When you think of a great brand, what comes to mind? Some of the most valuable brands in the world today include Google, Microsoft, Coca Cola, IBM, McDonalds, Apple, and China Mobile1. These companies have successfully built brand equity and are well established in consumer’s minds. But who are their customers? Are they individuals, or are they other companies? Your target consumer determines your brand strategy, and there are key differences when branding for business-to-business (B2B) as opposed to business-to-consumer (B2C) companies. The key difference between individuals and businesses as consumers involves how purchasing decisions are made-businesses make purchase decisions collectively with multiple decision makers. Therefore, general awareness and knowledge of B2B brands in the marketplace absolutely essential. This article will examine the importance of branding for B2B companies and look at a few ways to build a strong B2B brand.>> B2B Brand DifferentiationMany B2B companies have not effectively differentiated their brand from others. For example, the audit firms formerly known as the “Big Five” initially did not manage to differentiate themselves from one other. A survey conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers at the time of their merger showed that “the business community and the general public did not perceive any compelling differences between and among the Big Five. Not only did all firms appear to have similar defining qualities, they were also not sending any consistent message about their organisations to external audiences.” 2 “Around 10 years later, the situation remains the same. Although KPMG, Ernst & Young, Deloitte, and PWC all provide similar services, each firm is proficient in different areas. Due to a lack of focus on branding, the differentiating points of these large B2B audit companies are often not apparent in the B2B marketplace.An example of a differentiated B2B brand is Dell computers. Dell has not only utilized an innovative business model, they have always communicated to consumers and business the factors that make their brand different. For example, Dell was one of the first computer companies to allow customers to custom-configure and purchase computers online. For their B2B clients, Dell offers extensive Enterprise Resource Planning systems and e-commerce solutions. At the beginning of 2008 Dell launched a revised services-and-support scheme for businesses named “ProSupport” which offers more options to companies to tailor Dell services to fit their specific needs. Although there are many competitors providing computer solutions in the B2B environment, Dell has been a very popular choice over the last few years because they consistently abide by their brand promise to deliver customized product and service offerings, timely delivery, and reasonable prices.>> Moving from a House of Brands to a Branded HouseOne way a B2B company can strengthen their brand is by moving from a “house of brands” to a “branded house”. An example of a house of brands would be Procter and Gamble, who possess many brands within an overall portfolio. Consumers may not necessary connect the individual brands within the portfolio to the Procter and Gamble corporation. On the other hand, a branded house is when brands use a single name across all products and services, like the Virgin Group. Virgin brands are too numerous to list here, but some include Virgin Airlines, Virgin Records, Virgin Media, Virgin Money, and more.When a branded house launches a new product or sub-brand, it is more easily accepted by consumers due to its affiliation with the original brand. In addition, the original brand image may be enhanced by successful sub-brands. A branded house strategy must be carefully thought out in order to benefit from the virtue of the original brand while expanding its portfolio of activities. Once the strategy is in place, companies should then carefully choose new products or service categories such that the original brand brings valuable associations and adds credibility to them. It should be noted that the branded house strategy has its own inherent risk: a huge failure in one category could potentially put the whole portfolio at risk.FedEx is an example of a company operating in the B2B area that has strengthened their brand by going from a house of brands to a branded house 3.>> The Benefits of Internal BrandingInternal branding refers to how effectively the brand is understood and believed in by the employees of the company. If the brand strategy is well established in the minds of staff it will allow them to effectively communicate the brand’s message to clients and other stakeholders 4 . In turn, this should enhance the customer experience and improve the bottom line. Having a strong internal brand will also help to recruit and retain qualified personnel. People who connect with your brand will want to work for you, and once they are within the organization they will continue to contribute to your brand’s success. However, internal branding efforts cannot be taken lightly- all internal processes, practices and symbols must reflect brand values5.Although it may be thought of as both a B2B and a B2C company, Google is an example of an organization with strong internal branding. As a result, in 2007 and 2008, Fortune Magazine ranked Google as the number one place to work .Google’s corporate philosophy reflects the brand’s values, containing principles such as “Great just isn’t good enough. “, “Google does search”, “Google believes in instant gratification”, “you can be serious without a suit,” and “the need for information crosses all borders”, to name a few.So how is internal branding actually done? Employee training is an effective tool, but support from management is a key factor for successful internal branding. As is the case with Google, the brand values should be conveyed in corporate mission statements and reinforced by the words and actions of upper management.>> ConclusionAs you can see, B2B branding shares some similarities with B2C branding, yet it is different in many ways. We have only touched on a few methods that B2B companies could employ to build their brand. Even this brief analysis proves that brand strategy is often neglected by B2B companies, although it is crucial for their success.1. From Millward Brown Optimor, BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking.
