Strategy

B2B Branding, selling the brand first

In B2B, particularly in start up businesses, time and investment is reserved for R&D and production. If this is all that you do, you’re not going to make it. You’ll be another business with a great idea or a great product that finds itself a little lost in the commercial world.

Your product is only as good as the strength of your brand. Brands attract attention; brands get noticed and brands are memorable. Investing in building your brand protects you from other companies trying to take market share from you and raise the barriers to entry.

Let’s work through an example, imagine you developed the “intel chip” and were ready to take it to market. You had put an enormous amount of work into R&D, production, manufacturing, forecast, and financing – but it had no brand, no tagline, no logo. It has a value proposition; you know what it does well, what it does differently, who will benefit from it and how it will change people’s lives. However, these elements are not easily communicated without a brand, something to bring it all together and make it mean something to your target audience.

In B2B often people think that brands are a fluffy/nice to have, non-essential item. Without one though, if you were take the “intel chip” to PC manufacturers and tried to on-sell it, you are offering them just another component, and what is stopping another company with the same amount of resources and expertise from offering the same type of chip cheaper? Brands help you to charge a premium, brands help you to mean something to your customer and brands are not easily replaced by substitutes (when you invest in them).

At The Marketing Network (www.themarketingnetwork.com.au), a marketing agency an advertising agency, all in one, we come in at the early stages of product development or even when your product is just an idea. We help you to create a strong value proposition to build an emotional connection with your brand, so that when you are ready to launch, your brand is ready too. Read more about B2B Marketing at Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B2B_Marketing#B2B_Branding.

You Get What You Pay For – A Professionally Designed Logo Can Not Cost $100

Recently a member of Linked In Group, posted an excellent blog on why “A Logo Should not Cost $100”.

http://ronnielebow.blogspot.com/

Although a number of readers agreed fully with the thinking and issues raised by the author, they pointed out the cold hard facts of the free market…demand and supply will inevitably have their way. (more…)

A Web Marketing Tip from Experts that ends up costing you money and time by lulling you into a false sense of security…

Everybody wants to discover the “silver bullet”, THE solution to all their problems, whether it is to building a profitable online business or to losing weight! That’s the sort of society we live in – Quick Fix, Pop a Pill, so it is no wonder that the “expert marketers” serve up solutions that the market seems to be demanding!

Unfortunately, just like weight loss, developing a profitable online presence in form of a website or blog is not as easy as popping a pill! (more…)

Linked In: It is not how big it is but how you use it!

A fascinating debate recently took place on the pages of Anthill, the summary of which can be described as follows:

1. Should you aim to get as many connections as possible?
2. Is Linked In suitable for B2C Marketing or only B2B?

You can find the article and readers responses here:

http://anthillonline.com/so-you-have-300-contacts-on-linkedin-well-im-not-impressed/

Doesn’t the question of how you should connect and with whom all depend on your product or service offering? (more…)

Linked In: The Rules Of Engagement for Successfully Building Your Professional Network.

Success on Linked In and in fact in all Social Media channels relies on the principle of leveraging and building your reputation with your existing professional (and personal) connections as well as building new connections that will also hold you in high regard.

Yet many Linked In users fail to do this effectively and damage their reputations because they forget the simple rules of engagement when it comes to interacting with their existing and prospective audience online. (more…)