Unveil the Hidden Power of B2B Branding: Decoding Your Brand's DNA for Explosive Business Growth

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, the ultimate resource for business leaders eager to skyrocket their company's growth! I'm your host, Kerry Curran, and this episode is, “Unveil the Hidden Power of B2B Branding: Decoding Your Brand's DNA for Explosive Business Growth” with special guest Joe Lovett, Fractional CMO and Founder of Proving Ground.

In this episode, we'll discuss why B2B companies often overlook the importance of branding, the critical steps to build a purposeful brand strategy, and how aligning your brand with your business goals can shorten sales cycles and drive revenue. We'll also delve into Joe's robust and defined framework for creating a brand that stands out, resonates with your audience, and ultimately leads to sustained growth.

Tune in to discover the secrets of B2B branding and how to decode your brand’s DNA for explosive business growth. Whether you’re looking to refine your brand strategy or seeking ways to accelerate your revenue, this episode is packed with actionable insights and expert advice. Don’t miss out on unlocking the hidden power of your brand!

Transcript

Podcast Guest: Joe Lovett

Host: Kerry Curran

Topic: Unveil the Hidden Power of B2B Branding: Decoding Your Brand's DNA for Explosive Business Growth

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, the ultimate resource for business leaders eager to skyrocket their company's growth! 

I'm your host, Kerry Curran, and this episode is, “ Unveil the Hidden Power of B2B Branding: Decoding Your Brand's DNA for Explosive Business Growth” With special guest Joe Lovett, Fractional CMO and Founder of Proving Ground 

In this episode, we'll discuss why B2B companies often overlook the importance of branding, the critical steps to build a purposeful brand strategy, and how aligning your brand with your business goals can shorten sales cycles and drive revenue. We'll also delve into Joe's robust and defined framework for creating a brand that stands out, resonates with your audience, and ultimately leads to sustained growth.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:00.76)

Welcome Joe. Joe would love for you to introduce yourself and share a bit about your consultancy.

Joe Lovett (00:08.864)

Yeah, thank you, Kerry. Appreciate you having me on today. My name is Joe Lovett, and I am a fractional CMO for a company called Proving Ground. Just a little bit about me, Kerry and I actually worked together many years ago in the search engine marketing space. We were saying on the… we were talking on the prep for this podcast that really still think that that helps shape my perspective because in search you really have to think through who is the target audience, what do they care about, what are they looking for, where are they in the journey, all these constant things that you have to think about.

But from there, I went to a couple different agencies, bounced around a couple different agencies. Last place I was the strategic, the head of intelligence and head of strategy at a local agency here in Boston, and then struck out on my own and been doing this for about four years. I typically work with small to medium startups in the technology space mostly.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:18.04)

Awesome. Thanks Joe. Yes. Joe said we worked together a long time ago back when the brand differentiator was people are processed in our technology. So hopefully if you get anything from the conversation today, it will be to be a little bit more specific in your brand strategy and messaging. But yeah, the first, the original, the first. Yeah.

Joe Lovett (01:37.408)

That's right. Yeah. Or the first. You forgot about the first. The original, the first, you know, all those great differentiators.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:46.904)

And we were, it was a good time. But yeah, so Joe, I know you've worked with a number of brands and brand challenges over the years. So kind of, especially when you're talking to your newer clients or prospects, like what do brands ask you? What are they asking you for?

Joe Lovett (02:06.304)

Yeah, you know, I don't. I mean, there's I think on the B2C side typically work with B2B and on the B2C side, I think having a brand is a pretty well known thing. On the B2B side, it's a little bit. I don't know if they're about getting their product in the hands, showing the impact on the business.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:19.48)

Mm-hmm.

Joe Lovett (02:29.536)

Things like that, they don't really recognize that a brand is necessarily needed. I think that's probably something that they look at not being a priority. So I always, I probably have to do a little bit of the heavier lifting when it comes to selling and saying, hey, you actually need a brand. There was actually a study a number of years ago that, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:35.928)

Mm -hmm.

Joe Lovett (02:53.92)

… people actually felt a tighter connection with a B2B brand than they do a B2C brand. So for instance, companies like Cisco or IBM or things like that, their customers actually had a tighter connection with that brand than they do say, you know, the top consumer brands, Tesla or Apple or you name it. And part of it is like, if you make the wrong decision, like with a phone or with a car, like, yeah, it's gonna suck.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:01.08)

Interesting. Yeah.

