World Class B2B

The Cases For World-Class Marketing

The question arises frequently with companies that have primarily or exclusively B2B customers: ‘Why spend enormous amounts of money on marketing when our customers are already identified and already know who we are?’

Much of the accepted wisdom is that since the subject matter in B2B is the hard parts and high-end intellect of products and services aimed at the corporate audience, they don’t need to be ‘marketed’. Messaging is often amateurish and writing and design standards are not in keeping with the levels of excellence applied to R&D or investor relations. The marketing function is often under resourced and more service than strategic than it could or should be.

Many B2B marketers believe that developing a world-class brand will be expensive. But most of the time, these companies already are spending significant sums on trade shows, vertical ads, collateral and consultants and can benefit from strategic review and analysis to optimize these existing investments.
We disagree. With all the accepted wisdom.

Complex. Cynical. Compelling.

We have built an industry-leading practice at developing world-class brand and marketing solutions for companies with complex value propositions and hard to reach, cynical audiences by understanding that these audiences are more demanding and tougher to sell to than any consumer who’s considering which soft drink, running shoe or sofa to buy. The typical audiences for B2B include the investment community—analysts, fund mangers and high net-worth individuals, upstream corporate managers—CEO, CFO and board directors and functional management. Audiences also include the myriad influencers of typical large corporate purchases and increasingly include procurement and purchasing managers who apply entirely different criteria to the issue. Regulators and government are part of the equation. And, one should never forget that part of every corporate marketing investment should be retaining, attracting and motivating the workforce. These audiences have even less time and have a much higher level of knowledge and understanding which place greater threshold of excellence on the brand and marketing efforts, for they have no time for missteps in the strategy or naiveté in the copy.
These factors make it essential that communications programs compel the audience to act.

It’s More Fun Than Soda

B2B branding and marketing is unique—clients have more complicated messages and have multi-layered value propositions which must be translated to a memorable, competitive set of words that work in an annual report, at a trade show, in a sales meeting or in an elevator. This work supports large corporate purchases made by the leaders of industry. The stakes are higher. The risks, greater. And that’s why it requires the best.

World-class B2B branding clarifies complex brand portfolios making it easier for the sales force to cross sell and easier for analysts to perceive value in the corporate holdings. Great B2B generates returns by giving workers pride in the company and increasing productivity and loyalty. We pride ourselves on creating solutions, which add-value to the enterprise by finding synergies in marketing spending across divisions and regions, by creating common vocabularies, which multiply the effect on any single pitch meeting, ad or sales pitch.

Most importantly, branding and marketing enable management to control the dialogue about their company and to exert more influence about their industry debate. A world-class brand immediately sends an immediate signal of leadership and focus to all your relevant audiences and competitors.

A Message From Our Sponsor

ConstellationNY helps companies become more relevant and responsive to their markets. We create marketing solutions, which place our clients in leadership positions in their industries. Our world-class solutions start with a deep understanding of where management wants to be in their business and what issues are shaping their industry. We create focused and competitive value propositions for complex brand/product offerings. We create all the expressions of these strategies: website design and content, advertising, collateral, event management, sales strategies and e-mail marketing, customer segmentation and direct marketing.

No matter how specialized a market or product is, the audience’s perceptions of quality, innovation, and value is shaped by the brands they encounter throughout the world. So, even if your brand competes in an extremely vertical market, its website design and content will be judged by the very best of website design—so making B2B messages smartly designed, well written and intuitive isn’t vanity.

It’s good business.