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You are competing to be the best, right? Of course you are, but your bias to be the best might be hurting your marketing strategy and B2B sales messaging.

While striving to be the best is a noble goal and platform, when it invades your B2B sales and marketing message, you choose to play by someone else’s rules. You eliminate the opportunity to be truly differentiated because you are too focused on comparison.

In B2B marketing, there must be substance behind your brand and differentiator. You must communicate a truly unique message that compels a prospect to consider you. Great messaging must draw from how and why you do what you do.

So how can you tell if you are making this “better vs. best” mistake? From a marketing standpoint, stop the dependence on words like “quality” or “customer service.” Those words are not differentiators. Even if your operational systems have carved a truly different way to deliver quality or customer service, you are watering down your potency by using those words.

Hint: These words should be off your list, too.

I heard Michael Porter of Harvard Business School explain it this way: “Many managers confuse operational effectiveness with strategy,” and he is absolutely correct. If you can only state that you are better, as opposed to how you are able to be better, your target market may not believe you. If you want to stand out, you need to be different and specific.

So how do you find the right words if “quality” and “customer service” are off the list?

First, focus on what your prospects’ pain points are instead of your operational output.

Second, ask yourself what specifically makes you better at handling your clients’ pain points. Do you have a different structure, system, or philosophy that your competition does not have? Convey the real story behind why you are great.

A killer marketing and messaging strategy exists where your truth intersects with your audience’s truth.

Want to know more? Check out this slide show about the Five Marketing Mistakes that could be killing your sales funnel. You will find strategy tips for developing marketing that will drive sales.

This slide show will teach you:

• How to improve sales messaging with marketing
• How to get prospects to stay on your website longer
• How to create messaging that is impossible to ignore
• How to use marketing and messaging to improve your sales funnel
• …and more!

It’s time for your marketing and sales efforts to work together.

Or click here to schedule a free discovery session with Dacia to identify the marketing moves specific to you that will drive growth.

It’s about creating human connections, not distraction.

I love to follow the latest crazed marketing scheme. There is nothing more exciting for me than when a company taps into the human experience and inspires a transaction that truly showcases how business can be a microcosm of one group of people being of service to another.

But I hate following the latest and greatest, too. Anyone up for real-time, big data, customizable, programmatic, interactive, digital, automated, re-marketed, converting, experiential branding campaigns? If that question just made you nauseated, you are not alone.

I was recently reading a Fast Company article about Oreo. The humor, the creativity, and the willingness to be spontaneous were thrilling. They had tweets that went viral, 3-D printers that provided a customizable cookie experience at SXSW, a prime spot in the latest “Transformers” movie, and a gaming app that actually made money. But the sheer daunting task of creating an organization that can be spontaneous when they are so big, not to mention the cost of the effort, netted the following summary: “And what did this do for cookie sales? Mondelēz does not know … [their] efforts really show that there is nothing new under the marketing sun. Real-time marketing is another gun in the corporate arsenal, and like all the others, it’s damn hard to tell if it ever hits the mark.”

My summary is even simpler: What business is Oreo in?

Entertainment or food? I can’t see their mission or vision in these efforts anywhere, unless of course their mission statement includes the words “to provide escapism at any cost.”

Have you ever wondered why social media works?

By all means, get real, innovate, and try new things, but let’s not forget the truth that underlies the popularity of social media: people crave connection. We are all seeking ways to feel less alone, to have our voices heard, and to share the human experience. Exchanging goods and services for money is part of the human experience. Here’s a novel idea: let’s do it with more truth, more integrity, and more emotion. It’s the same end, just with simpler means.

Many of our clients ask for help with their branding without really knowing what a brand should accomplish for them.

To set it straight, a brand is more than just a logo and other visual marks. It is your truth. It’s how customers perceive your organizational identity and reputation across all platforms.

It’s important to understand that whatever customers experience from your brand helps build trust in your business. Hence, all forms of communication—not just visual—are key in reinforcing this trust and making your brand top-of-mind with your customers.

Your brand helps your audiences to easily understand your message and share it with others.

