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The strategic approach to selling: SMBs, SMEs and Enterprise personalization.

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The strategic approach to selling SMBs SMEs and Enterprise personalization website
Blogs

The strategic approach to selling: SMBs, SMEs and Enterprise personalization.

The strategic approach to selling: SMBs, SMEs and Enterprise personalization.

Boosting your sales needs you to think from different perspectives. And that is possible when you tailor your selling to different types of business.

Sales is the fabric that holds an organization together. Effective sales bring all efforts to fruition and help a business realize its mission.

There is a single reason companies close their doors: running out of money. 90% of SaaS companies shut down in the first year because of this.

How do you overcome this failure rate? Every founder and leader unfamiliar with sales should make it part of their entrepreneurial lifestyle. Only once a leader/founder has understood the twists and turns they need to navigate to sell their product and service will they be able to set up a team of salespeople who can deliver their goals.

Clarity is necessary for a sales team to deliver success. Clarity they might be able to achieve through trial and error. But why wait for that? As a leader, you must provide that clarity for them at the grassroots level of your organization.

This comes by understanding the processes essential for managing sales at different organizational sizes. i.e., The three types of businesses: SMBs, SMEs, and Enterprises.

As each size requires a different approach to sales, you must understand how to tackle their needs, what they expect from your solution, and the consultant approach to sales across different organizational types.

Sales is consulting the buyer and listening to their needs.

Sales require an understanding of many fields. Especially in the B2B market, where a product solves many problems from different domains. The sales team must convey what problem their product solves for ICPs in various segments to help them understand the benefits of using it.

Low-quality leads are not the only cause of sales failure. Not understanding buyer needs is also a vital reason.

Organizational leaders, especially start-ups, must quickly grasp this idea and understand industry requirements. Especially selling to a company based on the size.

Because according to the size, you have to sell them scalability and a dream of growth.

Here, sales teams must perform the all-important role of consultant. A strategic resource that shows the potential growth they can unlock with your product.

Listening to buyer needs

“Listening” is the most crucial skillset of a salesperson. It helps them identify the gaps in the buyers’ stack and, importantly, the goal the buyer is headed toward.

The goal will help salespeople position their product as the best solution and sell them a safer organizational structure.

Sales as a consultant

Sales must position themselves as risk-mitigating agents. And that is where the trends are headed.

Self-buying is becoming more prominent. On the other hand, buyers who self-buy report higher levels of dissatisfaction with the product.

Doesn’t that sound weird? It shows that without salespeople to guide them, buyers might not understand the long-term implications of the product.

Salespeople can bridge this gap and create greater satisfaction for the prospect. And that is where leadership comes into play. A founder or Director of Sales must understand the specific problem of their buyer and the strategic benefits the product offers for long-term growth.

This strategy benefits the buyer and seller by engaging in a quid-pro-quo deal.

  1. Does your product disrupt their status quo?
  2. What is the benefit of incorporating the product into their organization?
  3. What are the possible growth levers unlocked for their organization through your product’s usage?

Sales teams must answer these questions and gain the potential buyers’ trust to close.

The potential is in the company’s size.

A company’s size determines many things. Their budget, needs, and potential for growth are based on the current size of their organization.

It is beneficial for the sales rep to tailor their pitch to the company’s size. The method of personalization will break the buyer from analysis paralysis. There isn’t an all-size-fits-all approach.

Personalize the pitch to organizational size for greater success.

Organizational sizes are divided into three: –

SMEs SMBs and Enterprise with content 4 1

SMB (Small to Medium Business)

These are small businesses or start-ups that have just begun operations or haven’t grown past a limit in terms of employee size and revenue. Usually, SMBs have less than 100 employees.

  • SME (Small to Medium Enterprise)

SMEs are tricky to define. Different countries have different definitions based on employee size and revenue. Here, an in-depth research into the buyer will provide a clear picture into

  • Enterprise (Large scale organizations)

Enterprise or large-scale organizations are resource-heavy businesses. These companies are available in multiple countries and localities and employ over a thousand employees.

As you may have noticed, each organization will have different structures based on size and revenue. As such, you can personalize your pitch according to the size.

For each of the different types, let’s explore the strategy for the three types.

SMBs or (Small to Medium Business)

SMBs are the perfect place to get creative with your teams. Usually, these businesses provide a great opportunity for selling.

