Positioning Guide #13

In business to business marketing, a brand’s unique brand benefit should be economic.

It’s amazing how many business to business marketers obfuscate the value that they deliver to their target customers.  Businesses are economically motivated; they want to make money.  Even not-for-profit enterprises want to operate as efficiently as possible.  Thus, business to business marketers need to tell their target business customers how their unique brand benefit will increase the customer’s revenue and/or decrease their costs. 

Despite the simplicity of economic appeal in business to business marketing, business to business marketers often speak obtusely about the value they are delivering.  A currently popular phrase is “solutions provider”. A quick Google search will show 5.5 million matches for the phrase “solutions provider.”  The business customer will dismiss such appeals without even remembering them because the phrase is both vague and empty.  Solutions to what?  It doesn’t answer how the marketer is going to make the customer’s business more profitable.

Vague statements of providing value are also common in business to business marketing.  A Google search on the phrase “we deliver value” yields 43,500 hits.  However, few of these marketers are able to quantify in dollar amount the value that they deliver to their customers.  A good unique brand benefit for business to business marketers say that the marketer is going to saving the customer money and/or help the customer generate more revenue.  The challenge of business to business brand positioning is to express this brand benefit in a unique way.