B2B Branding

Part #3

Introduction

B2B branding refers to the emotions, feelings, and perceptions that a customer holds towards a particular company (or product/service). It’s important to note that although your brand identity (logo, brand name etc) falls under the topic of B2B branding, the actual ‘brand’ topic is much broader than just that. Think of your brand as being the ‘frequency’ your organisation transmits to prospective (and current) customers in your target markets.

When developing a new brand, or redeveloping an existing one, it’s very easy to jump straight to the brand identity component (how your company looks) – purely as most underestimate how deep and strategic the brand topic is.

In terms of importance, there’s a reason that this topic comes so early in this complete guide. Put simply, your brand is the foundation on which your business (and your marketing strategy is built). Before you start to piece together you content, channels and campaign strategies, its critical to ensure that your brand is robust, differentiated and futureproofed.

There are three main areas that fall under the broader ‘B2B branding’ umbrella:

Brand Strategy: Your company brand strategy will determine how you feel to your customers in target markets.
Visual Identity: Your visual identity will determine how you look to your customers in target markets.
Verbal Identity: Your verbal identity will determine how you speak to your customers in target markets.

1. Brand Strategy

Brand strategy is the first major component of the broader B2B branding topic and contains many key elements. However, for the sakes of this guide we will focus on five main areas; brand vision, brand mission, brand values, brand positioning and brand value proposition that will dictate how your brand ‘feels’ to your customers.

Each of these five key areas will be explored below along with best practice on how you can create your own.

Brand Strategy – Component Overview

1.1 – Brand Vision (Statement)

The brand vision statement focuses on ‘tomorrow’ and outlines what an organisation ultimately wants to become. This statement gives a business direction and offers insight into the future, which then essentially provides present day purpose.

A healthy and well-crafted vision statement will help define and illustrate the future of a business and help promote growth in all internal and external areas, allowing the eventual conversion of this vision into reality.

At its core, this statement should be both inspirational and aspirational and will commonly be longer than the accompanying mission statement. It should be used to clearly map out the vision for your future which in turn will help influence internal culture, drive operations, and impact all key business decisions and strategies.

Your Vision Statement Should Be:

Long-Term: When setting your view of the future, it’s wise to be using a timescale of 5-10+ years.
Big Picture: Of all the main brand strategy elements, the vision statement is the one where you really need to be ambitious and capture all the inspirations, passions, and dreams within the organisation.
Deeply Rooted: You need to focus on deciding what success looks like for your business, then articulate this within your vision statement.
Contain a Goal: Your statement should preferably contain a measurable goal, that is realistic and within expectations.
Crystal Clear: This vision statement needs to gain the support of the entire company and all departments. So, make sure that your vision, purpose, and goal is clear, engaging, and memorable

1.2 – Brand Mission (Statement)

The mission statement focuses on what a business needs to achieve ‘today’ to achieve its vision of tomorrow. This statement outlines what a business does at its core and offers a concise explanation of key reasons for existence.

The mission statement encapsulates what the business is doing right now to achieve its vision which should also allude to exactly how the business is doing it, and more importantly, why.

There’s no denying that the vision and mission statement can blend together very easily (many use just a mission statement with some vision inserted) – so remember that mission statement is more actionable than a vision statement, which is more about setting the scene.

Your Mission Statement Should Be:

Explaining What, How and Why: The mission statement is commonly more difficult to write that the vision statement as it contains more moving parts. That being said, if you have captured enough data from various stakeholders, then you should be able to explain what you do, how you do it and why you are doing it.
Inspirational: If the vision statement is designed to inspire your business in the long-term, then the mission statement is designed to inspire on a day-to day basis. Give your employees, customers and partners a reason to stay involved in your company and illustrate why they matter to your business today.
Differentiated: This statement is an opportunity to explain how your company differentiates from its competitors in terms of what you do, how you do it and why you are doing it.
Actionable: The statement needs to stand for something and contain tangible purpose. With the vision statement setting the goal, the mission statement outlines how you will achieve it – so its need to be hard hitting and easily understandable.
Authentic: Due to the nature of this statement, it must be 100% authentic. If you imagine this statement as being a tool that unifies your entire company under a set of uniform motivators – then you need to make sure that it’s a true and accurate representation.

1.3 – Brand Values

Brand values are a foundational element to your brand strategy and will help shape many tangible and intangible elements of your business including culture and communications.

Your values can be seen as guiding principles that will dictate how you operate both internally and externally along with enabling differentiation. Further to this, your values also help formulate the way in which your business ‘connects’ with your target audiences and customers – hence why they should be seen as impacting all areas of your business.

