Seven Ways Brand Collateral Enables You to Grow Your B2B Business Profitably Even in a Hostile Market

1. Online and Offline Branding is More Consistent Using Brand Collateral With Brand Guidelines

While a lot of thought often goes into offline branding for things like newspaper adverts, event stands or brochures, online branding is sometimes done on the fly. For example, someone will be responsible for updating the company or brand social media accounts using their own judgment — working without using any proper brand guidelines. 

This typically results in very inconsistent or offbrand outcomes e.g. a B2B firm whose tone of voice is usually serious but appears jokey or irreverent on their social media feeds. This brand inconsistency typically confuses customers or clients which in turn undermines their trust in your brand and when customers don’t trust your brand they don’t buy.

Effective branding requires as much consistency in brand communication as possible for both B2B and B2C, product or service. That is true across all channels as well as within a given specific channel. In truth, one of the most common problems we identify when conducting brand audits for clients around the world is brand inconsistency across their brand collateral — all of which does untold damage to the organisation or business.

Strong consistent brand collateral driven by your brand strategy is one of the most effective ways to ensure that “everyone is singing from the same song sheet”, whether it is online or offline. By providing an agreed menu of brand communication elements such as visual brand identity elements, signature language, personality, straplines and sales scripts, it acts as a template so that the brand message communicated does not change depending on the media channel.

Related: Online Branding and The Fundamentals of Getting it Right so You Thrive in Adversity

Note that this does not mean that branding is the same everywhere. For example, what you print on t-shirts you sponsor for a charity event will probably be different to what you have in your sales brochure. 

The key point is that although the exact articulation or representation may be different, it will be consistent because it has been generated using the same set of brand guidelines. In this way, well developed brand collateral taking its direction from your brand guidelines acts a bit like a lookbook – users can browse it to decide what elements of agreed brand communication they want to use for a given brand communication opportunity.

Image via Sky © Sage

A case study on this point is the accountancy software provider Sage. Even though they have a wide variety of solution types and operate across diverse markets like many software providers, their brand communication remains clear, consistent and simple across all media. That is what results from having good brand collateral centrally controlled and managed through brand guidelines.

2. Brand Collateral Forces You to Evaluate Your Value Proposition

A key factor driving effective brand collateral is clarity around your value proposition because it forces B2B businesses to evaluate their differentiators from an external perspective — your ideal customers’ or prospects’ perspective.

Questions to consider are; is this look and feel consistent with our brand architecture and how does it compare to other brand communication we have seen in our competitive space? 

While B2C firms often engage in “voice of customer” exercises, they are less common in B2B firms. For example, reflecting on the value proposition you offer your customers, and want to communicate in your brand collateral, will be a useful trigger for you to re-evaluate your own value proposition to that of potential competitors and figure out what strongly sets you apart — if anything. 

Related: 7 Key Branding Trends in 2020 to Grow Your Business

For example, if you find that your brand collateral is bland and undistinctive, it may be a symptom of the fact that your overall brand architecture and value proposition lacks standout strength or message clarity.

This isn’t necessarily about changing your business model. It’s about using brand collateral as a tool to see your business and brand through the eyes of outsiders such as potential clients or customers. You then need to ask yourself whether that brings your brand to life in a way that customers find compelling and staff energizing.

Related: 6 Ways to Develop and Nurture a Successful Brand Culture With a Limited Budget

2. Achieving the Right Price Point is Easier with Strong Brand Collateral

Perhaps you’re wondering why brand collateral matters at all. Unlike B2C, a lot of B2B firms generate their business from personal relationships, or proprietary technology that a customer feels compelled to buy, so brand collateral might not seem that important. Sometimes, people suggest that instead of putting resources into producing and using brand collateral, it would be better to invest in a tactical move like increasing sales bonuses.

Branding is about differentiating a product or service so that you can command a pricing premium. Brand collateral enables you to communicate all of the key points of your brand strategy which support that premium in an efficient, consistent way.

Related: Profitable Lessons from Luxury Brand Leaders, Brand Positioning for Premium Pricing

Branding collateral is about more than just items with brand logos. For example, it will sometimes contain key messages which can be used in sales or pricing conversations. So even in a face to face pricing negotiation, the brand collateral is an invisible support tool a professional can use to justify the brand’s price point.

Image via Business & Finance © Flipdish

Consider as an interesting case study, the restaurant ordering app Flipdish. Without branding, Flipdish is a piece of tech which a lot of restaurants might think they could develop themselves. 

The consistent Flipdish branding works to support the company’s pricing. But to ensure that the branding works as hard as it can on an SME budget, Flipdish needs to make sure that the brand conveys itself consistently ‘on brand’ whether seen on the app, its website or a point of sale advertisement in a restaurant. That is where strong brand collateral controlled by coherent brand guidelines helps ensure consistency.

4. Brand Collateral Helps You Coordinate Across Multiple Sites in a Professional Network

For a lot of B2B companies, there are multiple branches or locations which all have some responsibility for brand communications. Sometimes they’ve originated through acquisition, for example when a manufacturer buys a smaller specialist manufacturer in a nearby city or when an accounting practice owner retires and sells his practice to an existing accounting chain. 

Often different offices or branches have their own way of doing things which may not be consistent with brand guidelines. For example, they may use their marketing budget to sponsor a local sports team, or have a column on the local website. In fact because of this, the branding across different parts of a B2B enterprise can often seem more disjointed than in a slick B2C operation with its laser focus on executing branding strategy the most effective and congruent way.

