Free Preview, Part 8 - Brand as a Tactical Enabler for B2B Marketing - Introduction

To transition from the strategic insights we've covered in the previous part of the course, we now turn to brand as a tactical force. By now, you’re familiar with positioning and how it aligns your brand with market perceptions. However, our focus here is on a brand's ability to enable tactical efforts across multiple marketing channels—a subtle, often overlooked layer of brand strategy that becomes foundational as your marketing operations mature. Instead of solely discussing brand identity or positioning, this section examines brand’s capacity to activate (or constrain) your overall tactical framework, shaping how you engage with customers, differentiate from competitors, and operate internally.

Brand as Seen by the Customer

A well-defined brand must resonate with customer expectations, reflecting the energy of the target market. Achieving salience and distinctiveness from day one is essential. Rather than getting caught up in perfection, focus on the perception within the market, allowing brand voice and visuals to set the tone in a way that customers find memorable. For instance, visual elements or tone deemed "unprofessional" internally may resonate positively with customers. When well-calibrated, this brand energy serves as a foundation for long-term engagement.

Read more in the B2B Brand for the Customer here. (Coming Soon)

Brand as Viewed by Competitors

In a competitive landscape, identifying brand overlaps with others is key. When targeting similar audiences, the ultimate differentiators are quality and emotional connection. Too often brands could simply replace their colors and logo and sound exactly the same as the competitors they claim are inferior. In B2B, an effective strategy balances alignment of customer value (something all good competitors are likely good at) with uniqueness. While guidelines may help ensure consistency, flexibility is also necessary to navigate a competitive environment, where strict conformity could stifle innovative messages to market. Would your CEO approve of using memes in ads? What if they were perceived well by your customers and performed admirably?

Read more in the B2B Brand for Competitors here. (Coming Soon)

Brand as Experienced by the Company

The founding team’s personality often permeates the brand, especially in early stages. An authentic brand should align not only with customer-facing materials but also internally, acting as a "north star" in decision-making for all departments. For instance, a brand that reflects the founding vision is more likely to inspire consistent engagement and loyalty within the team, fostering alignment across tactical decisions. If marketing has to work extremely hard to realign content output from other teams (i.e. product, data science, solution consulting, sales) then there is a clear brand disconnect.

Read more in the B2B Brand for the Company here. (Coming Soon)

Connecting Content to Other Tactical Areas of Marketing

1. Brand and Content Marketing

• Help: A distinct brand voice and visual identity, when customer-focused, enhance content relevance. This enables your content to stand out by presenting unique perspectives that capture audience attention and create memorable associations.

• Hinder: Strong brand restrictions can limit content creativity, especially when catering to a wider audience that may not be immediately in market.

2. Brand and Product Marketing

• Help: A brand aligned with target market values, codified in messaging houses and consistent across time strengthens product marketing’s ability to effectively communicate between the company and the customer. Less gets “lost in translation” between product marketing and other marketing functions like content and demand generation.

• Hinder: If product marketing struggles with messaging, a brand disconnect may be the cause, signaling a need to realign product insights with the brand’s external image.

3. Brand and Digital Marketing

• Help: Flexibility in brand guidelines allows digital campaigns to incorporate creative elements that engage audiences effectively. Creativity boosts performance, brand should enable this.

• Hinder: Overly restrictive brand guidelines can stifle agility, limiting a digital team’s ability to innovate and adapt, which is crucial for scaling campaigns in B2B marketers where “safe and boring” have been the norm.

4. Brand and Event Marketing

• Help: A distinctive brand presence elevates your position in trade shows, creating memorable impressions. Standing out is often more important than being perceived as “looking nice”, and long term salience is a powerful driver of performance. 

• Hinder: Conservative brand choices may limit creative flexibility, impacting event effectiveness beyond what is immediately measurable (leads). Your Event ROI should be based on more than just demand generation, and a poor brand limits the less tangible ROI.

5. Brand and Partner Marketing

• Help: Brand associations through partnerships allow for broader reach and access to new audiences.

• Hinder: An overly restrictive, or overly loose, brand can limit the scope and amount of partners willing to collaborate on future projects. Clear, upfront conversations prevent partner marketing being (even more of) a time sink.

6. Brand and Sales Prospecting

• Help: A compelling brand story and high-level messaging give sales teams the edge during cold outreach where every bit of extra relevance is needed to stand out. 

• Hinder: Poorly defined brands make the message harder to convey and reduce salesperson confidence. This is a recipe for internal and external apathy, which is likely the worst case scenario.

7. Brand and Community Marketing

• Help: Positive brand elements help reduce the “barrier to association” people may feel towards your community. Simply put, cool brands that are well-known attract more people.

• Hinder: Without being known, being distinctive and being desirable most community effects fail to justify the investment. When was the last time you bought merchandise from a Youtube creator with less than 1,000 subscribers? 

8. Brand and Public Relations

• Help: PR thrives on a brand that offers interesting stories and angles, appealing to journalists and readers alike. For a more pointed critique, view an unfiltered opinion on the Gossamer Manifesto.

• Hinder: Brands with rigid guidelines may struggle to find compelling narratives, limiting PR’s ability to attract media attention effectively.

9. Brand and Analyst/Influencer Relations

• Help: Brands that are predictable and reliable in their messaging foster better analyst relationships, increasing mentions and recommendations. Influencers carefully craft their persona over time, a predictable brand that won’t damage their relationship with their audience is an easier sell.

• Hinder: Contrarian brands may face challenges with traditional analyst relations, which could limit credibility in some B2B markets. There is a strong opportunity to build a profile on being contrarian (see Tesla, as an example). However, too contrarian may erode brand confidence despite a strong product (see Tesla, again).

Conclusion

A brand’s structure can either enable or hinder tactical effectiveness. Strategic brand decisions at an early stage streamline operations and contribute to marketing efficiency across channels. Careful consideration here will reduce friction in your marketing approach, helping you better align with customer expectations, differentiate in the competitive landscape, and establish a cohesive company culture.

Read the brand deep dives to learn more about B2B Branding from the perspective of Customer, Company and Competitor. (Coming Soon)