Crafting a set of values on their own is only half the task – as each needs to be complemented by a set of associated behaviours that your entire workforce will abide by to portray the actual value. Your brand values can be kept internal or you can share them publicly – but regardless of how you distribute them, they will help guide the approach, processes, and actions of your business.

Your Brand Values Should Be:

Unique: Above all else, your brand values need to be unique to your business and relate back to your original vision and mission statements.
Holistic: Brand values are not just for the commercial teams, but rather for the entire company to live by.
Meaningful: Tying into the above, your values need to stand for something and be meaningful. If they aren’t, then your values probably won’t be expressed by your company, meaning you are missing an opportunity to align the business.
Easily Understood: Your values need to be clear, hence why they need to be matched with appropriate sets of behaviours. By doing this, you also make your values actionable and easy-to-follow by both existing and new members of your workforce.

1.4 – Brand Positioning

Brand positioning describes how your brand (company) is different from its competitors and where it sits in your customers mind. Whereas the above elements are easy to grasp, positioning is not. try to imagine your positioning as referring to the key attribute(s) of your business that you can ‘own’ within your target markets and then use that to penetrate the minds of your target (and current) customers

To carve out this space in your customer’s mind, you need to convert your desired position into a unique story or bundle of message that can’t be confused with competitors in your target markets. Essentially, this core brand positioning will set out what makes your business unique and different and will help drive general business strategy, behaviors, and communications.

Your Brand Positioning Should Be:

Differentiated: More than any other brand strategy element, your positioning must differentiate you from your competitors – in fact, you need to view your positioning as being a mini framework that enables your business to differentiate in the marketplace.
Demanded: Related to the above, a healthy positioning will consider the actual marketplace demand. The key to remember here is to strike a fine balance between what customers want and what your business can deliver on whilst keeping your competitors in mind – find this balance and you’ll find your positioning.
Robust: Your positioning can’t be solely based on what you think it should be, it needs to be fully aligned with the capabilities of the broader business. For example, if your positioning is based on innovation and progression, then you need to ensure that your product/service deliver on this.
Concise: Whereas some brand elements require a certain level of depth, your positioning must be concise and contain minimal complexity.

1.5 – Brand Value Proposition

Your brand value proposition may be the most important element within the broader B2B branding topic, and ultimately answers the question ‘why’ a customer should care about your company, product, or service. This statement should be able to convince a prospective customer why you offer more value to them than marketplace competitors.

You can view a value proposition as condensing a list of your USP’s down to a succinct statement that expresses the results a customer receives from the value of your company, product, or service. It’s not enough to just simply provide value, to forge meaningful relationships with customers, they must receive substantial results from utilising your offering.

The value proposition statement itself should clearly illustrate the who you are, what you do, how you do it and why a customer should select you over competitors – providing the customer with a clear understanding of your business and your capabilities.

Your Brand Value Proposition Should Be:

Easily Understood: Not only should it be immediately consumable, but a customer should be able to read and understand it within 10 seconds. If you use this as a benchmark, it will force you to ditch jargon and buzzwords for something clean and concise.
Descriptive: Touching upon on the above description, you should be aiming to clearly describe the value and the ‘results’ a customer can expect to gain from using your company, product or service. Results doesn’t necessarily mean quantifiable data, think of it more as the deeper purpose of your value – what is the customer ultimately able to achieve?
Holistic: Your value proposition will take cues from your positioning and even your core values and vision/mission statements – that will support each other reciprocally.
Expressive: To keep you guided, always make sure that your final proposition touches upon who you are, what you do, how you do it and why a customer should choose you to help solve their problem or achieve their goals.

2. Visual Identity

Visual identity is the second major component of the broader B2B branding topic and contains two main areas; external identity and internal identity that will dictate how you ‘look’ to your customers.

Visual Identity – Component Overview

2.1 – External Identity

Your external visual identity (also known as brand identity) is how you visually interpret your brand strategy – through several design-based principles, elements, and assets. Although under some circumstances its fine to jump straight to this section and bypass the brand strategy (if you are upgrading your brand design guidelines for example) – you should always try to formulate at least a brief brand strategy before venturing into your visual identity.

