Do business-to-business brands matter?
Consumers are known for their impulse buying habits. Advertising agencies know well the techniques to get a customer over the line. However when the purchase becomes a significant investment such as a house or a car, they follow much the same path that business-to-business buyers follow.
That path is a purposeful quest to research the options, consult with experts, seek out the opinions of trusted advisors and taking as many steps as needed to come to the best decision. In the business world there is usually more than one person who will influence a decision.
So, if a business purchase decision is restricted to research, consultation and consensus, does your business-to-business brand matter at all?
Absolutely.
Think for a moment about the sheer scale of the task in making a major business purchase. Product or service data, third-party research, online resources ... business purchasers have access to almost unlimited information to help them in their quest for the right choice.
And the information overload is only growing. In Bill Jensen's book Simplicity , he cites research that "The amount of business information that your prospects and customers need to process in order to make a decision doubles every 1,100 days."
It's this same mountain of information that makes the business-to-business brand more important than ever.
Your prospects and clients use brands like Post-it notes sticking out from the side of a heavy, boring text book. Brands are the short cut through the overwhelming task of researching a business purchasing decision. Brands cut down the time that business decision makers don't have. They will start with brands they know and build their knowledge base outward from that point.
But that's not the only benefit of building a strong brand.
No matter how much business decision makers claim that their selections are devoid of emotion, it simply isn't true. Just as emotion plays a part in a consumer's car buying decision, so it plays a similar role for the business buyer. A careful and researched decision does not mean it is entirely rational.
A strong brand delivers you an emotional edge in the 'rational' business decision.
Remember, businesses do not buy products and services ... people do. And the people who have the responsibility for making the right decisions often have a lot at stake - sometimes their jobs. Think of the old adage "No one ever got fired for buying IBM."
A strong brand addresses this fear factor. Leading brands have a reputation for quality and purchasing a strong brand has an element of insurance built in to the transaction.
Then, of course, there is the brand association factor. Leading companies, and those that want to be leading companies, like to be associated with the products and services their competitors and clients would consider cool and leading-edge.
So, are brands important in a business-to-business marketing communications? No ... they are critical.
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