Dominate the B2B Industry with Brand: A Raw & Unfiltered Conversation with Jason Vana
Read time: 4.5 min
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Why do some B2B companies thrive while others struggle? How should leaders think about branding vs. performance marketing efforts? Jason has real answers for us.
Jason Vana is the founder of Shft, a Brand and content strategy agency focused on B2B companies – helping them become the only choice for their customers. He is also an established thought leader in the world of B2B, with over 50K followers on LinkedIn.
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In this episode, we cover off on a variety of topics:
The most controversial topic in the world of marketing and branding
The irony of ironies in the B2B world
The powerful strategy of being different, not better
The fallacy of MQLs (marketing qualified leads)
The three most important things to learn as a marketer
The real Jason Vana, please stand up
KEY LESSONS
Branding is not a marketing function; it cuts across everything
As controversial as it may seem, I subscribe to the same idea. If brand is the feeling and perception someone has about your company, product, or service and branding is the execution of every touch point to create that feeling, how can it be a marketing function?
“Branding has just been confined or just tossed into marketing because marketing is promotional, branding is just this way to promote ourselves. But I think you and I would both agree that if I call into a company and I talk to a receptionist who's rude, that impacts the perception I have of the company.
“And so when it comes to brand, it is far more than just a marketing aspect. It really is built also by sales, by marketing, by operations, by production, by customer service, by your product, by every aspect, every point of contact”
The problem with branding being held in the marketing department is that they don’t have power over the entire organization.
“I don't know any marketers, any CMOs that have that authority. Most CMOs are like, oh that's the COO's job, not my job. That’s the disconnect in B2B…they don't understand what a brand truly is.”
“And it can’t just be the CEO either, because most CEOs are not brand people, they are product people. You need a Chief Brand Officer that sits between the CEO and the other functions.”
When Jason shared this online, it was the most controversial org chart in history, shooting it to virality status.
LinkedIn Post HERE
“The CEO should not be the owner of the brand cuz they don't even know what a brand is or how to build a brand. So if that's the case, then you should have a CBO that everyone reports to because the product and operations are just as much part of brand as marketing is. That's a conversation that a lot of people don't wanna have yet because in most org charts, brand sits under marketing, you've got a CMO, and then you've got like the chief brand marketer and, that is basically a glorified policeman making sure that everything is on brand.”
There are no impulse buys in B2B, branding is the only way to generate sustained demand
The ironies of ironies is that while the world of B2C is admitting that branding efforts have a higher ROI than performance marketing, B2B businesses continue to bet on performance marketing. It should actually be reversed as there are impulse buys in the B2C world, making it a more viable performance marketing candidate than the B2B world, with long sales cycles and drawn out decision making processes.
“Airbnb, Adidas and ASOS, three B2C brands that in the last year, all of them have come out and said we have moved away from performance marketing into brand marketing.
Airbnb made that move in 2019, they dropped their performance marketing started doing brand campaigns. They have had their most successful quarter and their CFO has said it is because of our investment in brand.
Adidas. They thought the majority of their sales was coming from performance marketing. And when they sat down and looked at the data, they found out 60% of their sales actually comes from brand campaigns, not performance marketing.
ASOS spent a quarter I think it was last year, one of the quarters last year, they made 80% of their marketing budget was in performance marketing and sales dropped 105%”
According to Jason, performance marketing is demand capture and branding is demand generation. I tend to agree, it also explains why performance marketing efforts have high initial ROI, then diminishes over time – there is no more demand to capture, the top of the funnel has dried out. Whereas branding continues to fill the top of the funnel. It’s not “either or”, it’s “and”. You need both to win long term.
“Imagine if you, if you sell a hundred thousand dollars service and you have a queue of people waiting to work with you, that's never gonna happen with performance marketing. It doesn't build that kind of loyalty of like, screw everyone else. I'm willing to pay more to work with you. That's what brand does.”
“Different” always beat “better”: lean into what makes the brand unique
Jason states that for a brand to be healthy, it must understand why it is different and I couldn’t agree more. He recalled for us a story about his days in a B2B company:
“One of the first things I did was I created an account pretending that I was a food processor. I went on all the competition's websites and requested information and I just wanna see how they respond
Nine years later, I'm still waiting for a response from some of those companies. Even the ones that did respond, it was one or two days So I said we're gonna make it super easy for people to hear a response. We will have an answer to them in 30 minutes - That is how we're gonna win. We broke the standard and we stole opportunities away from these big companies because of that.”
By zigging while everybody is zaggin, they stood out with a real experience that addressed a pain, not a “promotional” message. It was a tangible fulfillment of their promise. When looking for something unique, you also have to make sure it’s a sustainable differentiator.
“I've heard this a lot. It's our team is what sets us apart. No, it's not <laugh> because your team will be completely different in 20 years. So if that's your differentiation in 20 years, you're done. You know, like what actually makes you different?”
Because if you are not, you just set off the biggest nuclear bomb in the market, driving it down, down, down.
“If your customers can get the same thing from all your competitors, you are no longer competing on something unique, you are just competing on price.”
Conclusion
Branding is demand generation and when done well with performance marketing, you can truly dominate in the world of B2B, because no one is really doing it that well. The same in true in the world of health care, build a brand and your customers will line up around the block to choose you. Listen to the episode on your favorite podcast player for all the truth bombs.
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