Joe Lovett (03:23.264)

But it doesn't necessarily impact your career or your livelihood, whereas you really are placing a lot of trust into a software, for example, that you choose or whatever B2B vendor that you choose for your organization. So it does make sense that there's actually a stronger connection with brands.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:45.912)

And what happens when they think a brand is just their colors and logo? Or how do you explain to them it's a little bit more than that?

Joe Lovett (03:54.176)

Yeah, and that's another great point. We got a logo, it looks kind of cool, it sort of represents us, even though we don't have much rationality for it. We really haven't done our due diligence if it looks like any other marks out there. And all right, let's go with it. And it doesn't really mean a whole lot, and it doesn't really do a whole lot in terms of marketing. So I do take my clients through a pretty purposeful branding exercise to get them to … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:09.592)

Yeah.

Joe Lovett (04:24.082)

… you know, not just the tone and style of that logo, but what it actually means and what they as a company stand for and who they serve.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:36.44)

Right. And so do you have a challenge in convincing them to make the investment and that this is a strategy?

Joe Lovett (04:45.6)

You know, I believe, so a lot of times, and I'm sure you can identify with this, Kerry, a lot of times they come in and they say, we need a better website or we need a newsletter or we need an SEO friendly website or whatever that is. They tend to be very tactical. And I try to approach things. I think it's just kind of my nature being in strategy. I try to approach things from a very purposeful direction. Like, okay, who are we serving? What do you do? How are you different? Tell us about those types of things so that, and once you spend time doing that, then it makes all of those other things easier. 

Then we can identify and say, okay, a newsletter is going to be a great place to engage with them. And it just makes, once you have that brand and that direction, what you're out there saying to the market, everything becomes a lot more purposeful and effective and efficient.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:40.024)

Yeah, no, definitely. And what I'm seeing too is that, especially in B2B, they're kind of doubling, they need revenue, they need sales quickly, they need new customers. And so their reactive approach is to lean into sales, double down on their cold calling, cold email, looking at the bottom of the funnel versus kind of building up that strategy, that brand strategy for revenue. And it's so critical. What are you seeing in that kind of conversation about tying it all to revenue?

Joe Lovett (06:18.816)

Yeah, it is absolutely a challenge because you obviously got to have revenue to support some of your more sort of like to have, and revenue solves a bunch of challenges. What I would just say to that is if we spend a little bit of time doing these types of background, a fundamental of blueprint type activities that …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:28.888)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Joe Lovett (06:46.112)

… you're going to get your revenue better, right? You're going to shorten your sales cycles. You're going to reach the right audience. You're not going to have a lot of noise. If you're out there, you know, if ad buying is something you want to do, you'll be able to target people more efficiently and drive that revenue. So and just what messages are you out there saying that ultimately tie back to the problem that you solve and the value that you give? So it's, you know, it's part and parcel, I believe, like that the …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:14.808)

Mm -hmm.

Joe Lovett (07:16.018)

… strong brands and how you generate revenue are kind of the same, you know, the same coin, the different sides of the same coin, whatever that whatever that quote is.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:27.)

Right. No, and that's the thing too, like you're saying, like the more defined your brand is, your ICP coming out of the gate, I love what you said about you shortening the sales cycle. You're just making everything so much more effective and getting to that revenue, hopefully more quickly.

Joe Lovett (07:48.032)

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:50.264)

But yeah, you have a pretty robust and defined framework that I know your clients are benefiting from. Walk us through that, because I found it very interesting.

Joe Lovett (07:59.776)

Sure, yeah, absolutely. So envision just a bullseye target, right? And in the center there is a brand target, right? The next center out is going to be your brand purpose, your mission, why you do what you do. The next step out is gonna be the brand positioning, like...

Where do you live against other brands? What is your position in the marketplace? Then we go to the brand archetype. What is the tonality? Or your brand just at a high level?

And then we go into the brand style. And the style is really creative, the design works in the mark and what makes it uniquely you and conveys all of those things that I just went through. So what I just want to take you through was starting out with that brand target in the center …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:58.872)

Mm -hmm.

Joe Lovett (09:00.096)

… and take you through the brand archetype discussion if that works. All right, cool. So I …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:05.752)

Yeah, definitely.

Joe Lovett (09:09.92)

… I love that Abraham Lincoln quote that if I had eight hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend six of them sharpening my axe. And it's the same thing with defining your target audience. So I would encourage brands to go and spend a bunch of time really understanding their audience, right? Like if they have current customers, talk to your current customers. Why did they choose you? What were they using before? What do they love about it? You know, what are their frustrations? Like really understanding the category. 

