I just read Jon Miller's post on B2B branding, interesting. And ironically, I was reading about B2B branding on my 5 minute subway ride home. It was an article from BtoB Magazine called "Emotional connection with brand is important" and it discussed presentations at a recent ISMB B2B conference.
The article mentioned Philip Kotler, who is a well known marketing professor (Kellog School of Management), author, and strategist. Kotler has written a new book called B2B Brand Management.
The book explores the advantages of strong brand, such as higher prices (or margins), lower customer churn, as well as lower employee turnover. Another speaker at the conference, John Fleming, principal of Gallup Organization, made a very interesting point. He said that "Satisfying customers is not sufficient", and notes that customers that are "passionate" about a brand deliver two times profitability of average customers. Fleming added that branding is not only important to customers but to employees. Employees need to be emotionally connected to the company brand so that the company can reach top performance. This point makes a lot of sense to me. Sales people, probably engage more with customers when they love their company brand (not just the products) and customers pick up on this energy. I'm sure it goes beyond sales/marketing positions, it applies to the whole company.
B2B brand is often neglected especially by small companies. I mentioned in my last post how Sun Microsystems changed their brand from high end server to a real systems company. That is a big company example, but still relevant.
Big or small, I think all B2B companies should continue to explore the importance of brand, and especially look at web 2.0 (if they haven't already) and how it impacts or could impact their brand.
For more information, please read Jon's post (as well, he has two more sections planned on B2B branding). As well find a related post at Marketing Interactions blog. And don't miss this fantastic article from gapingvoid.
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