Quantcast
MarkLives.com

MarkLives.com

Independent industry news for marketing, advertising & media execs

  • Home
  • Sections
    • Adland
    • #CoronavirusSA
    • Media
    • Marketing
    • S’HOT
    • Tech
    • Archive
  • Columns
    • #AdChamps – Kyle & Morgan
    • #AgencyLeaders – Most Admired Poll
    • Accountant in Adland – Siwe Lawrence
    • Big Q – MarkLives Panel
    • Campaigns – MarkLives
    • Circulation Data – ABC Analysis
    • Clicks ‘n Tricks – Charlie Stewart
    • #CoronavirusSA – Special Section
    • Curiosity – Marguerite Coetzee
    • #CustomerFirst – Craig Hannabus
    • Dear Radio – Paulo Dias
    • Extracts — Books & research
    • Fair Exchange – Erna George
    • Hard Relate – David Alves
    • Herding Words – Wendy Shepherd
    • Hermaneutics – Herman Manson
    • Masterclass Notes – Johanna McDowell
    • Media Redefined – Martin MacGregor
    • Mission – Tom Fels
    • Motive – By Invitation Only
    • #NotSoOrdinary – Taazima Kala-Essack
    • Press Pass – Carey Finn
    • Q5 – Carey Finn
    • SA TV Ratings – MarkLives
    • #TheInterlocker – Emma King
    • The Martini Shot – Bobby Amm
    • The Power Report – Megan Power
    • The Suit – Jason Harrison
    • Thinking B2B – Warren Moss
    • #Transformers Transform 2020
    • Watched – Richard Lord
    • #WritersBlock – Tiffany Markman
    • WTF?! – Leigh Tayler
    • Young, Gifted & Killing It – Veli Ngubane
    • Zeitgeist of Now – Jason Stewart
  • Find an Agency
    • Shortlist & Compare Agencies
    • List your Agency
    • List as Agency Supplier/Service
    • Register as a Marketer
    • Company News Feed
    • Upgrade to Ramify Premium
    • RamifyPRO
    • Add Premium to Cart
  • Data
    • Agency Revenue Rankings 2020
    • Agency Salary Survey
    • Biggest SA consumer magazines
    • Biggest newspapers in SA
    • The 50 most-valuable brands in SA
    • Top 50 SA advertisers 2016
    • SA TV Ratings – MarkLives
  • Careers
    • Advertising
    • Digital
    • Marketing
    • Media
    • Public Relations
    • View All
  • About
    • About & Contact
    • Advertise
    • Business supporters
    • Privacy Policy
    • Readership
    • Submissions
  • Partners
    • Brands & Branding
    • Brands & Branding – Profiles
    • Retailing Africa
    • Retailer/Supplier profiles
    • Ramify.biz
Turnstar 2006 print ads

Back2Basics: Your B2B brand — distinctive or different?

  •   14 Nov 2019
  •   0
Share

by Mark Eardley (@mdeardley) I’ve been reading a lot in the B2B marketing media about “distinctiveness”. It’s all proclaiming the higher branding power of being distinctive, rather than merely different. I’m troubled by this. It strikes me that a potent B2B brand, one that’s unarguably far more effective at triggering deals than a sales team, has to be distinctive and different.

Your brand makes a promise of achievement for customers but a promise is only worth the trust we have in it. So, your brand must make a trusted promise, and it must make that promise to everyone who influences buying decisions in all your markets. It must win positive consideration so that influencers want your firm on a list of prospective vendors, whether that’s next week or next year.

Winning positive consideration

You are what your markets think you are. Market-perceptions of your offering are your brand. More specifically, influencers’ perceptions are your brand, and their perceptions are based on how much they trust a brand to deliver on its promise.

Though I’ve said it before, your brand becomes a trusted promise when all the different influencers see it like this:

  1. Relevance: It’s obvious to me why I should support buying from you.
  2. Evidence: My risk is minimised by your proven ability to deliver results I need.
  3. Difference: I can justify selecting you over and above your competitors.
  4. Prominence: Your reputation is understood and respected in my industry/line-of-business.

To earn the positive consideration that stems from a trusted promise, you must be ‘distinctively different’.