Also talk to some of your prospects that you might have lost. Reconnect with them and say, hey, something we were really working on changing out our brand, and we want to better understand our customers and what you care about. Why did we lose? What could we have done better? Why did you choose who you chose? And just really kind of conducting these qualitative interviews, I think, gives you a tremendous amount of insight to how your audience thinks. There's multiple decision makers and a BDA to be an environment. So I encourage you to talk to the tech folks, talk to the executive decision maker, talk to the …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:15.8)

Mm -hmm.

Joe Lovett (10:22.752)

… you know, talk to the people that spearhead the search, like figure out who they are and talk to all of them and really understand them. So because then once you really understand that, then all of a sudden those campaigns and I mean, after we go through all these steps, the campaigns and what you do in the messages you send are gonna be that much more effective because you know what those pain points are. You know where you stand kind of in there.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:28.248)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And just asking again, like you're saying, would the customer care about this? Like, is this important to them and making sure that you're aligning?

Joe Lovett (10:57.568)

Yeah, great point. Yeah and once you create this and you create a beautiful persona that has an image with what your customer kind of looks like and maybe a big quote, and then you're right, you can always go back and say, even from a product development standpoint, OK, we're adding this feature. Do they care about this? Maybe they don't. Maybe they care about something else. So you can use it for other aspects of your business besides just marketing.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:26.488)

Yeah, no, I love this. And it definitely the bullseye imagery just reinforces that it is a build and that there's that core foundation. Yeah, and so walk us through the next circle.

Joe Lovett (11:32.704)

Yeah, and then I'll just kind of finalize this and just leave you with like, I always like to see if you can fill in the blanks, like I need, you know, so what is their goal? What's their objective? So that, like sometimes it's not evident. Like I need an ERP SAS or I need, you know, to upgrade this. Like you can be a little more clear, but if you put so that, you are diving a little bit deeper.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:42.488)

Yeah, sorry. Right.

Joe Lovett (12:07.36)

On what actually they're looking for and why they're looking for it?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:07.608)

Yeah, no, I love that you were talking about that in the Mad Libs perspective. So give us some examples so we can visualize that a bit.

Joe Lovett (12:13.792)

Yeah, so I would say, like, I need a, and the clearer you can be, so I need a SAS ERP that replaces my, or sorry, SAS ERP that replaces our, sort of start one that we started when we were a startup that is able to connect our manufacturing to, you know, to something like that. So, and then, you know, we can be more efficient and effective in how we allocate parts and resources and those types. Exactly.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:53.848)

Mm-hmm. Solving the problems. Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. Yeah.

Joe Lovett (13:00.672)

And then something maybe like, if only, and what is the challenge that they're currently experiencing? Maybe, as we said in this example, this was a product that they purchased when they were a real startup and maybe didn't have all the bells and whistles. So what is their current challenge that they're existing with?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:21.976)

Mm-hmm.

Joe Lovett (13:22.752)

Or sorry, if only it was more like if it only had this, if it only was able to connect this, if only it was a cloud based and we didn't have to hire more IT folks to support it, you know, but then what is kind of the big challenge that they're experiencing? So if you just kind of type in for the portrait, you know, and do all your research and say, if only so that I'm sorry, I need so that if only. But once you get there, you've got a pretty good start on a robust framework for your …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:34.936)

Mm-hmm.

Joe Lovett (13:52.032)

… you know, for your customer portrait or profile.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:54.904)

Yeah, no, that's very helpful. Thank you. Yeah.

Joe Lovett (13:57.312)

Yeah. So then the next step out in our imaginary bullseye here is brand purpose. And … what framework I like to use is, you know, if you can imagine a quadrant, I'm asking everyone to imagine a lot of things here, but keep them all in your head. So in the top left is your fuel. Like what is that thing that's happening out in the marketplace today? You know, it's that cultural fuel. It's the trends that are happening. It's like, why is your audience doing, you know, or what are the

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:12.568)

Mm-hmm. A lot of shapes.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:26.424)

Mm-hmm.

Joe Lovett (14:35.89)

What are the impacts that they're seeing out there? What trends are they seeing? For example, in today's world, it's probably like AI and machine learning, right? Like anybody that isn't sort of looking for solutions that connect AI to them is probably, so that's just one example. And then, so your top right quadrant is what behaviors are your audience exhibiting in the context of your business?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:51.064)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Joe Lovett (15:04.896)

Because of that fuel, so because of that. So in an apple example, the fuel would be like we constantly become more similar and it's harder and harder to differentiate ourselves. The behavior is that we do things, we create, we dress differently, we try to...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:20.344)

Mm-hmm.

Joe Lovett (15:29.248)

We try to differentiate ourselves even though society and the norms want to continue to make us this monolithic culture. So those are two examples there. So then bottom left, now you start getting into your brand. So because of the fuel and the behavior, sorry, because of the fuel, what is your conviction? So we believe. What are we passionate about?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:50.104)

Yeah.