2. themanager.org/marketing/branding.htm
3. Kotler, P. & Pfoertsch, W. (2006). B2B Brand Management. Heidelberg: Springer.
4. Gough, 2008. mycustomer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=133691
5brandxpress.net/2005/09/internal-branding-8-principles

If you’ve been looking for simple, proven and tested, step-by-step methods for generating more leads for your small business, then this article may just have the answer. Firstly, I want you to stop for a moment and think about all the advertising you’ve seen over the past week.How many of those actual ads can you name? Researchers estimate that over the past seven days, you have been exposed to as many as 117,000 ads based on national averages. So out of 117,000 ads, how many can you name?If you’re fairly attentive, you may be able to come up with 3 or 4 specific ads… but I’ll bet that’s because you probably see those ads over and over… week in and week out. Let’s face the facts… repetition works. When you see any advertisement multiple times every day you’re bound to eventually begin to recall the ad. But now answer this question.What few ads you do remember, how many of their products or services have you bought? Because I have a passion for marketing I tend to go online and research for well accepted ads. Take for example a series of ads from online trading company E*Trade which uses babies to promote their products. These have a massive audience on both TV and YouTube. They even had one during the Superbowl. I think they’re a scream. But… I don’t have an E*Trade account. Never have, never will. Why should I?What benefits do they offer me as a potential buyer of online trading services that any of the hundreds of other stock trading services offer? See my point? Does a smart-aleck, wise-cracking baby have any relevance to online stock trading whatsoever? Of course not. So why does E*Trade continue to make these commercials? Believe it or not, there is a reason… and by the end of this short presentation, you’ll fully understand what that reason is.Businesses today are led to believe that all they have to do to build a successful business is create some type of attention-grabbing form of marketing and they will generate leads at will. Nothing could be further from the truth. And that’s just in the area of marketing. What about generating fast cash flow? EVERY small business needs to generate fast cash flow. So how do you do that as a small business owner? What about generating profits? Generating more cash flow is great… but not if you don’t get to put any of it in your pocket at the end of the day. How would you like the answers to all of these problems?In this article I am going to reveal to you the three biggest lead generation mistakes small business owners make… and outline how you can overcome them.Here are the three mistakes. Mistake #1… they fail to get professional help. Mistake #2… they don’t know the fundamentals required to successfully market their business and attract as many new clients as their business can handle. And mistake #3… they have no idea how to use their marketing to generate immediate cash flow. Let’s explore these three in depth, and show you how you can easily and systematically overcome each one of them.Mistake #1… small business owners fail to get professional help. Can you name me just one professional athlete who does NOT have a coach? There aren’t any. Tiger Woods actually has a total of 9 coaches guiding him in everything from his golf game to his financial investments. But do small business owners really need professional help? Remember the TV ads we previously discussed? Those ads are created by “professionals.” Unfortunately, those professionals have no clue what they’re doing. Everything they’re doing in marketing and advertising today is wrong! But let me prove that to you right now.If you currently use any form of marketing such as a print ad, brochure, postcard, flyer… or for that matter… your company website, take it out and look at it carefully. And if you don’t have any form of marketing right now, take out a sheet of paper and sketch out what you think would make for an effective ad for your business. It doesn’t have to be anything formal or fancy… just create a basic outline of the ad and where you would locate the various elements on the page.Now that you have your ad… or a mock up of your ad sitting in front of you, let me provide you with the little known secrets that produce more leads than your business can handle. 