There is no doubt that your brand is your most valuable asset. Brands build loyalty. But, if your employees can’t deliver that brand promise at each and every touch point with your customers, then your brand will begin losing value—quickly. Getting your employees on board before you role out your brand to the marketplace is essential.

Although it is essential, many marketers often skip the crucial step of internal branding. Selling your brand to your employees should come way before you try to sell your brand to your customers and/or prospects. If your employees don’t believe in what you are selling or don’t understand it, then it is likely all you will deliver to your customers are empty promises.

Your first step, after you’ve determined what your brand positioning and messaging should be, is to infuse the brand personality into all aspects of the company. Support from upper management is key.
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I’ve never been a “GE glorifier”, but I have been paying a little more attention to GE lately, as a student of business. Specifically, the strategic leadership of CEO Jeffrey Immelt. In my opinion, he's finally stepped out of the giant shadow of his predecessor and mentor, Jack Welch. Since December 2002, Immelt has sold off more than $75 billion in GE businesses such as its plastics and insurance units, and most recently, appliances (a business once synonymous with its brand name) while spending more than $50 billion on acquisitions in faster-growing sectors including wind power and aviation. Strategy in action.

Mr. Immelt has a very good sense of what he wants the GE brand to stand for going forward - innovation in emerging businesses in the 21st century (for now, that means big investments in health-care and energy.) Much of the growth in GE’s strategy will come
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I must confess. I’m a believer in Marriott Hotels. I recently discovered, I've stayed at Marriott properties over 100 times in the last 10 years. It’s not that I see other hotel brands as being inferior. I just find myself almost “automatically” making reservations at a Marriott when traveling. Why? Because, through experience, I believe the experience will be positive and I’ve not been disappointed.
 
Looking at it from a big-picture perspective, isn’t building belief the essence of what good B-to-B branding is all about? Without belief, there can be no trust, without trust there can be no loyalty. If a company, regardless of the products or services they offer, is not seen as having credibility, can any reasonable person be expected to believe that doing business with them is a wise decision?
 
Sure there are other elements that go into effective B-to-B branding like consistency of expression, positive touch point
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We’ve talked often about the role of branding in helping to improve marketing communications effectiveness and that certainly is its most obvious use, especially when you are trying to justify budgets to management and financial people.

Branding has a “softer” side, however. And that is branding’s role as self-revelation, as an opportunity to tell the world who you are.

For some, that can be a major event in a corporation’s life, giving you several equally-important opportunities:

• To understand the past, what made customers trust you years ago, and how they think of you now.
• To organize the present, to sort out what issues are temporary and transitory, and what factors have long-term consequences.
• To shape the future, to decide what kind of company you will be in five, ten, or even 20 years.

To do that, of course, branding has to be much more than graphics, colors, and typefaces.
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Lately I’ve been riding the bus to work, trying to save on gas. A fringe benefit is that I can listen to podcasts on my MP3 player.

Many B-to-B marketers (including some of our clients) are using podcasts to reach specific audiences who want to be informed. It’s a great tool for companies to establish thought leadership. However, you should avoid the temptation to record a blatant product pitch or “audio brochure.” Instead, content should meet the audience expectation that they’ll learn something new.

Your podcast needs to be educational and entertaining. The sales pitch can come later, when the listener chooses to take the next step and request more information (maybe even in exchange for their e-mail address).

First and foremost, a podcast should deliver useful information.
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It looks like we are in for some uncertain economic times. At least that is what Wall Street and the major news outlets are telling us. So what do we do as business to business marketers as budget pressure builds and we are expected to remain stewards of our brand?

I recently had the opportunity to be part of a panel on this subject at a meeting of the American Marketing Association’s, Houston Chapter’s B2B Special Interest Group.

Here’s a brief recap of what was discussed:

The overall message of the meeting was that successful B2B marketers view these as times of opportunity. A period that requires an "uncertain times" strategy with the brand and protecting the brand is the driver. It is a critically opportune time to make sure your brand message is integrated into all communications associated with your brand.

Michelle Reed, Vice President Strategic Marketing,
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To add one additional thought to Russ Green's recent post on getting on board with social media, one possible source of hesitation might be that marketers aren't sure how or why to apply the new media. Here are a few thoughts about the ways the social media apply to the B-to-B environment:

• Networking: Many users find the new social media like blogs and social networking sites to be a great way to stay in touch with old coworkers or customers who move to another position. Losing a customer in one job may simply mean gaining a new customer, if you stay in touch. And beyond being able to wish people a happy birthday, social media may also assist your efforts to recruit top talent.
  
• Content management: Many companies have purchased global content management systems at huge expense, and still have not achieved their goal of involving more of their
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You may be reading this after clicking on our E-news item that 45% of integrated marketers in a recent study haven’t spent marketing dollars on emerging media like social networks, blogs, or word-of-mouth initiatives, but are interested in doing so. Of course, the other side of the coin is that 55% have implemented some kind of social media effort.

Why haven’t the 45% made the plunge…or at least stuck their toe in the water?

A new study by TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony sheds some light on what we have found to be true through experience. The authors of the survey of 71 marketing professionals in the U.S., Canada, France and the U.K. say that many marketers, “particularly the slower-moving” ones (their words, not mine!), want “best practices” and “proven models.” That’s understandable,
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A recent article in B2B Magazine cites moves by B-to-B media companies Reed Elsevier, United Business Media and Ziff Davis that, collectively, point to the difficulties trade publishers are having in managing the migration from print to online.

Ziff Davis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing a decrease in revenue from print advertising and subscriptions. UBM announced that it had restructured CMP and eliminated the CMP name. And Reed Elsevier put its Reed Business Information unit on the block.

While we are not happy to see reputable trade publishers suffering, the future belongs to those who leverage technology and find, or hold on to, the B-to-B audience. As we discuss in our white paper on this topic, trade magazine publishers once owned the franchise as aggregators of information.
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When was the last time you saw a company advertise itself as “combative and adversarial?” Have you seen any vision statements that say “We struggle with our customers for common ground?” How about a tagline that says, “Committed to losing your trust?”

Of course not. But more than half of b-to-b technology companies are branding themselves this way by their actions, according to a new study by the Chief Marketing Officer Council, reported in a recent online article in B2B Magazine.

According to the study, which surveyed 1,000 b-to-b technology buyers, IT marketing and customer relationship executives and their channel partners, 56% of vendors perceive themselves as being customer-centric, but only 12% of customers agree. Even more telling is that more than half of customers surveyed described their relationship with
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