Many business-to-business CEOs view marketing as the domain of consumer goods brands. They are wrong. Interbrand’s 10 most valuable global brands include Microsoft, Google, IBM and GE. All generate far more B2B revenues than sales to end consumers.
Harvard Business School Professor John Quelch shares these five characteristics of top B2B global brands:
- The CEO is a willing brand cheerleader, loves the brand heritage and is a great storyteller. The CMO sees his or her purpose as helping the CEO achieve this role.
- The CEO understands that building brand reputation reduces commercial risk, insulates the company in a crisis and provides the common purpose that can bond all the company’s stakeholders.
- Efforts are focused on a single, global corporate brand rather than individual product brands.
- The payback on marketing expenditures is measured rigorously to the satisfaction of the hard-nosed engineers and finance staff who run the typical B2B enterprise
- Coordination of company websites worldwide to present a consistent face to stakeholders is the best way to get control of marketing communications that may have become too decentralized.