99% of all marketing professionals DON’T know the lead generation secrets I’m about to reveal to you. This information is so powerful and compelling, it will position you in the top 1% of all lead generation professionals today. This example will show you why every small business owner should acquire our step-by-step roadmap as they start to generate leads for their business.Here’s what a true marketing professional will know… and help you implement into your marketing. It’s known as the “marketing equation.” This marketing equation will let you quit competing on price… and let you start selling your product or service for what it’s really worth. You will drive in more leads and increase your advertising response by 10 to more than 100 times. You will convert a higher percentage of those leads and dramatically increase your number of sales. You will get a bigger bang for your marketing buck. The bottom line is this you will literally create a profit faucet that you will have TOTAL control over.First, you MUST understand what marketing is supposed to do. Its purpose is actually three fold. Its first job is to capture the attention of your target market. Second, it must give them the hope that reading or listening to your marketing will give them enough information to help them make the best decision possible when buying whatever you sell. In other words, train and teach them how to recognize the true value of your product or service… and conclude that you… and you alone… offer the best value versus your competition. Marketing’s third job is to lower the risk of taking the next step in the buying process… and if necessary… continue to educate the prospect regarding the value you offer.Marketing that accomplishes these three objectives will result in your prospects and customers coming to one single conclusion, that they would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else but you, regardless of price. It’s estimated that as many as 96% of all small businesses fail within their first 5 years. The main reason for this tremendously high failure rate has to do with the lack of expertise when it comes to generating leads and making the phone ring.Most small businesses don’t know anything about those three things that marketing is supposed to do. But there’s also an additional problem to consider. Most small business owners use a tactical marketing approach instead of a strategic approach. Let me explain.Running an ad in the local newspaper… sending out an email or direct mail letter… airing a radio or TV ad on a local media station are all examples of tactical marketing. Now don’t get me wrong… the newspaper, radio or direct mail can be successful marketing channels… If your marketing message is powerful and compelling. But that’s the problem… the message is the strategic side of marketing… and yet, it’s the most neglected.This distinction between strategic and tactical marketing is huge and one you need to be acutely aware of anytime you start talking about generating more leads. Many companies mistakenly assume that when you talk about lead generation, you’re automatically talking about tactical lead generation… placing ads, sending out mailers, joining a networking group, attending tradeshows, implementing a prospect follow up system and so on.They fail to realize that the strategic side of the coin, what you say in your marketing and how you say it is almost always more important than the marketing medium where you say it. If you fail to make this distinction, then you risk becoming jaded towards certain forms of marketing and advertising that should be a part of your tactical plan, but you eliminate them from consideration because they haven’t worked for you in the past.When lead generation results are less than optimal, small business owners tend to almost always blame the marketing medium… like the newspaper the ad ran in or the postcards they sent out. They blame the tactical part of the plan… without any regard for how good or how bad the strategic messaging in that marketing piece was. People often say things like, “we tried radio and it doesn’t work for our kind of business,” or “we sent out 50,000 pieces of direct mail and only generated 3 orders. It just doesn’t work.”Just because it didn’t work, don’t assume that it won’t work. Most people don’t have the evaluation skills or the know-how to judge whether poor marketing results from poor strategy or poor tactical execution. This is where our step-by-step roadmap can generate more leads than your business can handle.For example, most small business owners rely heavily on platitudes in their marketing. They say things like – we have the lowest prices… the best service… we’re family owned and operated… we offer convenient hours… the best value… not to mention that we’ve been in business since 1431 B.C. Look at your own marketing that I asked you to acquire or create earlier. How many platitudes did you use in your own marketing?By the way, this is NOT your fault. Small business owners have been conditioned to think this is the proper way to market their businesses… since most advertising follows this same pathetic marketing formula… including the Fortune 500 types.As human beings, we’re all after just one thing when we buy something… the best deal! Unfortunately, when you use platitudes in your marketing, there’s absolutely no way to tell who is actually offering the best deal. Everyone says they have the lowest prices, the highest quality and the best rates. So who do you believe? There’s only one way to know… and that’s to research every single business that offers what you want to buy. How many of us have the time or patience to do that?So most of us just automatically assume that everyone is pretty much the same, and therefore we default to calling on the business that offers us the lowest price. When you can’t