Brand is incredibly important for any business, but for a B2B company, it can be absolutely crucial. When most beginning marketers think about brand, they probably think about a company’s logo, or maybe a jingle that they heard on the radio, or at the beginning of an online video. In truth, brand goes much deeper than that.
For a company to build a truly successful brand,
There are three major components to consider when determining what will reflect your B2B company’s brand:
#1. Presentation to the customer
There are many facets to how a company interacts with a customer, as Huffington Post points out. This can start with a company’s motto or slogan. Consider your company’s reputation as you determine this. A funeral home will seem off-kilter and out of place with the kind of motto that would work well for a traveling magician who books kid’s parties and a great slogan for that same funeral home would see pretty strange at the local grocery store. Consider your audiences before you choose your motto.
Take that same awareness of your audience’s communication needs, and carry it through every interaction that the customer will have with your business. If you sell party supplies to event coordinators, you may want your staff to always appear friendly and excited. If you sell high quality stationary to Fortune 500 companies, more gravitas may be required. This will matter for every phone call, every flyer, and every ad; your customers should be able to recognize your style, whether they see your logo or not.
#2. Mobile presentation
Having a great webpage is no longer enough, according to SAP Business Innovation. More and more web browsing is happening away from desktop computers and on tablets and smart phones. An amazing web experience in a browser is completely different than a positive one on the 5″ screen of a smart phone. In 2013, Google sent out a warning to
This is a huge change for the web community, and web design in some cases has been slow to respond. Some companies have chosen to design a mobile friendly website, while others have opted for an app that can be downloaded separately onto a customer’s phone. Often, blogs and newsy sites benefit from mobile friendly presentation, while searchable consumer sites may find an app is more helpful, as it allows them to better present search functions and purchase abilities. Ultimately, what direction your business wants to take is up to you, but you should be consistent and confident in what you choose.
#3. Content
Great content is a huge piece of getting your business placed well in search results. Over time, there have been a variety of strategies used to help web pages rank as high as possible in search results; after all, the majority of searchers pick a link on the first page of Google results. As the primary search engine used worldwide, Google has had huge influence over how web pages are discovered by customers. Search Engine Optimization, or
Older methods of
If you are looking to contract out your content creation, be wary of anyone who promises to use keyword stuffing or a specific set of keywords to create content that’s guaranteed to rank. Google has assured companies for several months that these things which used to work are now being noticed by Google’s search algorithms, and will decrease a page’s discoverability.
Instead, whether you’re creating content in-house or contracting out, look for someone who can blend key topics into an article naturally, using several different variations and components of any keywords you give them. Find a writer with a genuine interest in your topic, who knows how to engage with social media across platforms—sharing a link on Twitter requires different phrasing than Facebook or Pinterest—to get the best possible results from your timely and evergreen content.
Finally – Commit to your brand
Ultimately, once you’ve determined what your company’s brand will be, you need to commit to it, and make sure everything your business does reflects the brand. If you have a motto of customer first, but never respond to customer inquiries on social media, or emails asking for assistance with a product, you are not living your motto. If your goal is really to make a sale, then run for the hills; don’t lie about it in your media. Customers will notice, and they will not be pleased. The Internet is forever, and mistakes on social media can gain an audience just as quickly, if not more quickly, than they can in real life.
Images: “brand word in vintage wood letterpress printing blocks stained by color inks on a grunge metal tray/Shutterstock.com“
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