B2B Brand Management Basics - Part 1

 

A few weeks ago, I published a post that asked, "Is B2B Brand Marketing Making a Comeback?" My post was prompted by the release of Dentsu's 2024 update to its Superpowers Index study. 

The 2024 update was based on interviews with 3,528 business buyers. Dentsu provided the interviewed buyers 30 decision drivers and asked them to rate the drivers based on how much influence each driver had on their buying decisions.

The three most influential decision drivers identified by the buyers were all characterized by Dentsu as personal drivers, and the firm noted that 2024 was the first time personal decision drivers outweighed functional drivers in overall importance. This finding led Dentsu to assert, "Brand has never been more important in B2B."

Other recent studies have also highlighted the importance of having a strong B2B brand. For example, Bain & Co. and Google surveyed 1,208 business buyers at U.S. companies in 2022. From 80% to 90% of the respondents said they had a set of vendors in mind before they did any research, and 90% of those respondents said they ultimately chose a vendor on their day-one list.

Therese Parkes with Google wrote that this behavior "means brand building and remaining top of mind during this process is essential." 

The Great Debate

The relative importance of brand building vs. demand generation (a/k/a "performance marketing") has been the subject of a long-running debate in the B2B marketing community. 

For nearly two decades, most B2B marketers have been primarily focused on improving the performance of their demand generation programs., and most of the B2B marketing literature published during that period was also focused on demand gen marketing technologies and techniques.

But despite this lopsided focus, interest in brand building has recently been increasing. Over the past couple of years, I've noticed a growing number of articles, blog/LinkedIn posts, and other forms of content addressing the importance of having a strong brand in B2B.

This increased interest has been fueled by several factors. A growing number of B2B marketers have recognized that business buying decisions are usually driven as much by emotional and psychological factors as by rational thinking processes.

B2B marketers are also recognizing that a strong brand can improve the performance of demand generation marketing programs, reduce the price sensitivity of business buyers, and strengthen customer loyalty.

The Birth of Brand Management

Most of what we've learned about building strong brands originated in B2C companies. In the 1930s, Proctor & Gamble invented the business function that would come to be called brand management, and by the late 1950s, brand management practices had been widely adopted by U.S. consumer package goods (CPG) companies.

In 1974, the Association of National Advertisers estimated that 85% of U.S. CPG companies (and 93% of those with annual advertising expenditures of more than $10 million) had implemented brand management functions and practices. ("Lessons from nearly a century of the brand management system")

Marketing is a recognized academic discipline that's been widely taught at the university level for decades. However, Professor Kimberly A. Whitler at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business argues that there's a "theory-doing gap" in marketing education.

In her book, Positioning for Advantage, Professor Whitler wrote:

"Most undergraduate courses tend to be theory or concept based, with few using tools or workshops to teach students how to create, build, or construct successful brands. Consequently, the vast majority of marketers discover what marketing is, and how to create marketing strategies and plans, from their employers on the job."

In her research, Professor Whitler found that almost all of the companies that excel at developing C-level marketing leaders were from the CPG or retailing industry. She offered an explanation for this finding in Positioning for Advantage:

"What do these developers of C-level marketing talent have in common? They all have systematic and science-based systems, processes, and approaches to building superior brands . . . The marketers in these firms are typically profit and loss (P&L) leaders in their firms and play an upstream role, often being expected to lead the development of the strategic plans that will drive growth. This differs from the nearly 50 percent of companies that treat marketing as only a sales activity existing just to commercialize the products that other firm leaders create."

Brand Management for B2B

Given the B2C origin and evolution of brand management, it's not surprising that many B2B marketers don't have extensive experience with the discipline. However, it's clear that brand building is becoming an increasingly vital aspect of B2B marketing success.

I'm planning to publish a short series of posts discussing a few of the basic concepts and principles of brand management. These posts will barely scratch the surface of a complex topic, but I hope they will encourage B2B marketers to learn more.

Image courtesy of EdgeThreeSixty via Flickr (CC).

It's Time to Change How We Think About Content Marketing

Last month, Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs released selected findings from their 15th annual content marketing survey. This survey was conducted between June 25 and August 16, 2024, and generated 980 responses from B2B marketers located (mostly) in North America. 