External Identity Elements Include:

Logo: A full company logo commonly contains two key parts – the logomark (the symbol/icon) and logotype (the text).
Naming/Strapline: You don’t always need a strapline and shouldn’t shoehorn one next to your full logo just for the sake of it. If you do craft one, be sure to link it to your overarching value proposition to keep your brand communications aligned with your strategy.
Typography: This is the font and text style that you use across your brand.
Imagery/Photography Style: Similar to typography, your photography guidelines will help portray a certain visual personality attune to your brand strategy.
Colour Palette: There is a science to colour. Like your photography direction, choose a colour palette that best represents the brand you are building.
Data Visualization/Illustration/ Diagram/Iconography Style: You will use these across a vast number of content types and within campaigns – so be sure they contain any design cues from the other items such as your chosen colour palette.
Interactive Elements/Video/Sound/Motion Style: Again, there are finer nuances to all these interactive elements that will once again relate to your broader brand.
Print Assets: This is where you will move away from developing single elements and start merging them together to form full asset templates and styles.
Digital Asset: Similar to the above, you will need to create several digital templates that utilise the pre-developed elements above for several different channels (email, social media, online ads for example).

2.2 – Internal Identity

Your internal identity is an extension of external identity, and largely relates to full templates as opposed to individual attributes.

Internal Identity Elements Include:

Stationary & Signage: Includes items such as business cards and letter heads – obvious yet essential.
Collateral: This can become quite a vast area depending on the size of your organization. Items include sales presentations, business case templates and sales enablement collateral that should all follow your brand identity guidelines.

3. Verbal Identity

Verbal identity is the third major component of the broader B2B branding topic and contains two main areas; key messaging and tone of voice that will dictate how your brand ‘speaks’ to your target audiences and customers.

Verbal Identity – Component Overview

3.1 – Key Messaging

With your value proposition organising the value and results that your company, product or service creates – then your brand messaging is how you communicate this to customers. Effective messaging hones in on what’s important to your targets and communicate it consistently and effectively.

Messaging Framework:

To better understand the structure of B2B branding/campaign messaging, below is a simplified messaging framework containing several levels (the more advanced models contain up to 3 times as many levels as this one).

Before we explore each level, it’s important to note that the basis for your messaging framework can broadly be grouped into two key categories.

Brand Messaging: This is focussed on crafting key communications for your company, product, or service. it depends on how granular you want to go, but say for example you have a business, product A and Product B (that are largely differentiated from each other) then you will ideally need to create a messaging framework for each of the three entities mentioned. (Although your company messaging will tend to appeal to all your collective target personas, you will want your product/service messaging to be tailored to each individual target persona or persona group. Using the framework above, duplicate the ‘Persona’ row so you can craft the messaging pillars beneath for each one).
Campaign Messaging: As expected by the name, this is focussed on crafting key communications for your market campaigns that will be focussed on specific target markets (and personas). This is particularly useful for companies majoring on selling services or offering customs solutions that can be moulded to multiple different markets (as mentioned previously). Here you may need to reshape your value proposition, so it leans more towards a specific target market. Like the brand messaging, you may need to duplicate the ‘Persona’ row. Whereas you will be creating messaging frameworks infrequently for your brand messaging, you could be creating these for every campaign you develop.

Framework Levels:

With the two major type of frameworks outlined, the below will explore each key level in the simplified framework example above.

Value Proposition: Detailed in an above section – this statement outlines the value and results a customer stands to gain from your company, product, or service. Ultimately it answers the ‘why’ and should be short enough to be read and understood within 10 seconds.
Elevator Pitch: View this as being a ‘beefed up’ version of your much shorter value proposition statement. This will commonly take form of a 50 or 100-word statement that allows you to go into further depth with regards to your company, product, or service.
Persona: What persona or persona group the framework is based around.
Messaging Pillars: These are the key top-level benefits or USP’s related to the topic of your framework (company, product, or service). Try and stay within the optimal 3-5 brand pillars as not to spread your messaging too thin.
Benefit Statements: Under each pillar, list several example key messages or benefits that are derived from the messaging pillar (USP) related to the persona you are targeting and topic of your framework (company, product, or service).
Proof Points: To support your benefit statements, these are pieces of ‘evidence’ that provide credibility and authenticity to your claims of value.

3.2 – Tone of Voice

With your key messaging communicating the key components of your value proposition (related to your company, product, or service) then tone of voice dictates how these key messages are structured. The tone of voice you use must be fully aligned with your overall B2B branding including the brand strategy and visual identity – in that it must inherently convey your values, positioning, personality, and overall identity.

Your tone of voice can be seen as the underlying principles that help structure the way you communicate with both prospective and existing customers.

Tone of Voice Elements:

Voice Dimensions: These are the pillars of your brand personality – or the key traits that will be installed into your communications.
Tone Attributes: These relate to the finer nuances of each chosen voice dimension and further detail exactly how your communications should be structured to reflect your broader B2B branding.
Rules: These include guidelines related to vocabulary, grammar, acronyms, territory nuances, naming conventions and formats.