In B2C perception is the reality. Truth comes a distant second because a purchase decision is largely emotional.  Consumers decide on a purchase as quickly as they bat their eye lids. B2B branding is not about persuading consumers into making irrational purchase decisions. In consumer markets, branding is manifested in glitzy packaging, dramatic commercials, and soothing imageries. But in business markets, branding... 

Selling a product or a service becomes very challenging when the forces of commoditization are at play. It essentially boils down to cost play and the ones with a lower cost most likely will win the race. I would like to take the IT services industry as an example. 1. Many in this space have been opportunists and they went with the tail wind that existed in the space 2. Not many have really looked at differentiating themselves... 

B2B Brand building is about building mindshare among the business buyers and other stakeholders. It builds value at every touch point. Here are the five key pillars on which a strong B2B brand is built:   1. Focus: The brand can’t be everything to everyone. Narrow the target groups, value propositions and solution offerings. This requires tremendous energy and discipline to introspect and accept.   2. Differ and... 

Sales and marketing activities need to be tightly integrated for an organization to be successful in the market place.  Though they are pursuing common objectives, the thread remains that they don’t get along well with each other. The common arguments that are put forward are: Sales are the bread winners, hence they need to be deified; Marketing are the strategic brainy ones who position the offerings in the market... 

Is branding science or art or both? Why some brands fail? I believe that the two principal elements behind the success of a brand are creativity and relevance. Unfortunately, there are no manuals or rules for how you combine them to win. More importantly, win consistently. Creativity is the force that produces fresh and compelling ideas that entice and sell repeatedly. Relevance comes from the knowledge of the rational... 

Let’s take an example of a B2B telecom company that wants to brand and market its solutions. Its strength lies in flexible architecture and reliable infrastructure. The company hires a generalist, read it as an advertising agency, and briefs them about its values, vision, competition, solutions and a bagful of industry terminologies like ‘multi-level redundancy’, ‘intelligent real-time call routing’, etc. It... 

I have been having a number of discussions with some business incubators and the companies that have been incubated by them. General feeling in this community is that they don’t need marketing and they are not at a stage where they have to look at marketing. Their model is, let the technology evolve and then we will hire a PR and Advertising agency and go for a big-bang launch of their product/service. How so wrong,... 

We need to dwell deep into the minds of business buyers to understand the intricacies of corporate decision making process. Let us imagine that we are in a court of law and two advocates representing emotional and rational clients argue the case… Emotional Advocate: Companies don’t buy from companies. People buy from people.   Rational Advocate: Purchase decision depends on a matrix of tangible features and price.     Emotional... 

Many a conversations that I have been having in the last couple of weeks points me to one weak area that most companies have. It is about their value proposition; too difficult to believe but that is the truth. The most important aspect of any business and the most neglected of it, is a value proposition that businesses offer their customers. Most value proposition that is created are listless and vague.  Without a... 

In my mind, all marketing activities need to be tightly integrated with the sales process; else it cannot be directly equated to the growth in your business. What is the point in generating hundreds of leads if they are not acted on? There definitely is no point. I have written about this and some more in B2B marketing essentials as a paper. You can get a free download of this by clicking on this image below. B2B Marketing...