B2B brands don’t have retail outlets and many do not have eCommerce capabilities. The website is often the #1 tool for building brand identity and for marketing. When creating a B2B website, internal resources are often stretched to the max, yet the urgency for the website to build brand awareness remains strong. To apply limited time and resources for the best results, consider these five tips:
Earlier in my career, I was part of a national organization of creative firms that met in different parts of the country. I recall sitting at bar in the French quarter of New Orleans, a few cocktails in, when a colleague from New Orleans said, “You know the difference between branding firms in Boston and those down here?” He paused, “Y’all live above the neck… we live…below the neck!”
As well as being highly amused, I recognized the depth of his colorful statement and it caused me to reflect upon the top ten attributes to look for in a Boston based branding agency:
Amidst the blow-by-blow coverage of Donald Trump, and by association, the other candidates (including Democrats), there has been surprisingly little said about the 2016 candidates’ taglines and their impact, or lack thereof, thus far. This post should not be construed as an endorsement or opinion of any candidate, just their brand strategies as represented through their use of campaign taglines.
To understand the power of a tagline, look no further than Barack Obama’s success in 2008 with his two taglines: “Hope” and “Change We Can Believe In.”
I’ve spent considerable time as an agency owner putting myself in the shoes of our clients and prospects to better understand when an agency like ours, or any agency — creative, brand, web, inbound marketing, etc.— is the right investment and when it isn’t; here are my insights.
You are in charge of Marketing. Your competitor just launched a new site. And it’s good. They have case studies, testimonials, video and interactive diagrams. What’s even more disconcerting is that they are telling a compelling story with a point of view. Their copy is solid, design is modern; They got their branding right.
Your CEO is not happy, wants to see something done about it and wants results fast… but within a budget. How do you get it done?
My mother taught me how to write. My father taught me how to defend myself (verbally). Art Center College of Design taught me how to present my ideas. But none of these venerable resources taught me how to read minds. What does mind reading have to do with marketing or design: practically everything.
The other day, I saw a website for an agency that uses the tagline, “We Work on Your Business, Not Just Your Website.” I related to the line’s strategic positioning and have to admit to being disappointed that I hadn’t come up with it myself.
Good storytelling is the new frontier for the website.
As Responsive Design homogenizes the look and feel of websites (I love the usability but dislike the cookie cutter designs that Responsive Design so often engenders); now, more than ever, we need compelling content to break through the visual monotony and fuse the “brand experience” with the “user experience.” This is especially true in B2B, where it is easy to “live above the neck” in a world of features, functions, dense and often technical content.
Here are five websites that successfully use compelling storytelling to build their brands. Read more
Our staff has marveled at just how frequently the companies for whom we have provided brand strategy, visual branding and website redesign, have been purchased by larger companies not long afterward.
Soon after we provided branding and web design for our client, Predilytics, a predictive analytics company, they successfully sold their company to Welltok, Inc.
Again, shortly after creating a comprehensive rebrand and launching a new identity for Unica Corporation, they successfully sold to IBM. At about the same time, our client, Netezza, was also sold to IBM. There was also Coley Pharmaceuticals and Targanta Therapeutics; these are but a few client transactions that have happened not long after our collaborations were completed.
Much like last year when websites with Parallax scrolling took off, we’re seeing a growing number of sites using video on their websites, in new ways, to enhance their brands. But rather than, and in some cases in addition to “talking heads,” we’re seeing “ambient video.”
Ambient video is background video whose purpose is to establish a visual brand identity. While words and still images do the heavy lifting in terms of creating messages, the addition of web video can provide an emotional resonance that can help an otherwise purely rational brand become a more emotionally satisfying user experience.
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