Branding is rarely discussed when it comes to companies
providing industrial finished goods in a business-to-business (B2B)
marketplace. Instead, individuals most often associate brand management and
strategies with consumer products. However, every company has a brand. Regardless of the market or industry your company operates in, it has a brand,
one your customers immediately recognize and one they've come to rely upon. Now the question becomes: What does
it take to build a killer B2B brand?
Essentials of Branding
The best enterprises are ones that continually raise the bar on how they sell and service their customers. Ultimately, their brand is solid because their approaches are sound and because their after-sales service and support is above reproach. For these enterprises, everything begins and ends with their customers. Their customers hold the keys to making their brand successful. In fact, it’s their customers that mold it, define it and provide them with the essential insight on how best to improve it.
When thinking about branding, keep one essential idea in mind: Your brand is everything you want your customers to know about your business wrapped up in one clear message. In the end, it’s about combining a couple of simple strategies to making that all-important B2B brand.
1. Brand Champions
Your brand champions are your most loyal customers. They are the customers that consider you their primary vendor, the ones where your company enjoys the incumbent position and the ones who wouldn’t consider another vendor regardless of price or service offered.
The best enterprises know how to use these brand champions. They focus entirely on tapping into the insight these customers have about what makes their brand work and why. In fact, every company has brand champions. The difference is how they’re used. The best brands use their champions better than their competition. It’s just that simple.
Your company must find those customers, ones who swear by your product and services, and ones who hold the key to reaching out to the rest of your market. If you can tap into these customers, they might just show you things about your brand you never knew existed.
2. Segment Your Customer Base
Segmenting your customer base is essential to improving upon your brand. It allows you to define which customer segment represents your biggest and best opportunities, while also helping to identify where your brand champions are located. Segmenting your customer base isn’t just something done in consumer markets; it’s something every company must do if it wants to identify its best customers and cultivate those relationships.
Once you find your ideal customer segments, start by asking them why they appreciate your product offering. Next, define these customers in order to locate similar, likeminded customers, ones you can add to your list of brand champions. The idea is to tap into what works and why by defining the qualities of your most loyal customers.
Ultimately, segmenting your customer base allows you to define your ideal customer segments, while also helping you to isolate those aforementioned loyal customers. You'll then be able to ask whether your most loyal customers are whom you want them to be. For instance, if your company is trying to focus on original equipment manufacturers and end-users, but your most loyal customers are integrators, value-added resellers (VARS) and or distributiors, then you have to adjust your strategies.
To read more about selling to these aforementioned customer classes, please go to: Sales Strategies When Selling to Original Equipment Manufacturers, Integrators and End-Users
3. Upgrade Your Service
Isn’t it funny how some companies have an excellent product, at an excellent price, but just don’t have a clue about what it takes to properly service a customer? These companies go day-to-day claiming to have the best product available, while at the same time questioning any customer who purchases from the competition.
This is the single biggest mistake when it comes to B2B branding. Do not question the intelligence of your customers. If you have a solid product to offer then make sure your company’s service levels are above reproach. No customer will remain loyal to your brand and company if you can’t provide excellent service. There’s no two ways about it.
4. Increase Customer Loyalty
When a customer is loyal to a brand, aren’t they ultimately loyal to the company itself? They are, and it’s the reason why companies who build successful B2B brands focus predominantly on increasing customer loyalty. Without customer loyalty your company will never improve its brand.
Every successful brand is backed by a customer compensation program, one that rewards customers for their loyalty and one that incentivizes them to purchase more products. Your company must have its own incentive plan. If you want to improve your brand, then get your customers on a program that rewards them for loyalty.
A back-end rebate program, like the one described in the above video, is an ideal custoemr retention and reward program. It is also a great source of market data and provides instant feedback and information on up-to-the-minute competitor pricing. To learn more please go to: B2B Sales Strategies: Importance of Market Data in Price Negotiations
5. Build Market Credibility
The best companies build a network of contacts, ones that constantly feed them with pertinent market intelligence and ones that are essential to building the company’s credibility. In fact, when you think about why any company is successful, it’s hard not to see how market knowhow isn’t playing a role. In most cases, it’s merely a case of one company using that intelligence better than another. So, does that mean that building market credibility is difficult? Absolutely not!
Building market credibility is nowhere near as difficult as it sounds. For instance, successful business-to-business companies are ones who maximize their opportunities at trade shows, conferences and exhibits by using product demonstrations, giving training exercises, showcasing their market knowledge by providing training seminars and finally, having a couple of brand champions within them inside their booth and training seminars.
Start by building your network amongst your customers, your employees, your vendors, your creditors and your major market players. Even keeping tabs on competitors is essential to success. Your company must have a market intelligence gathering strategy, one focused on capturing market trends, competitor pricing, and one that helps to increase the skillset of your entire business development team. Your company’s market intelligence gathering strategy must capture each new piece of information emerging from your market, and it must be made readily available to your entire business development team.
In essence, having a nice logo or emblem won’t do anything if your company doesn’t have brand champions, doesn’t segment its customer base, ignores its service, pays little attention to customer loyalty, and doesn’t have the market knowledge to capitalize on opportunities. In fact, most companies in business-to-business markets base their decisions on historical performance. In this case, its consistency that matters - the kind that is built up over time and the kind your customers can count on.
To learn more about managing customers in a business-to-business market, please see: Five Customer Concerns That Cost You Sales and Market Share
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