B2B Brand Marketing: Standing Out in a Crowded Field
A harsh reality has presented itself in the world of B2B marketing over the last decade or so, and the more seriously marketing leaders accept this reality, the better off the world of marketing will be. That reality: nowadays, B2B and content marketing can oftentimes feel stale.
Granted, B2B and content marketers themselves aren’t fully to blame for the staleness throughout the industry. B2B companies, particularly in software and tech, have exploded this century, and there’s constant disruption, upheaval, and competition. New software upstarts are constantly appearing, promising to provide differentiated product offerings to previously underserved markets. And with the rapid emergence of so many new companies, it’s difficult for marketing teams to change their approach on the fly.
As a result, marketing strategies become predictable. Trusted playbooks that have worked well for successful companies are put into action by newer entrants in the field. Tactics are recycled. A lot of the time, even the people in charge of decision-making carry over from company to company. So, what consumers see is repetition. Billboard placements, subway and airport campaigns, sponsored social media posts, podcast advertisements, and now even B2B branded podcasts: these are all levers that get pulled time and time again.
This is where brand marketing and creative direction can serve as notable differentiators. Sharp brand leaders can come up with clever ways of establishing a brand identity, ideally making their companies stand out from the pack. So, what tactics can brand and creative leaders adopt to make their marketing ploys fresh and unique?
Dmitry Shamis, the VP of Brand and Creative at SEVENROOMS and Founder of The Creative Brand, is someone particularly qualified to talk about brand differentiation. Dmitry is an established brand leader who has experience leading creative teams of over 150 people and also heading up more entrepreneurial ventures. As part of StudioPod’s Content Frequencies series, Dmitry sat down with StudioPod Co-Founder TJ Bonaventura to talk about ways that brand leaders can approach B2B marketing more creatively.
The role of creative in content marketing
Before brand and creative teams can put fresh tactical ideas into practice, some internal jockeying and level-setting is needed upfront. Brand marketers can sometimes be cut out of executive planning and goal setting meetings. This oversight is often due to a profound misunderstanding of what brand leaders provide. “[A lot of people] think that the role of creative is to just pump out work, like in a service org type status, and that the role of creative is to make things pretty. And that’s just not true,” Dmitry says.
Obviously, successful brand operators do much more than publish work and beautify marketing materials. “As a creative, you need to understand the business,” Dmitry goes on. “The best creatives are the folks that understand what is happening, how the work affects the business, what worked, what didn’t work, why it didn’t work, what are the opportunities for change.” Effective brand operators are fully immersed into all silos of a marketing organization. But it’s on leaders of the brand arm to effectively prove their comprehensive value.
The best brand leaders will ensure that they create a functioning partnership between their teams and marketing leadership. To do so, they will show marketing heads that they fully understand the goals of the business and how marketing fits into those objectives. They will push back on constraints that keep the brand hamstrung and suggest alternatives to campaigns that may prove ineffective. And in return, marketing leadership should provide a seat at the table for brand and creative for every high priority project.
Branding smarter: tweaking established marketing tactics
Once brand leaders have created a partnership with marketing leadership, the real work can begin. And the real work often entails modifying marketing tactics that have been utilized for years ad nauseam.
Take the example of a webinar. Webinars have been around for nearly as long as all professionals have had access to personal computers. The formula, traditionally, is pretty straightforward: find a topic that fits a company’s niche, identify a host who can speak effectively to that topic, schedule a webinar, promote the event, collect attendees’ contact info and email addresses for future promotional use. The playbook for running a webinar, at this point, is pretty rote.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Dmitry notes the example of Superside. He finds Superside’s brand team to be admirable in large part because they’ve turned the concept of a webinar on its head. Superside hosts webinars for smaller groups of people, maybe 10-15 attendees when the industry standard is for hundreds of sign-ups. These more exclusive webinars make attendees feel more fortunate to attend, and excited to learn. They also give attendees an opportunity to participate by asking questions and starting discussions. Suddenly, a webinar becomes more interactive and engaging. And at the same time, the company’s brand can ride the tailwinds from these sessions.
Content repurposing, with real purpose
We’ve brought up the topic of content repurposing before in our Content Frequencies series, and for good reason - it’s an easy way to make the most fruitful and efficient use out of every piece of marketing content that is generated. But just like all successful marketing efforts, content repurposing only works well when there are thoughtful, strategic reasons in place.
“If you’re just taking transcripts and posting them as blog posts or something like that, that’s never going to be successful,” Dmitry says. “You can’t assume that just because an asset worked in one place, it’s going to work or be as successful in a different place.”
Dmitry is right. Simply reposting a blog post as a video or LinkedIn post is missing the point, and it’s also lazy. Marketers have to deeply understand the different channels available and tailor content strategically to those channels. As Dmitry goes on, “You have to understand who your audience is, what channels they’re on, and then you have to create content that’s relevant to those channels.
Showcasing unique brand personality
At its core, brand marketing means broadcasting a company’s unique voice and doing so in a differentiated way. Brand marketers must not lose sight of the fact that distinctive branding is a good thing; that deviating from the pack’s baselines is smart and often even necessary.
In discussing companies that are doing content marketing well in today’s marketplace, Dmitry points to those who showcase their personality. He falls back on an old trope that, while old, has been around for a long time for good reason. “People or companies forget that they’re not marketing to companies. They’re marketing to people, and people have personalities. They have likes and interests. They like to laugh and emote in different kinds of ways,” Dmitry explains. He approves of companies who embrace their quirkiness and have fun with showing some personality.
Companies can also be well served by offering strong stances on controversial topics and standing by their values. He explains, “Most companies are afraid to offend and that means they just don’t have anything to stand on at that point. And the goal is never to offend, but if you have an opinion, as a brand, you need to stand behind that. If there’s something you support, something you stand for, you have to continue to support and stand for those things.”
Building a brand through podcasting
TJ’s conversation with Dmitry fits nicely into our Content Frequencies series because brand building is at the core of what we help businesses with. Our team provides full service production for B2B podcasting efforts and helps to weave company podcasts into the demand generation feedback loop. Contact us today to learn more about how a B2B podcast should fit into your content marketing plan.
