Does Your Brand Really Matter?

Many B2B companies or service businesses struggle with the concept of their brand.  Some organizations think of their brand only at the most rudimentary level – as a combination of logo, colors, design and taglines that they might use on their website or printed materials.  Others may have a deeper understanding that branding extends to the company’s personality, price, service and customer interactions. 

But however they consider their brand, many B2B organizations think that branding is something that’s only important for well-known, nationally advertised consumer products.  Granted, major consumer products companies can invest a lot of marketing dollars to reinforce their image.  But even without that advantage, companies should pay careful attention to their brand.

That’s because in one sense, perhaps the most important sense, a brand is a promise.  As Lois Geller explains in “Why A Brand Matters,” (Forbes.com, May 23) when you think of some top brands, such as McDonald’s Coca Cola or Apple, you immediately know what they promise.  The combination of a brand’s attributes creates an impression in the customer’s mind.  For instance, Geller says, when think of Volvo, your first thoughts are probably going to be something like “well built, comfortable, Swedish” and, most of all, “safety.”

The good news is that you don’t have to be a major company to create your own particular brand attributes.  In some respects, reinforcing a set of brand attributes for a B2B company is easier because you have a much more focused customer base. The other advantage is that you probably have more direct contact with customers, making the role of employees in reinforcing the brand vitally important. 

Employees should know what your brand stands for and what their roles are in supporting the brand. This is particularly true as social media and other communications methods have given customers methods to share their experiences – both good and bad – at light speed.  A failure to live up to a brand promise, whether through a poor sales experience or a faulty product, can quickly snowball into a full-fledged crisis of confidence among customers.  Studies by the U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs show that a dissatisfied customer may tell as many as 11 people about his or her experience,
and each of them will tell others.

If your company needs to work on defining your brand’s promise, here are some questions we use with NMMC clients:
• What is your company's mission?
• What are the benefits and features of your products or services?
• What do your customers and prospects already think of your company?
• What qualities do you want them to associate with your company?

Answering these questions about your brand will pay big dividends.