communicate the true value your business offers, you’re doomed to forever compete on price. Our marketing equation will change all of that for you forever. It’s going to be the backbone of your strategic marketing plan. It’s the foundation on which everything else we build for you is based. Let me give you a quick overview and then spend some time going through it with you in detail.A proper marketing equation has four main components. First, it must interrupt your prospects. It must get your qualified prospect to pay attention to your lead generation marketing. Simple enough to say, but a lot more difficult to pull off in real life unless you understand what you’re about to learn here. The interrupt is done through your headline if your marketing is in print… or it’s the first thing you say if your marketing through radio or TV. The second component is engage. Once your prospect is interrupted, it’s critical you give your reader the promise that information is forthcoming that will help the prospect make the best buying decision possible. In other words, it must help facilitate their decision to pick you over anyone else. This is the job of our subheadline.The interrupt is our headline that highlights a specific problem that your prospects are looking for a solution to… and the engage is our subheadline that promises them that you offer a solution to the problem we mentioned in our headline.The third component you need to include is ‘educate’. Once you have interrupted and engaged your prospect, you have to give information that allows them to logically understand how and why you solve the problem they’re facing. This is accomplished by giving detailed, quantifiable, specific and revealing information. This is typically done in the body copy of your ad. When you educate, you need to reveal to your prospects the important and relevant information they need to know when making a good decision, and that your business… and yours alone… provides it to them. The interrupt and engage hit the prospects emotional hot buttons. Educate is the logic they need to justify picking up the phone and calling you.The fourth and final component of the marketing equation is your offer. Now that you have interrupted your prospect based on problems that are important to them… engaged by a promise of the solution… and they’ve examined the educational information that makes your solution real and believable… the last step you need to take is to give them a low risk way to take the next step in your sales process. You do this by offering a free marketing tool, such as a report, brochure, seminar, audio, video or something that will continue to educate them. Your offer will allow your prospect to feel in control of their final decision to call and buy from you.So your marketing equation is interrupt, engage, educate and offer and together they equal market domination. Now here’s the problem. Most marketing today only contains two of these components. They interrupt by throwing something at you that’s either familiar like Tiger Woods… or unusual like a monkey or talking pets. Sometimes they like to use both, as in the case of the E*Trade baby. Then once they grab your attention, they make you some type of offer such as “call now for whatever.” They have left out the engage and the educate, and marketing seldom succeeds when that happens.In fact, the only time this type of marketing does succeed is when you can afford to run the ad over and over nonstop for an extended period of time. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz… melts in your mouth, not in your hand… and the burgers are better at… have literally been rammed down our throats by Fortune 500 types. After hearing these slogans thousands of times, of course we’re going to remember them. But how can a small business owner like you that doesn’t have a billion dollar marketing budget successfully market your business. The answer… you can’t… UNLESS you follow the entire marketing equation.And finally the third biggest mistake small business owners make is that they have no idea how to use their marketing to generate immediate cash flow. When you follow this marketing equation in every form of marketing you do… from your business cards to your company website, the financial results are instantaneous and immediate.So in conclusion, the three biggest lead generation mistakes small businesses make are #1… they fail to get professional help. #2… they don’t know the fundamentals required to successfully market their business and attract as many new clients as their business can handle. And #3… they have no idea how to use their marketing to generate immediate cash flow.The above marketing equation contains the fundamental components for instantly making your phone ring and positioning your business as the dominant force in your market. It provides the marketing foundation that will enable you to generate immediate cash flow. And small businesses can use this information as a minimum standard when seeking out professional help for their business.When you can overcome these three biggest lead generation mistakes, you will generate all the leads your business can handle.