Business Branding and the Budget Blues

Branding is as important in business markets as in consumer markets. Business buyers, however, look for a different set of brand values. They ask what a product or service can do for their business.

If your budget is limited, product message are more likely to generate short-term revenue. That could increase your marketing budget over time through new customer acquisition. However, it would be wrong to neglect brand-building messages completely. You would be sacrificing long-term business development and customer retention.

Traditionally, branding has been seen as a consumer marketing discipline. Business marketing was seen as different; buyers were assumed to be rational and decisions were believed to depend primarily on price and performance. However, research has shown that business purchase decisions are more complex, and companies base their decisions on a variety of factors. Business-to-business companies ignore branding at their peril.