Too many people think that brand management matters most to a consumer brand, and they underestimate the value of marketing for B2B brands. And many of these people are running B2B brands. They treat marketing as a support function, hiring low-cost marketing coordinators to support their sales team, and do basic packaging for new launches and run a few basic trade magazines.

1. THE BRAND LEADER
How to run a B2B brand
Too many people think that brand management matters most to a consumer brand, and
they underestimate the value of marketing for B2B brands. And many of these people are
running B2B brands. They treat marketing as a support function, hiring low-cost
marketing coordinators to support their sales team, and do basic packaging for new
launches and run a few basic trade magazines.
Beloved Brands We make brand leaders smarter

2. In this story, I will show you how to build out a customer profile, a brand positioning
statement, brand idea, brand concept, and brand story, all within the context of a B2B
brand. I hope afterwards, you will be convinced the fundamentals work equally well.
Manage your B2B reputation
B2B marketing is not just about selling products, but about building and selling your
brand’s reputation. The role of a B2B brand is to create a unique idea for your brand,
perceived in the minds and hearts of your customer, consistently delivered by the
experience, forming a bond, power, and profit beyond what the product itself could
achieve. Too many B2B companies believe they just SELL PRODUCTS. However, you
should be building and managing the reputation of your brand. Whereas basic products
and services solve small problems, I like to think that a brand beats down the enemy that
your customer faces every day. For instance, FedEx fights the enemy of “business moving
too slowly” while IBM fights “unsolvable problems” for their customers. What is your
customer’s enemy that you can solve for them?
The more loved a brand is by its customers, the more powerful and profitable that brand
will be. With a connected brand, it helps to warm up sales leads–many times they’ll
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3. already know your reputation before you call. A brand can connect with customers so that
pricing becomes less of a factor. If the customer is satisfied and connected on one piece
of business, they’ll look to you to solve other problems for them.
Elements of the brand positioning statement
Four elements make up a brand positioning statement, including who you serve, where
you play, where will you win and why consumers should believe you. These are the
consumer target, marketplace definition, the consumer benefit, and support points.
1. Who is your customer target? What slice of the potential customer base is the
most motivated by what your brand offers? Do not just think about whom you want,
but rather who wants your brand.
2. Where will you play? What is the competitive set that defines the space in the
market where your brand competes? Positioning is always relative to the other brands
your brand competes against.
3. Where will you win? What is the main consumer benefit promise you will make to
the customer target to make your brand stand out as interesting, simple, unique,
motivating, and ownable? Do not talk about what you do (features); instead, talk
about what the consumer gets (functional benefits), and how the consumer feels
(emotional benefits).
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4. 4. Why should they believe us? Understand what support points and features you
need to back up your main promise. These support points should close any possible
doubts, questions, or concerns the consumer has after hearing your main promise.
Before you just randomly write out a brand positioning statement based on your intuition,
force yourself to think deeper to help focus your decisions on the best possible space for
your brand to win and own.
Start with your customer
Most marketers think of the type of customers they want to attract. Why not change your
thinking and go after those customers who are already motivated by what your brand
offers? So instead of asking, “Who do we want?” you should be saying, “Who wants us?”
Seven fundamental questions to define and build a profile of your
ideal consumer target:
1. What is the description of the consumer target?
2. What are the customer's main needs?
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5. 3. Who is the customer's enemy who torments them every day?
4. What are the insights we know about the customer?
5. What does the customer think now?
6. How does the customer buy?
7. What do we want the customer to see, think, do, feel or whisper to their friends?
The customer benefits ladder
The customer benefits ladder helps turn your brand’s features into customer benefits. You
should stop talking about what your brand does and start talking about what your
customer gets.
The four steps to building a customer benefit ladder:
• Leverage all available research to define your ideal customer target profile with need
states, customer
insights, and the
customer enemy.
• Brainstorm all possible
brand features. Focus
on those features you
believe give your
brand a competitive
advantage.
• Move up to the
functional benefits by
putting yourself in the
shoes of the customer.
For each feature on
your list, ask, “So,
what do I get from
that?” Challenge
yourself to come up
with better benefits by
asking the question up until you move into a richer zone.
• Then move up to the emotional benefits. Look at each functional benefit and ask, “So,
how does that make me feel?” As you did in step 3, keep asking the question until you
see a more in-depth emotional space you can win with and own.
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6. Find your Brand Idea
The best brands use a Brand Idea to help explain themselves in 7 seconds, and use that
Big Idea to help extrapolate that same brand story into 60 seconds or even 30 minutes,
depending on the situation. In a crowded branded marketplace, Brand Ideas help simplify
your brand message so it’s easily understood and remembered, own-able in the
customers’ mind and heart and motivating enough to change consumer beliefs and
behavior. That brand idea should transform your brand message into a brand reputation.
I created a brand idea blueprint, which has five areas that
surround the brand idea.
On the internal brand soul side, describe the products and services, as well as the cultural
inspiration, which is the internal rallying cry to everyone who works on the brand. On the
external brand reputation side, define the ideal consumer reputation and the reputation
among essential influencers or partners.
The brand acts as a bridge between the internal and external sides.
• Products and services: What is the focused point of difference your products or
services can win on because they meet the consumer’s needs and separate your brand
from competitors?
• Customer reputation: What is the desired reputation of your brand, which attracts,
excites, engages, and motivates customers to think, feel, and purchase your brand?
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7. • Cultural inspiration: What is the internal rallying cry that reflects your brand’s
purpose, values, motivations, and will inspire, challenge, and guide your culture?
• Influencer reputation: Who are the key influencers and potential partners who
impact the brand? What is their view of the brand, which would make them recommend
or partner with your brand?
• Brand role (archetype): What is the link between the internal sound and external
reputation?
