During my monitoring and my participation in B2B marketing / sales virtual events lately, I have gathered rich and abundant information, especially on the importance of B2B brand strategy.
Many industries have been experiencing content saturation for several years. The current crisis is pushing us to create more (somewhat ironic) in response to the loss of so-called traditional business development activities.
It goes to say that the choices are sometimes difficult to make between prioritizing the management of our time and the value of the content (articles, webinars, videos, Lives, rich content, etc.) that seems to answer our questions.
Similar findings
Through all this content, I found a study by ON24 and NetLine Corporation pretty relevant. These two agencies interviewed some of the world’s leading B2B marketing experts in their study: “2020 B2B marketing trends report: Brand, content and sales-marketing Alignment.” They discussed the most important lessons they have learned since the beginning of the crisis.
Unfortunately, the findings are very similar to what we notice at ExoB2B. The lack of clarity of brand strategy is the biggest challenge to be addressed if we are to succeed in amplifying the reach of our brand.
The amplification of the scope of a brand is a necessary step to achieve certain goals precisely because of the saturation of content that only increases exponentially! This strategy can significantly expand your audience, establish your brand in a sustainable way in your market and create new opportunities to generate leads and sales.
Few B2B companies in the world have understood or are putting forward a brand strategy built on a viable strategic positioning that allows the marketing team to align its amplification strategies with it.
From this strategy it is possible to establish a game plan, the creation of content and its dissemination. But also, the measurement instruments and performance indicators, having faith that the work done upstream is solid and that it will allow us to produce gains.
Going back to the ON24 and Netline study, the topics covered obviously include brand building, the use of one-off events for digital experiences and marketing-sales alignment.
All are topics that we consider highly strategic in B2B and that we have been dealing with since 2009 on our blog. Quickly, here are some highlights from the report:
“Never forget the importance of building the brand.”
Despite the inherent need to generate new short-term sales opportunities, CMOs should never forget “The importance of building the brand” (longer-term benefits) as a necessity and a priority.
For them, it’s all about building an emotional bond with customers and prospects while helping them solve their problems.
Although 56% of marketers surveyed say they have a fairly strong brand, there are still 43% of respondents who say they cannot do their job properly because their brand growth strategy is not clear or understood.
As ON24’s vice president of marketing, Tessa Barron said, “I don’t know how you could be a marketer today and fuel a sales funnel regardless of the brand.”
Client-centric assets and actions.
Okay, but we still have to agree on what a B2B branding strategy is. In our view, the elements contributing to the growth of the brand are customer-centric assets and actions. Improving brand recognition (perceived value) is an essential step in increasing market share.
This recognition or perception is created through the experiences of marketing, sales and customer service (which evolves towards customer success).
This research of ON24 and NetLine highlights the obstacles to amplification of the brand’s reach:
Let’s remember that 43% of the specialists interviewed say that an unclear strategy is the biggest obstacle to amplification of the brand’s reach!
If the brand development team does not understand its growth strategy, how can we expect results?
In 23% of cases, the fault lies with decision makers, therefore on the CMO or VP of marketing, who do not see the long-term value of implementing a brand strategy.
In conclusion, 37% of marketers do not know how to measure the performance of their brand due to the lack of strategy clarity.
Is your B2B brand growth strategy unclear?
So, it’s time to fix it and take advantage of the crisis to identify opportunities.
Moreover, amplifying the reach of your brand, as well as creating content, is not an option. We will not hide it: content creation has become the “farwest” of marketing, where everyone shoots everything and without precision.
But as with many confusing situations, there is light at the end of the tunnel. There are strategies, tactics and tools (in order) that you need to implement to drive your growth and in the medium term, your digital marketing transformation.
Want to discuss it? We’re here for you.
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