I hear it all the time from B2B companies. We don’t really need to brand. Our customers all know who we are. Branding doesn’t work in B2B because the buyers have decision-making committees and systems that eliminate all those humanistic influencers. We don’t want to spend money on branding because none of our competitors do. The people who make these arguments are leaving money on the table – maybe lots of money. Every B2C operation knows the benefits of branding. Every box on the cereal aisle gets designed and redesigned in a constant battle to win the attention of the shopper as she wheels her cart on by. They only have a moment to capture her eye and earn her notice. Their branding has barely a nanosecond to do its thing. By contrast, the B2B sales cycle can drag on for months or years. There are multiple decision makers across various silos. Branding has plenty of time, and plenty of people, to influence. The firm that brands its offerings has a leg up on its competition because, over all that time, it’s shaping its buyers’ perception of the brand in a positive way. Branding is much more influential in B2B than in B2C precisely because so few B2B firms invest in it. Boardwalk proved that when we worked with a software development firm.
