Though businesspeople and consumers may buy for different reasons, the triggers that motivate them remain largely the same. Creativity, humour, storytelling, and long-term branding all play a huge role in creating the mental availability (salience) that drives conversions – yet so many B2B organisations still struggle to follow this path when building out their campaigns.
At LogicLogicMagic, we strive to help organisations like yours overcome these challenges by creating the messages and marketing vehicles that breed familiarity and trust amongst your target audience. Using data gathered from our “Mogic’s guide to making technology marketing more memorable,” we’ve compiled a short list of key steps you can follow to ensure your brand stands out from the crowd.
Focus on building familiarity and trust
While many technology companies often believe that their products will sell based on functionality and price alone, customers rarely buy from brands they don’t know. As with any relationship, trust and consideration are things that build up naturally over time though a series of pleasant and memorable interactions.
In his 1968 study on ‘Attitudinal effects of mere-exposure’, social psychologist Robert Zajonc found that people tend to develop a preference or attraction to things merely because they are familiar with them. So, regardless of whether it’s for a B2C or B2B company, familiarity is the single biggest driver of consideration amongst buyers and is a critical part of any successful marketing campaign. An idea that's foundational to Professor Byron Sharp's seminal marketing text 'How Brands Grow.'
Try to balance long-term branding with short term activation
Though the pressure to deliver short-term sales often makes B2B companies focus their marketing efforts on short-term activation, the truth is that many customers aren’t looking to buy right away. Unlike the impulse buying behaviours of consumers, most business buyers will plan their decisions carefully over time and must be nurtured along each step of the consideration process.
For this reason, long-term branding is equally (if not more so) important than short term activation when it comes to generating consistent revenue growth. Yet, despite the recent claims from Ty Heath, Director of Market Engagement at The B2B Institute at LinkedIn, that smart B2B brands should be investing at least 50% of their marketing budgets on branding initiatives, many organisations still fall short.
Embrace creativity and emotion in every campaign
As well as finding the right balance between long-term branding and short-term activation, incorporating creativity and emotion into all your campaigns is critical for increasing differentiation and driving business value. Though B2B audiences are often thought of as logical thinkers who buy based on reason alone, the work of Les Binet & Peter Field in ‘The Long and Short of it’ shows us that emotional advertising is twice as efficient as rational, and therefore delivers twice the profit.
Considering the above, modern B2B marketing needs to appeal to both the rational and emotional intelligence of the audience by creating engaging content and a unique brand personality that buyers can relate to. This creativity and distinctive tone of voice, when applied on a consistent basis, will help increase familiarity and continue to separate your brand from the herd when price and product alone are not enough.
Want help building brand familiarity?
Helping our clients build familiarity and trust with their target audience is something we pride ourselves on here at LogicLogicMagic. By using our years of experience in both B2B and B2C, we help organisations like yours create the innovative campaigns that harness both the logic (rational) and the lateral (emotional) to cut through the fuzz and create the mental availability that drive conversions in the long-term as well as the short.
If you're interested in learning more about the LogicLogicMagic approach and how we can help your organisation establish stronger connections with your target audience, you can download our quick guide: "11 ways to making technology marketing memorable", or the more comprehensive: "Mogic's guide to making marketing more memorable"
