Branding is a pivotal component of any business or organisation. Despite misconceptions that brand strategy and marketing apply only to new entrants to a market, it’s incredibly common to find that branding that was once immersive, targeted, and fresh has become stale.
Having long-standing branding – where this no longer aligns with the current needs of the market – is a frequent sticking point. Companies might find, for example, that their market share has stopped growing and dipped into a backslide, or their leads and conversions have slowed to a trickle rather than a stream.
If this sounds familiar, all is far from lost. With a sprinkle of enthusiasm and energy, there are ample opportunities to inject new and impactful messaging across your brand communications, taking the brand you already have and making it better rather than starting from scratch.
How to Address an Outdated or Stagnated B2B Brand Image
Of course, so much depends on the sector or market you serve, but a superb brand strategy is a foundation for success, by identifying whether your branding has plateaued or become tired and the right ways to renew it without losing your brand voice and brand identity.
The first step is to try to define what you believe your brand is, what it stands for, the values and ideas it represents, and the goods or services it offers. If your branding perfectly represents that, a refresh may not be needed—but, importantly, it’s also essential to uncover the same perceptions held by other stakeholders.
That’s because familiarity can detract from innovation, and assumptions about whether your branding remains clear and bold might mean you miss changes in attitudes, habits or expectations from others who interact with your brand, including buyers and businesses.
Using a B2B Brand Audit to Spot Issues Within Your Brand
A brand audit is one of the fastest and most dependable approaches, where we can analyse:
- Whether your branding is consistent, uniform and represented in the same tone and style across every platform, channel and brand marketing campaign.
- How your branding is reflected in your visuals, dialogue, and tone of voice and how these aspects convey USPs and differentiating factors that make you stand out.
- The latest industry trends and whether your competitors are grasping new technologies, services or interfaces that your brand is lacking.
- How well your messaging and communications relate to your brand mission and values—a contrast between these aspects can cause reputational damage.
- Changes to your core B2B audience demographic, or where your buying audience remains consistent, but their needs and priorities have changed.
Alongside market research, you can review your engagement metrics, where a steady and sustained drop in responses and reactions can be indicative of tired branding – alongside the way this is reflected through your revenues, enquiries or orders, especially for new product or service launches.
When we have a full picture of your brand, how it compares to the competition, and whether it remains representative of the business behind it, we can start working on strategic branding to achieve your objectives.
Indications Your Branding May Have Become Outdated or Less Relevant
Outside of a professional, independent brand audit, there are several glaring issues that may be a key indicator that your branding isn’t performing as it should or that it has stopped being as effective and impactful with your audience.
If your brand doesn’t capture and demand attention, usually seen through drops in market share, you may have untapped potential, where the viewers you are trying to engage with don’t have a good enough reason to engage or lack a connection to your brand – if a buyer or procurement team views all brands as equal, they’ll likely make decisions purely on a cost basis, for example.
Similarly, brands that seem a little too close for comfort to their competitors, or who have products that have a very comparable value proposition to the next, without anything special that makes them shine, may find that they blend into the background.
Lastly, if your company has changed, grown, shifted or evolved, your branding should also be updated in line with your business, whether your direction and focus have changed, you have outgrown your previous brand image, or you’ve extended into new services and product ranges that weren’t a factor when devising your old branding.
B2B Brand Marketing Refreshes: Getting Your Branding Back on Point
Refreshing and reimagining a brand is an opportunity, with the knowledge of your stories and histories, and concepts of how you want your brand to be seen, perceived, experienced and valued by your customers – and, hopefully, new buying audiences.
Even if it feels like going back to the basics, we’d recommend a branding strategy where you set out what you want to achieve, whether a quick and simple image refresh, a completely new brand identity, or a stronger brand image your newer target buyers or long-standing clients will want to be a part of.
The scope of the brand update matters because there is a significant contrast between tweaking the branding to make it feel more modern and vibrant and stripping back brand assets and elements that have become redundant and redesigning them from the ground up!
Essentially, your brand needs to be distinct, different, and authentic, steering clear of stereotypes that replicate formulas that are already over-used, and that gives your target audience a reason to believe.
Sharp, purposeful and bespoke brand visuals that represent a clear vision and purpose always outperform dull and repetitive branding, with a laser focus on all of the intangible aspects of your brand that make up the sum of its parts – showcasing all of that information concisely and directly to your audience.
Finally, branding refreshes and the strategy underpinning them should be scalable. This ensures that if you encounter a similar hurdle in the future, you’ll be able to make adjustments to align your branding with your audience and services and can make improvements as you go to create a brand that is appealing, convincing, and stands the test of time.
You are welcome to contact the Flintlock Marketing team to discuss your B2B brand marketing requirements and how we can help.
