What is a brand and how can it increase my profit in B2B?

So, what IS YOUR brand?

To find out, first, you need to define your “proposition” or “purpose”. I tend to stick with “proposition” as “purpose” often leads brands down a road that leads to nonsense statements about world peace or something equally ridiculous like Verizon’s stated purpose of “humanability”. You are not trying to come up with a plan to fight for justice. You are a B2B company looking to satisfy your customers whilst making a profit from them, not an NGO or the UN. You just need to explain what your brand really is and how it represents something of value for your customers.

A brand proposition is a short statement that explains who you are. It doesn’t have to be snappy as it’s not something you have to use outside of the organisation. This is Labrakita Marketing’s brand proposition:

“Experts in B2B engineering marketing & brand strategy that simplify complex messages & marketing processes, making clients’ lives easier, maximising their profit and taking them to the next stage of growth.”

It is NOT a tag line or something I will ever use in my copy (with the exception of this blog, obviously). It simply states who I am as a professional and how I can help my target market with the issues they face. You can probably see how I came up with my tagline “making your complex simple” from this – and the rest of my branding followed.

Creating your own brand proposition

There are a few ways to do this but I use Wolff Olins “Brand Butterfly” model (BCG have a very similar model). The idea is that you look at “what is wrong with the world”, “what is special about you” and the overlap is your brand proposition. Now, bearing in mind how wrong you can go with brand “purpose”, it is important that you focus on YOUR world (or, your target market’s world) not problems with the world as a whole – your brand is going to have very little impact on wars or inequality outside of the business. If you don’t know what issues your customers face – research it now! Equally, you need to be honest about what is special about you and be specific – “good customer service” which is industry standard will not help you here.

So, for example, say you manufacture a product for the construction industry. One of the issues with their world is a skills shortage. What’s special about you might be your on-site technical support and how quickly your product can be installed. Or you might be a service company working in the Food & Beverage sector where potential contamination is their biggest concern and you may have a new process that minimises contamination issues.

These are obviously very simplistic. Ideally you need to come up with several bullet points under each heading to really see where you are. Once you have, you should have a much better idea where the over-lap is and how to articulate your brand proposition.

How does brand focus improve profit?

Research shows that brand-guided companies (those that have a brand proposition and is communicated to and understood by the whole organisation) have twice the profit margin of the industry standard (this includes B2B). It makes sense when you think about it, If your employees understand what the company essence is they are more likely to make the right decisions for the right reasons and they are more likely to be motivated about what they are being asked to do. 100% higher profit margin than their industry standard is incredible though and shows how important brand is.

Obviously the first stage in becoming a brand-guided company is coming up with that brand proposition but it is important to make sure that your employees (if you have any) understand it too. One way of getting employee’s on board in involving them in creating the brand proposition through workshops.

Branding – what next?

If you are a start-up or if up until now you have simply been trading using your name and gaining business through word of mouth, you now have the tools to set up your new brand. Take a look at my first blog post “Marketing for B2B start-ups – what do you need before you launch?”

Chances are though you have been trading for some time, have branding but have only now had a chance to look at your brand proposition properly. So, do you need to re-brand now?

Look at your branding again with this new understanding in mind. Does it truly reflect your proposition? Does it communicate what you are really about? Does that logo you got a student designer put together when you had no budget still look right? Is your branding distinctive enough to stand out? Does your website say “professional company” or does it look like someone with no budget has built it themselves?

Try to get honest second opinions – if the business is your baby it is very easy to get emotionally attached to your original branding. One Managing Director of a tech company I spoke to had a terrible time trying to convince the owner of the business to re-brand. He couldn’t even convince him that the 1990s style website needed to be re-done at first. What made him go for it in the end was a survey which showed that people who looked at the website thought that the company was in an entirely different industry than the one it had been operating in for over 30 years.

That said, be careful. During those years you have built up brand equity (recognition among your target audience) and you don’t want to lose that. Think very carefully before changing the name and colours. If you come to the conclusion everything needs to change (unusual but not unheard of) you may need to re-brand piecemeal over several years rather than changing name, colours, logo etc all at once as you risk even your best customers having no idea who you are.

If you need any help with your branding, would like me to run a brand proposition workshop for you or have any other marketing needs call me on 07791 521439 or email me at samantha@labrakita.co.uk

Author: Samantha Tonge, Marketing Consultant, Labrakita Marketing