The annual CMI/MarketingProfs survey has been one of my go-to resources for more than a decade. As with earlier editions of the research, the latest survey provides valuable insights regarding how B2B companies are doing content marketing and what practices are critical to success.

I've been a long-time advocate of content marketing. I've published over 200 posts about content marketing since I launched this blog in 2010. Over my 20-year career in marketing, I've watched content marketing evolve from a niche marketing technique to a core component of marketing at most B2B and B2C companies.

Given its widespread adoption and proven strengths, it might seem odd to suggest that the time has come for marketers to think differently about content marketing. But a change is needed and, in fact, is overdue.

I'm not suggesting that content-focused marketing is no longer effective, but I am arguing that it's time to stop treating content marketing as a separate marketing discipline and start focusing on how to use the rich diversity of content to support marketing objectives that will drive strategic business outcomes.

A Quick Look at Content Marketing Evolution

The Gartner hype cycle was developed to track the maturity of emerging technologies, but it is also often used to describe the evolution of marketing techniques and practices. In this framework, a new marketing practice usually receives a huge amount of hype when it first appears, which leads to the spread of inflated expectations for the practice.

When a practice fails to meet these unreasonable expectations, many marketers become disillusioned with it, and some abandon it entirely. In time, however, some marketers develop more realistic expectations for the practice and begin to use it productively.

We also often see a second pattern in the evolution of marketing practices that runs alongside the Gartner hype cycle. When a new marketing practice begins to gain significant attention, a gaggle of "experts" soon appears to help companies adopt and use the practice.

These experts usually describe the practice as a new and distinct marketing discipline. Some argue that the new practice should replace other marketing methods and that the "old" rules of marketing no longer apply. Over time, however, astute marketers recognize that the fundamental objectives of marketing haven't changed, and they begin to view the new practice as a tool for achieving those objectives.

This pattern is clearly evident in the evolution of content marketing. When its popularity and use began to grow, we quickly came to view content marketing as a distinct marketing discipline. Overall, this was good because it fostered the rapid development of a substantial body of knowledge about how to do content marketing effectively. The downside of this approach is that it made it easy to view content marketing as an end unto itself.

The essence of content marketing is using informative or entertaining content to, as CMI put it, "attract and retain a clearly defined audience - and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action." Such content is the "fuel" for marketing programs that are designed to achieve a variety of marketing objectives.

Most strategic marketing objectives - such as revenue growth and increased market share - have remained largely unchanged for many years. Therefore, what we now call content marketing is about using a distinctive kind of content to achieve long-standing marketing goals.

Why the Different Way of Thinking Matters

Source:  Pat Pilon via Flickr

Focusing on "content as a vehicle for achieving marketing objectives" rather than on "content marketing" may seem like an inconsequential difference, but it has meaningful implications. For one thing, it should inform how we approach marketing performance measurement.

Measuring the performance of content marketing programs has been a hot topic for several years, and numerous marketing pundits have offered measurement frameworks for this purpose. However, most companies should not focus on measuring the performance of content marketing per se.

In virtually all B2B companies, marketing will be responsible for three core types of marketing communication programs - brand building programs, demand generation programs, and customer retention programs. In some cases, marketing is also responsible for developing content for the company's sales enablement program.

These programs are the mechanisms through which marketing achieves (or doesn't achieve) its strategic objectives, and the performance of these programs is what companies should measure. Content is an essential element in all these programs, but it is only one of several factors that will determine program success.

Therefore, metrics that focus only on content performance won't adequately measure program performance. A good marketing performance measurement system will include content-related metrics, but the primary metrics should be focused on the outcomes that each type of program is designed to produce and, ultimately, on the business impacts of those programs.

The Most Profound Marketing Practices Disappear

In a 1991 article for Scientific American, the late Mark Weiser, then the chief technology officer at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center wrote:  "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it."

Content marketing has been one of the most profound marketing developments of the past two decades. The development, management, and dissemination of content have become essential marketing competencies. Content marketing has been assimilated into the fabric of marketing and is simply the way marketing is now done. 

Top image courtesy of The Wild Blogger via Flickr (CC).