Joe Lovett (15:56.)

You know, so in context, and a lot of times I love working with founders because they actually started a company because, you know, there was something missing in the world or it didn't have a feature pack that they wanted to have. So they got frustrated and started their own thing. And I love those kinds of stories. So like, what is that conviction? And then bottom right is the purpose. So the conviction is what the brain believes and the purpose is like, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:15.096)

Yeah.

Joe Lovett (16:24.608)

… why we exist. We exist too, which is really kind of solving for that behavior fuel and that conviction, which ultimately becomes the purpose. So in the...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:27.096)

Mm-hmm. That yeah, I was writing. I was drawing it all out as you're going through it. That's definitely helpful.

Joe Lovett (16:42.784)

You're good. Good. Hopefully everyone at home is doing that as well. So just kind of taking our Apple example. So conviction would be, you know, we believe in helping people establish that, you know, be unique, you know, and then their purpose is, you know, we believe in helping people be creators and express their creativity or something like that.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:46.424)

Yeah.

Joe Lovett (17:10.496)

It's probably not exactly that, but you can kind of see where that's going from a brand standpoint. So now you've actually established your purpose.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:16.664)

Yeah, and is part of that work just reiterating or defining the unique value prop or does that kind of come out there to make sure that it isn't just our people process and technology?

Joe Lovett (17:32.576)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a great point. I think sometimes it's good to step back and sort of say, what do we believe in? Like, why do we exist? Because yes, we have a value prop, but … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:42.168)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Joe Lovett (17:47.296)

Sometimes the value prop is in terms of like, we help you save 10% of money on this and that, which can be okay, right? That could be a valid differentiator, but it's good to sort of explore back and kind of say, okay, like let's go external, right? What is that external fuel? What's the external behavior that our target is experiencing? Now let's tie that to our differentiation and what we believe in and why we exist.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:55.416)

Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Lovett (18:17.6)

And then you can go back and rectify it and say, okay, now let's go back and look at our value proposition. Are these things connected? Are they different? You know, is it, does it still feel strong? Does it feel like something we want to keep, we want to refine? But it's just another way to look at it and kind of go really deep into those core building blocks of why the company exists in the first place.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:20.76)

Right. Mm-hmm.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:41.624)

Yeah, no, that's super helpful. And then so where do you do your work, you work with your teams, your clients to kind of build this out? And then how do you take them to the next step?

Joe Lovett (18:43.392)

Yeah.

Joe Lovett (18:54.784)

So then I use that mad lib positioning template that you were talking about. So this is just more mad libs, but it's, you know, so I usually use a template that's like to, you know, the audience, you know, so I was using Volvo as an example the other day, Kerry. So, you know, to the audience, to safety minded, you know, to safety minded families, you know, or that's not probably not necessarily the buyer. So the,

The decision maker, the transportation decision maker of safety minded families or safety minded parents. What is the category? So it is the luxury vehicle, luxury car. What is the key benefit? So the luxury vehicle that is the highest rated, safest car that money can buy.

You know, because of our advanced technologies in, you know, I'm making this up, I don't own a Volvo, crumple zones, airbags, you know, whatever new cool feature that they just came out with that's, you know, super safe and super, you know, 10 point belted seat belts, you know, for the back seat or something.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:09.944)

Mm-hmm.

Joe Lovett (20:18.208)

And then I always like to add, unlike, you know, and then you can put kind of your core, your key competitors there, you know, and what are they out there saying? So, you know, what I haven't talked about is like actually looking at what your competitors are out there saying, which is a good step into this process, but at least here you're kind of saying, okay, this is our position template and it's unlike, you know, in this case, maybe BMW, which is, you know, engineered to be more of a driving machine, you know, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:33.048)

Right.

Joe Lovett (20:48.114)

… and freedom on the road. So now you're starting to think, okay, is this different? Does this resonate? We've done our research with the audience. We sort of know why we exist, right? We exist because we believe that people deserve safer cars or life is violent out there. You should be safe or whatever that is. And then we see that it's different from some of the other competitors out there.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:14.292)

Yeah. No, this is great. And it's a very helpful framework and lots of shapes, but lots of actionable steps to take. It's great. So yeah, as long as you're not listening to this in your car, it's good to kind of draw it out as you're working on it. Yeah, no, Joe, this is great. And it's definitely, you know...

Joe Lovett (21:22.112)

Yes.

Joe Lovett (21:25.952)

Lots of quadrants, bullseyes, mad libs, you know.