Once you have your Brand Idea, you should then use it to frame the 5 different
connectors needed to set up a powerful bond between your brand and your customers.
Build your brand around a brand idea that’s simple to understand
and big enough to create a lasting impression with consumers.
• Create a simple brand promise that separates your brand from competitors, based on
being better, different or cheaper.
• Use your brand story to motivate customers to think, feel or act, while beginning to
own a reputation in the mind and hearts of consumers.
• You need a fundamentally sound product, with innovation that keeps your brand at the
forefront of trends and using technology to deliver on your brand promise.
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8. • The purchase moment is where customers move through the purchase cycle and use
channels, messaging, processes to make the final decision
• Turn the usage of your product into an experience that becomes a ritual and favorite
part of their work life so that your customers always turn to you first.
Organize your Brand Concept
Write your concept in as realistic a manner as possible, narrowing it down to one main
benefit and two support points. It should be realistic enough to fit on your package, new
product innovation, advertising copy, or your sales message. Too many brand leaders try
to write concepts that include everything, with a long list of claims and reasons to
believe. There is no value in writing a concept just to pass a test, and then find yourself
unable to execute the concept in the market.
The ideal brand concept
• The main headline should capture the brand idea. The headline is the first thing
customers will see, and it will influence how they engage with the rest of the concept.
• Start every concept with a customer insight (connection point) or customer enemy
(pain point) to captivate the consumer enough to make them stop and think, “That’s
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9. exactly how I feel.” Your customers feel more engaged with your concept. The enemy or
insight must also set up the brand promise.
• The promise statement must bring the main customer benefit to life with a balance of
emotional and functional benefits.
• The support points should close off any gaps that customers may have after reading
the main benefit. An emotional benefit may require functional support to cover off any
doubt lingering in the consumer’s mind.
• Complete the concept with a motivating call-to-action to prompt the customer’s
purchase intent, which is a significant part of concept testing.
• Adding a supporting visual is recommended.
The Brand Idea should drive the internal culture
Whereas B2B brands currently treat marketing as a support function, once you have your
brand idea, you can see how for a B2B brand, that the idea should drive every part of
your organization and that your brand’s experience will be supported by the culture,
people and operations which then transforms that idea into a brand reputation. Below you
can see how that Big Idea should be a beacon for your top-to-top leadership, your sales
team, the problem solvers, customer service team and the experience delivery team.
Everyone in your organization must be saying the same message. For a B2B brand,
marketing’s role is to make sure that the external and internal stories are given equal
importance so that everyone in your organization must be communicating and delivering
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10. the same big idea to customers that they see in trade magazines, at trade shows or in the
sales materials.
Communicating your brand
Like any brand, there are really only four choices: you can be better, different, cheaper or
else not around for very long. For B2B, when your product is a commodity, you have to
find a way to use service levels as a way to see your point of difference. When you start
to treat your own brand like a commodity or believe that you are, that’s when you’re in
trouble. What you want to do is use that Brand Idea to create an internal culture and use
that culture to build your brand’s reputation as the way to help separate you in the
marketplace.
As you build your culture, you’ll see that you can begin to use culture as a way to stand
out and then you’ll evolve to where culture becomes the backbone that delivers the brand
experience. At the ideal stage where you become a beloved brand, you see that culture
and brand become one as your own people become the most outspoken fans of the
brand.
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11. You can extrapolate all the work you have done so far into a brand
story, which explains, “who you are.”
• Turn your brand idea into an inspiring promise statement you will deliver.
• Match the brand purpose to customer insights showing why it matters. This thinking
makes it highly personal, explains the story behind why you do what you do. This part
of the story will connect with consumers.
• Use your brand’s core belief in connecting with consumers, and demonstrate what you
do to support that belief.
• Talk about what makes your brand different and what claims you have to support your
difference.
• Outline the ways you want to connect with your customer and the promise you will
make to them.
Your brand is your reputation, and it
can never be a commodity
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12. Beloved Brands: Who are we?
At Beloved Brands, our purpose is to help brands find a new
pathway to growth. We believe that the more love your
brand can generate with your most cherished consumers,
the more power, growth, and profitability you will realize in
the future.
We think the best solutions are likely inside you already, but
struggle to come out. Our unique playbook tools are the
backbone of our workshops. We bring our challenging voice
to help you make decisions and refine every potential idea.
We start by defining a brand positioning statement, outlining
the desired target, consumer benefits and support points the brand will stand behind. And
then, we build a brand idea that is simple and unique enough to stand out in the clutter of
the market, motivating enough to get consumers to engage, buy and build a loyal
following with your brand.
We will help you write a strategic brand plan for the future, to get everyone in your
organization to follow. It starts with an inspiring vision that pushes your team to imagine
a brighter future. We use our strategic thinking tools to help you make strategic choices
on where to allocate your brand’s limited resources.
Our brand playbook methodology will challenge
you to unlock future growth for your brand
1. Our deep-dive assessment process will give you the knowledge of the issues facing
your brand, so you can build a smart plan to unleash future growth.
2. Find a winning brand positioning statement that motivates consumers to buy, and
gives you a competitive advantage to drive future growth.
3. Create a brand idea to capture the minds and hearts of consumers, while inspiring and
focusing your team to deliver greatness on the brand’s behalf.
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13. 4. Build a brand plan to help you make smart focused decisions, so you can organize,
steer, and inspire your team towards higher growth.
5. Advise on advertising, to find creative that drives branded breakthrough and use a
motivating messaging to set up long-term brand growth.
6. Our brand training program will make your brand leaders smarter, so you have added
confidence in their performance to drive brand growth.
You have my personal promise to help you solve your brand building challenges. I will
give you new thinking, so you can unlock future growth for your brand.
Graham Robertson
Founder and CMO, Beloved Brands Inc.
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