This can be a challenge especially in organisations where branding strategy and marketing isn’t highly valued, so people might not see the need to operate from a consistent set of brand collateral across the company. But part of the benefit of being a big organization, or having a networked offering, is that the brand architecture is communicated consistently no matter which part of the organization someone is touching. That is true for internal branding as well as customer-facing branding. Strong brand collateral is the tool to ensure that all of the sites communicate in a consistent manner. 

That doesn’t mean that each site can’t also use its own messaging if appropriate. For example, in some industries it is common to operate a network model where local branches operate under their own name, but with some common elements of corporate branding. In such a situation, brand collateral helps individual branches by providing standardized brand assets for shared parts of brand communication, freeing up more of their time to develop any localized assets which aren’t part of the overall network brand collateral.

Image via The Times © Countrywide

A case study is Countrywide estate agents. They are a national network of estate agents in the UK – as the name clearly communicates – who use the same backend systems and common branding elements such as tone of voice and key visuals. But the local members use a variety of fascias and some local branding to benefit from historical strength in key markets. 

Related: The Impact of Company Brand Culture On Driving Performance and Increasing Sales

5. Your Customer Experience is More Effective Using Strong Brand Collateral

Brand collateral is an easy way to ensure that your business provides clear, unambiguous communication about your brand and your value proposition. Customer experience can be a critical mode of communicating the brand for many B2B firms. How things look, the tone of voice and language used by the brand and the ways in which the brand manifests itself can create engagement and loyalty.

Related: Top 10 Brands for Customer Experience and What You Can Learn From Them 

In this way, brand collateral is an easy and often low-cost way of improving your customer experience to make it more consistent and connected to your brand outcomes, for example, in sales conversion.

Image via © Howdens

A case study is provided by the chain of joiners’ trade suppliers Howden Joinery Group. That company organizes regular local “expert meetings” for tradesmen to learn about a subject and swap experiences amongst themselves. With meetings at different Howden facilities across its markets, brand collateral helps ensure that the way the brand is presented is consistent both across the meetings and also as between the meetings and company depots.

6. Brand Collateral Gives the Right Message in Selling Situations

A lot of B2B staff can be involved in sales situations informally even though they’re not part of your core sales team. In truth, all your team should actually be your secret sales force because you’ve empowered them to represent and champion your brand through effective brand induction and training. 

Strong brand collateral provides support to all your team to represent and champion your brand, even in an informal sales capacity. It can operate at as simple a level as making sure there are contact details on business cards and company stationery, emphasizing the company’s USP in its brochures, and ensuring the website doesn’t conflict with anything the person has said ‘face to face’ in person, on the phone or meeting online.

Strong supportive brand collateral helps mitigate risk against the wrong thing being said. It supports consistent sales situations or outcomes because each individual in your team has a strong central reference tool in the form of your brand collateral to draw on. 

Image via © Deloitte

Professional services practice Deloitte provides a good example of this. Their “green dot” branding brought all of Deloitte’s diverse practices together under a single identifiable set of visual brand identity principles centred around a green dot. This green dot is a simple, flexible device which means it can have relevance across as large and diverse an organisation as Deloitte, while still providing a common set of brand assets for communication. 

7. People Can Focus on What They Do Best if they Have Brand Collateral to Use

It’s not unusual to find that a lot of B2B staff do not see themselves as marketers and often don’t want to be involved in ‘marketing’. The discipline is not always as highly valued in, say, traditional accounting or legal practices or even tech firms compared to consumer goods companies. However, many staff are involved in marketing-related activities whether they want to be or not and strong consistent brand collateral enables them to be more effective.

Instead of unintentionally leaving them unsupported, and by default, forced to generate PPT templates, marketing taglines, design cover sheets for proposals or create their own value proposition give them direction through strong brand guidelines for all your brand collateral so they have templates, formats and a signature style to replicate. This will ensure they can perform at their best, increase sales and help drive brand growth. That frees them up to use their talents best which is what you originally hired them to do. Aside from being a far more efficient use of resources and management in any B2B firm, it’s especially attractive in a more traditional fee-earning environment.

Related: How to Build a Powerful Employer Branding Strategy so You Attract and Retain Top Talent to Grow Your Business

Final Thoughts

A strong business is enabled by a strong brand and effective brand strategy. Brand collateral is an essential practical tool which helps ensure your brand strategy is brought to life by an organization aligned around and using common brand identity elements. 

It also helps ensure consistency, reduces time wasted reinventing the wheel and prevents unintentionally sabotaging your most important asset — your brand. Brand collateral supports your people in crucial sales and marketing conversations. 

Perhaps consider reviewing your brand collateral now using a brand audit health check so you can re-evaluate how effective it is, or is not as the case maybe, and whether it could be re-envisioned to work harder for your business?

Hostile trading conditions can be challenging for a B2B firm but with a strong brand strategy underpinning your baseline it also presents opportunities to thrive — to Be The One, unstoppable in uncertainty.

Questions to Consider

1. How consistent is your brand collateral across online and offline channels?
2. Does your current brand collateral help you achieve the price points you want?
3. How consistent is your brand collateral across different parts of your organization?
4. Does your customer experience reflect a disciplined use of brand collateral?
5. Do you have digital and hard copy brand collateral which frees up your team’s time to focus on other elements of their roles?
6. Do you perhaps need to re-evaluate and perhaps refresh some of your current brand collateral online and off?