Joe Lovett (21:34.4)

Right. Absolutely.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:42.616)

And as you're saying at the beginning, an important framework to invest in at the beginning to make everything more efficient and really work better together to drive that business growth. So yeah. So this is great. Thank you so much. And hopefully we can have you on again soon.

Joe Lovett (21:53.152)

Yeah, absolutely.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Why is brand personality so important?

Joe Lovett 

You know, it's really with your brand itself, it really helps shape who your brand is. Right. So you're either, you know, are you the 800 pound gorilla that's super confident and, you know, and like an IBM, no one ever got no one ever got fired for using IBM. Or are you more, you know, are you more that challenger brand and those that are going to be the outlaw and just disruptive and kind of change up the market?

So it really depends. I think it's rooted in what your audience is looking for But as you go out with your different tonalities You start being able to help Ideate like where your campaigns are. So let's just back up for a moment.

If you Google brand archetype wheel, again another shape here, but you'll see like different brands. So for example, it's got like creator, explorer, outlaw, hero …

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Mm -hmm.

Joe Lovett 

… you know, what are some brand examples? Tesla would be the hero, Apple would be the creator, Jeep would be the explorer, Outlaw would be like Harley Davidson or Dos Equis or something. So you can start seeing how these brands, now these are very broad personality traits.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Mm -hmm.

Joe Lovett 

But you can sort of start seeing along the wheel like where do you want to where do you want to live? And once you recognize where you want to live then you can kind of start digging deeper and saying okay now let's start building out our tonality of how we want to write. You know of the style guides that we ultimately will have to express that you know whether again you're in every you're an every man or you're very exclusive or you're … you know, more jovial or whatever those things are. So it's important to have that as a framework and then you get tighter, you define that tighter as you figure that out.

Kerry Curran, RBMA

Great, thank you. And so why is brand important for revenue growth?

Joe Lovett 

Yeah.

I believe it's really part and parcel with revenue growth. So I've got a lot of clients out there that just want to focus on driving that revenue, right? Like get as many sales people on the phone, give them kind of a rough script to talk about, and then just start smiling and dialing or create a newsletter or start advertising or whatever it is. And with anything, especially in the startup environment, you want to do things as a …

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Mm -hmm.

Joe Lovett 

… efficiently and effectively as possible. And when you have a brand that you know what your core message is, you know why you exist, you've created your campaigns and even some of your ads and things like that that are rooted in what the customer cares about and why you exist and how you're different, then everything just becomes that much easier. You can use that in all facets of business. 

Whether it's product development or even employee growth and things like that, as well as marketing. So it's one of those things that once you have that message down, once you know your core story and how you want to convey it to the marketplace, just everything becomes faster, everything becomes more efficient, everyone's singing from the same song sheet, and you're going to see that revenue growth.

Kerry Curran, RBMA

That's great and so important. Great, thank you. All right. 

How does the marketing strategy connect into, or let me start over. Why is marketing strategy so important for a sales deck or pitch deck?

Joe Lovett 

Yeah, I - I'm a big fan of starting with the pitch deck. So I actually had a client come to me one time and they had spent $50,000 on a brand guideline with another agency, brand study, brand guideline, and they had about $3,000 to execute. And I was just like, my God. And they were very proud of this brand study that sat on the shelf. But in my experience, brand guidelines are great, but …

… really only the graphic designers use them, right? Where a pitch deck on the other hand is a working document that's actively out there driving revenue for you all day long. So I actually, a lot of times don't recommend a true brand guideline that you spend a boatload of money on. I actually recommend putting that money into sales pitch decks because once you're like creating, you go through all of the steps that we talked about today, but go through and you're like,

Your first asset is that sales deck, all of a sudden all your salespeople are telling the same story, right? They're, that's rooted in what the audience cares about. So you're bringing them some insights on what you know about them and how you're solving specific problems and doing it in a way that you say, here's why we exist. Because it's not necessarily that we help you save money or drive.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Mm -hmm.

Joe Lovett 

Revenue or whatever your whatever the value add you is, add that you create is, but it's also about why you do what you do. And you know, if you look at Simon Sinek and is, you know, people don't necessarily care what you do. They care why you do it. And if you can convey why you exist and what you're passionate about, what problem or issue in the world that you're out there solving, then that's that that's a working document, a working asset that's going to just …

Kerry Curran, RBMA

Mm -hmm.

Joe Lovett

… pay dividends for you down the road.

Kerry Curran, RBMA

That's great. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. Awesome. Yeah, this was great. Thank you. Really good.

Joe Lovett 

Yeah. Yeah. Cool.