Being distinctively different: winning hearts and minds

Unless you want to compete on price alone, you must differentiate your offering and its deliverables from your competitors’. That’s about differentiating what you offer and what you achieve. It’s all rational, practical stuff about process and purpose, and you may read more here on how to differentiate.

But, as a fast recap, here’s a simple illustration of what a differentiated brand should look like:

SIMPLIFY EXEMPLIFY AMPLIFY
What you offer What you achieve Who benefits, how they benefit
PROCESS PURPOSE PROMISE

To be distinctive, you must amplify your promise — who benefits and how — above that of your competitors. You’ve got to elevate it above all the me-too chatter. Crucially, being distinctive means promoting a crystal-clear promise that heightens influencers’ immediate emotional response to the benefits you deliver.

Emotional in B2B? Our most-affecting and -enduring memories are emotionally rooted. A distinctive brand promise embeds itself because of its emotive foundations, its clarity and its immediacy — people get it right away. And they remember it.

However… They don’t buy inappropriate, overpriced, poorly supported, inferior products with unreliable lead-times just because of your promise’s emotional appeal. They don’t think, “Wow! That product’s totally crap but it’s so pleasing — let’s buy it!” They don’t lose their minds just because you won their hearts. Fact-based differentiation always matters.

B2B marketing - different vs distinctive. Credit: Mark Eardley

Covering the bases for growth: long term, short term

If you’re selling infrequently purchased products, right now, very few of all your potential customers are at an advanced stage in the buying decision cycle. If they are and you don’t know it, your brand is a failure. Pack your stuff and leave the building.

They might be aware of you. So what? They’re not considering you. You’re not even sitting on the bench. Result? No sale.

So, the challenge for your brand is to ensure all potential customers think well of you. You must be widely known and widely respected. Why? Because growth comes from building market share. It comes from getting more customers, rather than selling more to existing ones. Unless you’re constantly introducing new offerings, selling to existing customers doesn’t create growth. Once all the up-sell and cross-sell is done, you hit a wall.

Continuing growth depends on the power of your brand to drive positive consideration across all your markets, now and in the future. But growth is incremental. The short term develops into the long term. Growth doesn’t just emerge fully formed at some point in the long-term future.

If a strong, distinctive brand doesn’t drive sales today, what reason is there to think that it will do so tomorrow? If it isn’t winning hearts and minds immediately, it never will.

PS There’s nothing at all new or trendy about being ‘distinctively different’. Here are two print-ad examples from 2006 of some distinctive brand-building of my own devising.

Turnstar job offer print ad 2006 by Mark Eardley Turnstar warning bullet print ad 2006 by Mark Eardley

See also

  • B2B: A Game of Clones? Here’s why it pays to be different

 

Mark EardleyMark Eardley (@mdeardley) advises B2B companies on how to govern their marketing to attract and retain profitable customers; several of his clients have grown to become market leaders. Apart from his new column for TGIFood, he and Charlie Stewart have written Business-to-Business Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide (Penguin Random House), which offers practical, actionable advice on how to make marketing make money. His monthly “Back2Basics” column on MarkLives covers how B2B companies and their agencies should manage their marketing.

— Sign up now for the MarkLives newsletter, including Ramify.biz headlines, emailed every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!

