Although technical business visual branding predominantly requires high-quality creative design, data-driven decisions backed by solid market and competitor research are still key when creating an effective and competitive B2B brand identity.
All businesses strive to be recognised and add value to their business, and successful branding goes a long way in achieving this. Finding your visual identity is a balance of branding considerations, target audience, market competitor analysis, differentiators, logo and graphical element creations and ensuring brand consistency. All of which the creative team at Motion have at the forefront of their mind when delivering their next quality B2B brand project.
Understanding your technically minded target audience is vital
As with all elements of marketing, understanding your target audience is key to success. You must tailor your brand to suit the interests and needs of your business. Creating audience personas can help to focus the creative mind on delivering a brand that will represent and engage your desired market. Step into your targets shoes and look at who you should be.
Remember, you can’t be everything to everyone. Design and position your B2B brand to the audience that will help meet your overall business and sales goals.
Technical B2B brand considerations
How do you want your business to be perceived? Are you a friendly, small but professional team that can offer a personal touch? Are you looking to grow your international business? Or do you want your brand to make you seem larger than you are because you want to grow your market opportunity? Branding is a powerful and clever element to help influence the target market into buying into your perceived vision. Your branding considerations must align with your business goals.
Structured market competitor analysis
Evaluating the market place and the progressive and non-progressive brands within it is an important step in our creative research process. By using our brand quadrant (below), we can rank and evaluate all key market players and their brand elements. We look at either end of the progressive scale so we are aware of what works and what to shy away from. It also helps determine the area of the market where the client can compete thus ensuring an appropriate B2B brand is delivered.
All logo used are not owned or associated by Motion Marketing Ltd.
Finding your difference in the technical market
Finding your voice and standing out in the crowd is a common reason why many decide to undertake a rebrand. We want to find the gap in the marketplace, discover what colours are saturated or underused and what will keep the connection to the existing marketplace and target audience.
At Motion, our creative team use our tried and tested ‘competition colour wheel’, as shown below. From our market competitor research, we can visually evaluate B2B brand identities. For example, for many of our technology clients we found blue to be a colour overly saturated in the market – but getting the balance between being recognised as a key player in the industry and rising above the noise can be tricky to get right.
To help with differentiation we also look at imagery, videography, iconography and infographic styling from across the competition – considering hero imagery, personas, technical graphics styling, human connection compared with technology connection etc – ultimately getting an overall picture that ensures your brand competes effectively.
Fortunately, our long history and experience working in the manufacturing, engineering and IT sectors allow us to identify the perfect balance of maintaining the market heritage and finding that competitive edge.
All logo used are not owned or associated by Motion Marketing Ltd.
Logo creations that work in across all B2B channels
Often considered the main visual identity of a brand, the logo creation goes through many stages of development. We test various colours, icons and typography to cover all bases. From making sure a logo is easy-to-read and demands attention when amongst other brand logos at a busy event, to being bold and clean on a website header, we understand a competitive and successful logo needs to work across a range of online and offline channels. It is also important to remember that a logo is a key piece of the visual brand, but the visual brand is a lot more than just your logo.
B2B brand consistency is key to building trust and loyalty
To build brand affinity and ultimately, create brand advocates, branding must be consistent across all marketing channels and touchpoints to help create a unified experience for customers and prospects. B2B brand consistency is important to a business, as it helps to build trust and loyalty, all of which are crucial when it comes to influencing a potential buyer’s decision.
From the outset of a technical branding project, consistency is considered. We can help create the tools and guides your content writers need to ensure that tone of voice, messaging and imagery are consistent throughout and so that your target audience is exposed to the same core message and values that your brand offers for maximum opportunity. Our handy branding checklist might also help you identify the collateral and channels missing from your brand.
Could your B2B brand benefit from a refresh to maintain that competitive edge? Get in touch with Motion’s creative team to learn more about your marketplace and what you should be applying to your brand to help you achieve your business goals. Or, get some branding inspiration from our recent creative projects.
