3 ways branding can make selling easier for new enterprise ventures
by Shara Cohen & Mya Kramer of The M-Line
Branding is an oft-maligned practice, especially in B2B technology settings. It is associated with the waste of failed dot com marketing strategies and non-existent, or at least immeasurable, returns. Both reputations lead new enterprise businesses to miss an important opportunity that can mean the difference between success and failure.
What is a Brand, really? A "brand" is commonly believed to consist of consumer images (Tiger Woods wearing the Nike swoosh, celebrities in Gap khakis) constructed to convince the masses through product image rather than substance. Branding has a seamy reputation of subterfuge.
But branding can be defined more accurately and broadly as planning and building customer perception and expectation. It involves understanding the goals of a business, its core values and its value to its customers, then expressing those things to the marketplace effectively. That expression, or communication, is done through a number of vehicles — a company or product name, a logo, a web site, sales collateral. Beyond that though, a brand is reinforced every time there is an interaction, whether that is sending a potential client a brochure or speaking to them on the phone. So, it is inherently valuable for companies to know who/what they are and how it is valuable, because it has practical applications in the B2B, enterprise setting.
"We are a new company, with a new product, in a new category."
The unique branding challenge for many technology start-ups today is that many have developed a product that addresses an entirely new need, created by other new technologies. These companies have to educate their audiences not only about their own company, but the need for their products and services as well. This can involve a long, difficult explanation and when a sales pitch, press call or an investor presentation takes too much time, the audience and opportunity are lost.
By honing the most salient points, a well-conceived brand can consolidate messaging, make it more compelling and simplify the explanation.
EXAMPLE: iOra (www.iora.com) is addressing a specific need for distributed organizations where the mobility of information determines the success of remote employees/users.
The problem of being able to access information remotely and quickly is a new one. As tools for remote users within organizations increase, their ability to access them (over slow wireless or dial-up connections) directly affects their ability to stay up-to-date and produce. But this is complex, and iOra needed a way to explain all of it to both potential customers and the investment/analyst community.
iOra came to us with some of the basics of their brand in place. They had a name, a logo and some collateral. But their web site was confusing and difficult, impeding their ability to communicate. This was our charge, and the key for our work was making decisions about how and when to explain the benefits of their Information Mobility products. Brand definition & messaging hierarchy were planned to make the story simpler. The web site was constructed based on that hierarchy, using visual communication to build a customer experience that reinforced those messaging priorities.
Put simply, these branding efforts made iOra's explanation shorter and their product value clearer to their customers. Branding made it simple to understand the technology value and why any distributed organization should be interested.
Extensibility — Planning for Change
A common problem for start-ups over the last few years is the exploration of possible business plans and subsequent changes in target. The move from B2C to B2B focus has been a familiar story throughout the technology boom. From a marketing perspective, the messaging to these two types of audiences is vastly different which can create problems. A company that decides to make such a shift is often left with a brand that had been geared toward one audience, and is largely irrelevant to the other. When the focus shifts, the brand must too.
EXAMPLE: CyberstateU (an iMinds portfolio company) made their name in online IT education, marketing directly to the end-user. With radio ads during NFL games and a descriptive name that explained easily what they did, CyberstateU had done an excellent job of reaching their audience. When that audience changed and they recognized their largest growth opportunity lay with corporations needing to better train their staffs, the challenge increased. The name CyberstateU no longer worked. It didn't positively establish their image with large corporations and they needed to avoid their name becoming a barrier to getting new business.
We worked with them on a naming project and helped them by taking a little time to re-brand. Under the new name Logilent, they were able to elevate the perception of their company to make introductions to a sale easier. The new name sounds more serious and established than the original and provided more believability for their B2B, Fortune 1000 target. It also speaks directly to their industry by referencing “logic,” “intelligent,” and “efficient.”
Value-based Pricing
Enterprise technology marketing is fairly unique in that most products are not something you can see or touch, and their value to the customer is often unrelated to the cost of production. A brand can give a face and personality to products. It gives customers something tangible with which to associate. It can also establish, or jeopardize, the customer's sense of value.
EXAMPLE: How do you raise the perceived value of a product in the eye of the customer? LoanPerformance has built the largest database of mortgages in the country; covering more than 75% of the market. The data is extremely valuable for banks of every size, enabling them to measure their performance in the market and discover ways to improve. Beyond that, because of the sheer size of their data pool, LoanPerformance can make the most accurate and supported projections in the industry, an invaluable resource for financial risk management.
The problem arose, however, in communicating this value. The price point for the software is high and requires a senior decision maker. This type of sale requires the value perception to be raised quickly, with an audience that has an extremely short attention span.
They need to understand the benefits of the product and what the company gains by purchasing it--without necessarily understanding the technology itself. For instance, big banks would often consider the value low initially believing that, since they generate a large number of loans, they could simply use their own portfolio data. The basic fact, however, is that without understanding how that data fits into the market, it provides a relatively myopic view.
By simplifying the communication and injecting a bit of humor, we were able to widen the audience’s vision and make a point through a metaphor. We compared these complex data and delivery tools as fundamentally as possible, representing them as dirt. Each bank had its own small pile, but LoanPerformance’s pile, by pulling from all of them and selling it back anonymously, was bigger, represented by an entire quarry. Their tools for analysis were bigger, industrial strength. That meant better, stronger decisions. It caught attention and made the point quickly.
Branding effectively is really communicating effectively. These companies, by understanding what they needed to say, pinpointing and defining their audiences and maintaining the consistency of their messages, were able to overcome real sales challenges. It is inescapable that the payoff of good branding is difficult to quantify. However, by enabling companies to explain themselves better they can reinforce their professionalism in the eyes of potential customers or partners, shorten their sales cycles, raise price points, etc.
In essence, branding is symbolism and language applied to commerce. When a brand identity is strong, solid and well focused, the response from the target audience will echo that message with feelings of confidence, security and trust. Logic and explanation may appeal to the mind, but a well-constructed brand can also appeal to the heart and ultimately open the door to a fuller, more robust sales environment.
About The M-Line
The M-Line has been developing creative design and strategic brand solutions for over 20 years. With a wide range of expertise that includes identity design, brochure and print communications, web and electronic media design, packaging, product design, corporate and product naming, and brand strategy development, they thrive on the toughest communication challenges for clients of every size and description. Recent clients include Microsoft, iOra and Epoch Biosciences. For more information, contact Mya Kramer at mya@mkdg.com.
