concerns, core messages, validation proof, likely objections, and required assets they look for from a vendor.
Economic Buyer (ROI and Vendor Risk): A vendor can reduce operating costs while not increasing implementation risk. Customer outcomes and financial models - “Why change now?” - Establishing an executive business case.
Technical Evaluator (Integration and Security): A vendor fits seamlessly into a customer’s current technical architecture. API documentation and security certifications - “Will this create technical debt?”
Daily User (Workflow Fit): A vendor can make a customer’s current daily process faster and easier. Product demos and onboarding evidence - “Will adoption be difficult?”
Procurement (Contractual Risk): A vendor has predictable vendor and contract experiences. Terms, support models, and financial stability - “What happens if requirements change?” - Standard procurement package.
This matrix ensures that marketing content, sales enablement materials, and technical documentation function in a coordinated manner throughout the buying cycle to minimize resistance for buyers at all stages of the funnel.
Building the Core Brand Architecture
Positioning is at the core of all strategy development and defines the space a company will own in the minds of the market. Positioning statements enable marketers to clearly identify their audiences, brands, categories and differentiation points.
As brands grow, they should also develop brand architectures to define how they will connect with each other. There are three brand architecture models: the branded house, the house of brands and the endorsed brand.
When brands begin to enter new markets, they must establish their messaging hierarchies. As such, companies tend to fail to execute on their messaging hierarchies effectively.
The Starr Conspiracy maintains a proprietary database that tracks B2B technology partnerships across a range of 40 companies with annual recurring revenue (ARR) of between $10 million and $500 million; the median naming consistency score was 52 out of 100.
A score of 52 means that the majority of both mid-market and enterprise-level companies do not maintain a coherent brand architecture which leads to confusion in the marketplace.
Directive Consulting looks at messaging architecture based on audience segments, and uses value proposition maps to define the brand's messaging. Generic terms such as "trusted partner" and "enterprise-grade" do not provide differentiation; as such, we see many organisations use these terms without adding value.
As artificial intelligence continues to make the cost of generic content very low and easy to produce, it is essential that companies establish a unique point of view and create differentiated brand assets in order to survive in today's market.
Messaging should translate an organisation's high-level positioning for its branding strategy for B2B business into specific language used by the company's sales teams and throughout all digital touchpoints. By looking at win/loss data and voice recordings, we were able to determine the language that customers who won consistently use to describe the products they purchased from us.
Managing Your Brand Across Teams
Brand architecture is an operational governance model that requires touchpoints to be integrated into the brand. In the event that a company says it can help transform a company digitally, but the company website contains a outdated product interface and the sales deck has contradictory terminology, this causes a loss of trust in the company brand.
According to Metabrand, there are over 50 different potential customer touchpoints that occur during the purchase process. Managing these customer touchpoints requires an appropriate governance model to be developed. Using a Brand Council or a RACI matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed), businesses can establish a formal process for obtaining approvals.
Legal groups, product marketing groups, regional sales teams, and senior executive leaders need an established formalized process for resolving messaging inconsistencies and conflicts.
Tools for Brand Consistency
In order to ensure consistency in both the look and feel of messaging, centralized design system(s), digital asset management platform, and component libraries developed in the content management system are needed to provide guidelines and consistent standards for distributed teams.
Timelines and Costs
Time and money are needed to prepare for the implementation of this system. For the purpose of providing businesses with a realistic timeline and resources required for the implementation of the brand strategy, Metabrand provides their clients with an overall practical timeline for strategic execution.
The brand strategy development phase typically takes between two to four weeks. If an agency facilitates this process through conducting market research, competitive analysis, and conducting stakeholder interviews, that time frame will range from four to eight weeks. The visual and verbal identity development phases will take approximately four to six weeks each.
Based on the estimates provided by The Brand Algorithm, a typical comprehensive rebranding effort for a mid-market technology business would last an average of four to six months, resulting in substantial investment on behalf of the business depending on their needs. Companies that simply engage in positioning alignment typically pay between $15,000.
A company that participates in a comprehensive rebranding effort that includes strategy, visual identity, and custom web development should expect to pay at least $350,000.
How to Measure Your Branding Strategy for B2B Business
Brand measurement must go well beyond just looking at website traffic and social media impressions. To measure the commercial value of your brand through consumer metrics, you can take a structured approach that determines the return on your investment (ROI) and has established baseline periods, attribution windows, and control groups to measure incremental activity over time.
With the right structured methodology in place to determine the ROI of what you have invested, you will be able to track how much money you are making from your brand investment, together with identifying areas where you can improve your investments, or stop investing altogether.
Companies that have strong brand equity are able to charge a higher price for their products than companies with weak brand equity. A study by Bain found that top-quartile B2B brands commanded a 7 to 9 percent premium on price compared to B2B brands in the lowest quartile.
In categories with high switching costs, the premium can exceed 12 percent. The link between share of voice and share of market is well established. When compared to their competitors, brands that maintain a share of voice that exceeds their share of market by 10 percentage points can expect to grow their market share by 0.5 percentage points annually.
Setting Goals to Track Brand Value
Rather than relying solely on revenue lagging indicators, organizations should also establish operational goals for the purposes of tracking their overall brand performance over time. By using a structured methodology to track their brand performance over time, organizations will be able to identify whether their branding strategy for B2B business is producing tangible results for their organization.
By developing operational objectives similar to the objectives used by Directive Consulting, organizations can provide clarity for their internal teams on what they should be focused on. Examples of possible operational goals include:
Reduce customer acquisition costs by 10 percent over the course of a 12-month period.
Increase segment coverage to over 70 percent within the primary target accounts within the next two quarters.
Develop a brand defect rate of less than 2 percent across active marketing and sales assets.
Increase message resonance by 5 to 10 percent across recorded sales calls over a period of 9 months.
By tracking branded search volume, pipeline throughput from branded sources, and category entry point coverage, marketing executives can demonstrate how their organization's brand strategies positively affect their organization's financial health.
Final Thoughts on Your Branding Strategy for B2B Business
Brand strategy in the B2B segment is a measurable mechanism for reducing risks with branding and product margins. Brand equity provides buyers with security, and the data illustrates the degree of this correlation with branding; at the measure of "brand awareness," 81 percent of brands identified by buyers make it onto the buyers' "short list," leaving no room for unknown brands.
To implement an effective branding strategy for B2B business, companies must strictly align their messaging and content across their total buying committee matrix of economic buyers, technical evaluators, and end users with validated, consistent messaging.
By mapping customer touchpoints across the total duration of the sales cycle (typically 6 to 18 months) and ensuring that strict execution of the plan occurs according to a defined architectural framework, companies can move beyond generic marketing messaging to a clearly documented brand strategy that will define companies that engage in commoditizing their SaaS solutions and those that can command a premium (12 percent price premium) for their offerings.