Share

Columns

  • #AdChamps, #AdOfTheWeek & #AdOfTheYear
    #AdChamps, #AdOfTheWeek & #AdOfTheYear
  • #AgencyLeaders – Most Admired Poll
    #AgencyLeaders – Most Admired Poll
  • #CoronavirusSA – Special Section
    #CoronavirusSA – Special Section
  • #CustomerFirst – Craig Hannabus
    #CustomerFirst – Craig Hannabus
  • #NotSoOrdinary – Taazima Kala-Essack
    #NotSoOrdinary – Taazima Kala-Essack
  • #TheInterlocker – Emma King
    #TheInterlocker – Emma King
  • #Transformers Transform 2020
    #Transformers Transform 2020
  • #WritersBlock – Tiffany Markman
    #WritersBlock – Tiffany Markman
  • An Accountant in Adland – Siwe Lawrence
    An Accountant in Adland – Siwe Lawrence
  • Big Q – MarkLives Panel
    Big Q – MarkLives Panel
  • Big Reads on MarkLives
    Big Reads on MarkLives
  • By Invitation Only – Motive
    By Invitation Only – Motive
  • Campaigns – MarkLives
    Campaigns – MarkLives
  • Circulation Data – ABC Analysis
    Circulation Data – ABC Analysis
  • Clicks ’n Tricks – Charlie Stewart
    Clicks ’n Tricks – Charlie Stewart
  • Curiosity – Marguerite Coetzee
    Curiosity – Marguerite Coetzee
  • Dear Radio – Paulo Dias
    Dear Radio – Paulo Dias
  • Extracts — Books & Research
    Extracts — Books & Research
  • Fair Exchange – Erna George
    Fair Exchange – Erna George
  • Hard Relate – David Alves
    Hard Relate – David Alves
  • Herding Words – Wendy Shepherd
    Herding Words – Wendy Shepherd
  • Hermaneutics – Herman Manson
    Hermaneutics – Herman Manson
  • Masterclass Notes – Johanna McDowell
    Masterclass Notes – Johanna McDowell
  • Media Redefined – Martin MacGregor
    Media Redefined – Martin MacGregor
  • Mission – Tom Fels
    Mission – Tom Fels
  • Press Pass – Carey Finn
    Press Pass – Carey Finn
  • Q5 – Carey Finn
    Q5 – Carey Finn
  • SA TV Ratings – MarkLives
    SA TV Ratings – MarkLives
  • Spotlight – MarkLives
    Spotlight – MarkLives
  • The Martini Shot – Bobby Amm
    The Martini Shot – Bobby Amm
  • The Power Report – Megan Power
    The Power Report – Megan Power
  • The Suit – Jason Harrison
    The Suit – Jason Harrison
  • Thinking B2B – Warren Moss
    Thinking B2B – Warren Moss
  • Watched – Richard Lord
    Watched – Richard Lord
  • WTF?! – Leigh Tayler
    WTF?! – Leigh Tayler
  • Young, Gifted & Killing It – Veli Ngubane
    Young, Gifted & Killing It – Veli Ngubane
  • Zeitgeist of Now – Jason Stewart
    Zeitgeist of Now – Jason Stewart
  • View All
  • Freelance Integrated Account Director: Top Full-Service Ad Agency
    25 May 2022
  • Head of Video & Design: Sports Entertainment Platform
    25 May 2022
  • Head of SEO & Analytics: Full-Service Digital & PR Agency
    25 May 2022
  • Copywriter: TTL Creative Agency
    24 May 2022
  • Account Manager: Global Content Marketing Agency
    24 May 2022
  • Mid-Senior Digital Designer: Digital Agency
    23 May 2022
  • Motion Graphics Designer: Creative Advertising Agency
    20 May 2022
  • Integrated Retail Graphic Designer: Fashion
    19 May 2022
  • Head of Communications: Global Sports & Culture FMCG Brand
    19 May 2022
  • Digital Designer: Financial Services Sector
    18 May 2022
  • Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply.

    No comments yet.

    Related News

    Brands & Branding – Affinity Publishing, Columns, Featured, Marketing Brands & Branding 2019 and Carla Enslin

    Brands & Branding: Transformations & emergence of brand ecosystems

    29 Nov 2019
    Brands & Branding – Affinity Publishing, Columns, Featured, Marketing, Watch Brands & Branding 2019 and Doug Mattheus

    Brands & Branding: Brand-building — key lessons & insights from Nashua

    15 Nov 2019
    Clicks ’n Tricks – Charlie Stewart, Columns, Featured, Tech, Watch Adidas logos

    Clicks ’n Tricks: Performance doesn’t pay off for Adidas

    1 Nov 2019
    Facebook
    Like us on Facebook
    Twitter
    Follow us on Twitter
    Google Plus
    Add us on Google Plus
    YouTube
    Join us on YouTube
    Pinterest
    Follow us on Pinterest
    Subscribe Newsletter

    Get our round-up of top ad and media industry news every Monday and Thursday.

    Online CPD Courses Psychology Online CPD Courses Marketing analytics software Marketing analytics software for small business Business management software Business accounting software Gearbox repair company Makeup artist