Last month at Bowery’s annual Marketing Summit, we were joined by Marybeth Sheppard, SVP of Marketing at SEVENROOMS, and Marco Marandiz, Former Head of Marketing at Elliot, to talk about “B2B SaaS Branding.” You can find the full video replay of their session below (or here).
Below we have summarized some of the key takeaways:
1. When selling B2B SaaS you are still selling to a person (even though they represent an enterprise). If you can connect well with an individual at a target company, they can become a champion for your product. Branding is the emotional element of selling B2B products, and is the sum of all the touch points that instill a perception of brand in a person’s mind. When branding is done well, every ad and communication channel is an application of the brand, and communicates to the person on the other side what the promise of your company is. The goal of branding is for the buyer to see the company as not a faceless platform, but as a partner.
2. Communicate a clear brand image to employees to foster brand consistency. Define the core principals of the brand, and then explore how they can be expanded – and where they can’t be expanded. A strong “nucleus” allows a brand to be built out effectively and accurately. Once the entire team at a company has a sense of its own brand, employees have a starting point for every project they tackle. This includes the logos, fonts, colors, and tone that is adopted by all internal and external communications. While it’s important to remain consistent across the company, a brand can evolve to respond to changes in the world and the company’s place in it.
3. Strong branding will “grease the wheels” for every other process in B2B SaaS. While some marketers still believe in a wide omni-channel brand presence, you can build a lot of traction by effectively marketing over just a few platforms that fit your brand. Branding may reduce the number of channels that need to be experimented with, because often it is clear which platforms work well for a defined brand. Branding also has the potential to make the entire sales lifecycle more effective and efficient by filling in a lot of the white space that exists when a customer first hears about a B2B SaaS company. Even the hiring process can be streamlined by strong branding – more than ever, the team in the office is a large component of branding.
Marybeth Sheppard (left) is currently the SVP of Marketing at SEVENROOMS. Prior to SEVENROOMS, Marybeth was a marketing leader at GrubHub, Seamless, and Zer0 to 5ive.
Marco Marandiz (right) is the former Head of Marketing at Elliot. Prior to Elliot, Marco was a Product Manager at HomeAway and Kogg (which he co-founded), as well as a software developer for Capital One and Boston Scientific.
If you liked “B2B SaaS Branding” and want to read more content from the Bowery Capital Team, check out other relevant posts from the Bowery Capital Blog.
