Branding is the process of defining who you are and how you add value to your markets and customers. Over time, the simplest expression of your brand comes to symbolize the host of values that differentiate you, confirmed by customers’ experiences with your company and your products. This helps build preference and affinity that helps avoid commodity status and maintain profitability.

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"B-to-B Branding: Consumer Models Need Not Apply" (105 KB PDF)

We believe a company's branding success is driven by two factors:

• How effectively it can shape those definitions internally and incorporate them into all areas of their operation.
• How well those internal definitions are aligned with external realities, especially the needs, expectations and perceptions of customers and channels.

Our approach is to help clients discover and enunciate the key differential and core values that make up their brand. We determine how well their view is shared by customers, channels, employees, and other constituencies. Then we help companies express that branding in their marketing efforts, and “live” their brand values in all of their customer interactions.

B-to-B branding takes a B-to-B expert

Godfrey has extensive experience creating B-to-b brands that endure. And that provide important benefits throughout the organization. We believe that branding for B-to-B is fundamentally different from branding in the consumer market.

• It is a practical discipline, driven much more by products and services, and their performance in application. But emotional drivers do play a role, since job security and career aspirations may be at stake in the decision.
• Products and services are generally more complex, as is the buying process. The B-to-B buying process is now a team sport, with buying teams representing all areas of the company with a stake in the success of the purchased product, service or solution.
• In B-to-B, branding is influenced by channel partners, who often “own” the end customer relationship and can control access and communications to and from the customer.
• In order to maximize profitability, you must differentiate in ways that go beyond the features, benefits and even the performance of your products. By going beyond the product, you go beyond the transactional sale and commodity status to customer affinity and loyalty essential for relationship-selling.
• For most B-to-B companies, effective branding requires focus and discipline; there isn’t the luxury of million-dollar spending to make up for unfocused execution.

Godfrey has decades of experience developing B-to-B branding strategies, creating the powerful ideas that give those strategies expression, and executing those programs effectively. We can help you identify and express your brand for competitive advantage.