The B2B brand strategy glossary: 50 terms marketers need to know
1: Brand strategy Usually defined on an annual basis in order to help a comp…
1: Brand strategy Usually defined on an annual basis in order to help a company meet its b…
Read moreEstablishing your brand roots
Branding
B2B branding is about making a mark through brand assets – verbal, visual, or even auditory. Long term, these associations become a shortcut to brand meaning. Short term, they can propel a customer towards a sale. Effective branding begins with a rigorous positioning process.
Step 1: Brand verbal identity
Your words are your brand
So choose them wisely. Every verbal expression of your brand either strengthens or weakens your ability to embody your beliefs, attract your target customers, and turn positioning theory into commercial reality.
Build a storyful brand
At the heart of your verbal identity is a story that tells the world the who, what, when, where and why of your brand or product.
It takes the output of the positioning phase and turns it into the one story to rule them all: a narrative and a voice that will guide not just your content creation but your – if it’s done well – growth strategy for the next year or more.
Brand without the BS
Brand work can feel fluffy – because a lot of it is. Don’t let agencies dazzle you with brand archetypes (the zodiac signs of the marketing world) and a copy-paste voice. Take a pragmatic approach that welds the creative and the strategic together.
Talk to us about your verbal identityStep 2: Brand visual identity
Your competitive edge on display
The yang to your verbal identity’s yin, your visual identity is made up of every visual expression of your brand.
More than just a list of design elements like your logo, colours, fonts and graphics, it requires thoughtful crafting and faithful management to create a visual identity that captures the essence of your brand positioning and helps you put it to work across all your campaigns and content.
First impressions last. Lasting impressions count.
Even in drawn-out B2B tech sales, subconscious thinking drives decision-making. Your brand’s visual identity acts as a welcome or a warning to your customers. It should be distinctive, memorable and designed to elicit the right instinctive responses from target audiences.
An authentic identity that motivates and moves
This is about more than developing an award-winning look and feel and a big idea. It’s about digging deeper to distil an identity that moves and motivates your audiences, and is true to your business and ambitions. Crucially, this identity must be robust enough to support expression across all your brand touchpoints and content.
That’s how you build deep, lasting connections between your customers and teams. That’s what we’ll build together.
Talk to us about your visual identityMore on our branding approach
Who we do branding work for
Beneath Agency works with B2B companies at various stages on their branding and marketing journeys. Sometimes we help younger, growth-stage startups to strengthen their brand, or to build out the foundations of their marketing operations. Sometimes we partner with very large enterprises with industry- or product-specific branding challenges, or PE-backed companies repositioning after an acquisition or merger.
Our process is transparent and collaborative, and everyone’s confident it’s going in the right direction. In other words, we show our working.
The next steps
Sometimes Beneath acts as a plug-in marketing agency for tech scale-ups. Sometimes we support B2B giants with global campaigns. Get in touch to find out whether we’re a good fit for you.
Testimonials
Get a taste of our branding know-how
Substance before style: B2B tone of voice should be emergent
If you’re a B2B marketer thinking about investing in your brand’s tone of vo…
If you’re a B2B marketer thinking about investing in your brand’s tone of voice, you might…
Read more