Here are some definitions of branding that we really love:

“Branding is the immediate and visceral reaction you have to any product or service, and what you believe it communicates about you as an individual to others.” – Jon Gieselman

“A brand is both a tangible mark and, at its best, a powerful emotional connection with the consumer.” – James Speros

“Branding is the sensory presentation and reinforcement of everything a brand promises to deliver.” – Ken Carbone

“Branding is the definition, communication, and management of a compelling truth.” – Scott Lerman

BEHOLD! The power of a strong brand.

In a study done by McKinsey & Company, strong brands outperformed weak brands by 20%.

The feeling of trust in your brand influences the B2B buyer’s decision to choose your product or service over another. B2B companies often face long buying cycles where lead nurturing becomes a tedious phase. But branding helps in that it directs initial impressions of your company and communicates your true value, helping customers understand how your product or service applies to them.

Even when customers resort to heuristic methods to shorten their journey, your brand helps to drive them through the sales funnel. How? Effective branding creates a mental association that customers use to catalog their impression of your company.

This makes brand management strategies important if you want your company to triumph over challenges such as a hyper-competitive market and even economic uncertainties.

SIMPLY PUT: Branding equals positioning!

What happens when you fail to deliver a consistent brand experience?

Consistent customer experiences and marketing messages drive positive sentiment. Furthermore, brands that fulfill their promises create trust. But consistency can break down when your company is focused on developing tactics instead of building a brand aligned with your vision, mission, and core values.

Inconsistent branding sabotages your business by reducing sales from new and repeat customers who are unhappy about their experience. As a result, growth goals and desired outcomes do not happen as fast as you would like.

Brand inconsistency generally leads to:

1. Miscommunication
2. Brand confusion
3. Erosion of trust
4. Poor customer experience

Check your brand for these common inconsistencies:

1. Inconsistency in Visual Communication
Inconsistency in visual communication is one of the most common mistakes in brand management. Your logo, images, color scheme, and typography should create instant recognition for your customers. However, inconsistency in your visual style makes it hard for them to trust the authenticity of your communication. It’s also a distraction from the core message. The style elements chosen in your branding should all convey a unified emotion, vision, and personality.

2. Inconsistency in Voice
How do you sound to customers? Fun? Business-casual? Buttoned-up? Calm? Brand discrepancies can be caused by the lack of a single brand voice. This happens when your company’s content is created by different individuals who may have different, and sometimes conflicting, styles. An inconsistent voice is a missed opportunity to resonate with your customers. The tone you use to communicate your message can help your company rise above the noise. To win the brand war, you need to maintain a unified voice whether in your social media channels, website, blog, or emails. This creates a stronger and clearer brand reputation, which then reinforces your unique value.

3. Inconsistency in Conveying Brand Values
One of the most overlooked areas in brand management is how business owners and employees bring their company values to the world. With the rise of social networks, people now have the power to engage in social selling and help build a reputation for the brands they represent. The problem is that different stories and activities could present the wrong values on behalf of your company. This blunder affects branding for the long term, especially if it involves major customer touch points. It is important to identify the true values that your company stands for and to determine whether they are aligned with your overall vision.This does not mean to say that everything has to be identical moving forward. A great way to start is by developing a set of brand guidelines that you and your employees can apply everywhere. Purchasing is, more often than not, an emotional decision. Consistency helps create a perception of quality—a unique value that builds your company and attracts more customers!

Social Media Today has listed the key benefits of brand consistency here:

• Helps you to differentiate your business, making you stand out in your customers’ minds
• Gives your business a personality and an identity that people can relate to
• Effectively delivers and reinforces your key messaging
• Meeting customer expectations helps to drive authority and trust in your business
• Drives customer loyalty and brand evangelism

Remember, branding sets the stage for future sales! If you’re looking for a branding expert, we can help. Blender has lengthy experience in setting up B2B companies for success by helping them build their own brand personality and voice.

Schedule a 20-minute call with Dacia Coffey to discuss your goals and challenges and how branding can propel your growth. Onward and upward!