The process is less complex than in bigger companies as there are fewer decision-makers.

For SMBs, the advantages can be broken down like this: –

  1. Shorter sales cycle
  2. Fewer decision-makers
  3. More opportunities to identify a champion and get the buy-in
  4. Understanding your GTM strategies and testing your ICPs’ response to it
  5. Deployment of the demo is easier across systems.
  6. Sales reps can build a personal relationship with their account, helping them increase CLTV.

In short, there is ease of selling. But how can we leverage these points to close?

SMBs want to expand their business or streamline processes, but they are at risk on every corner. What SMBs want most is a tool that enables them to grow and mitigate the risks involved in their industry.

And they have limited budgets, which means they will be more aware of possible solutions and will drop ones that are more expensive or seem irrelevant. To sell to SMBs, your sales reps should:

  1. Research the industry in which the SMB exists and the problems surrounding that industry.
  2. What are the potential growth opportunities for the company in that field?
  3. And how does your product enable them to achieve that growth?
  4. Is your product in their budget range, and what is the ROI it can deliver?
  5. How does it integrate with their systems and existing stack?

Such questions will empower your sales teams to understand SMB requirements and provide a viable solution catering to their needs.

SME (Small to Medium Enterprises)

SMEs offer a bit more flexibility in terms of budget. SMEs are not like SMBs. Even though there is flexibility, there is a hierarchy to work with.

It is like a double-edged sword. These SMEs are not exactly full-fledged conglomerates but are edging towards it. And therein lies the secret.

Any SME wants to achieve growth in their domain. They have been a player in the industry for long. With that in mind, for growth, they must outwit competition. The advantages of an SME can be broken down into: –

  1. Flexible Budget
  2. Open to experimentation for the potential of growth
  3. A sizable set of users is a chance to test your product on a larger pool.
  4. Exposure to complex IT systems
  5. Increased Revenue compared to SMBs

SMEs are the primary sources of employment. Between SMEs and SMBs, the two provide 99.9% of jobs in market. And as such, they are looking for stable Y-o-Y profits. SMEs have a responsibility to maintain stability.

To sell to these, you must answer and ask yourself: –

  1. Make them understand the benefit of adding your product to their suite.
  2. What is the edge your product gives them that a competitor may not?
  3. They are risk averse, and you must show them how your product stabilizes their organization.
  4. Is your product evading or providing relief from a possible economic downturn?
  5. How does your product do that?
  6. What possible worst-case scenarios exist in their industry, and what does your product do to alleviate them?

Such inquiry will help understand the risk-averse nature of SMEs. And provide them with a solid solution that does not disrupt their status quo but adds to it, creating a stronger foundation.

Enterprise

What is an Enterprise’s main goal? In the words of Konosuke Matsushita, an enterprise exists to satisfy the people’s desire to live a life of greater abundance.

We could also say it is to provide value to their stakeholders— from shareholders to the end customer.

As such, the decision-making for enterprises is more deliberate and longer than SMBs and SMEs.

But, first, let’s talk about the advantages of Enterprises.

  1. An Enterprise is a shark because of its ability to pay hefty sums for a great solution
  2. That means an increased CLTV
  3. They can experiment with their stack to see what works and are more open to dialog.
  4. More chances to upsell and cross-sell due to higher budgets
  5. Building brand credibility because of their name

An enterprise provides a hefty benefit. But they seek a product that creates a unique edge; an innovation.

To sell to the enterprise, a sales strategy calls for: –

  1. Making the buyer understand the value it builds for its stakeholders. Enterprises care about the bottom line for their customers and shareholders.
  2. The enterprise buying committee has 8-11 members. Identifying and reaching them via ABM with marketing teams is necessary.
  3. Does the solution make their processes easy? And does it help with collaborative efforts across the organization?
  4. What integrations does the product support?
  5. Is your product intuitive for a large organization and people at every level?
  6. Or is it a specialized tool only for a few skilled employees?
  7. If yes, how does the product enhance the productivity of the skilled users?

Selling to an enterprise is a satisfying experience. But it takes patience and time, more so than the two smaller segments. But the returns are sweeter. And not just for your sales team but the entire organization.

The depth of sales is found in tailoring the experience to the buyer.

Buying has become complicated. Because of the frictionless B2C experience in their day-to-day life, buyers expect more.

They want to be catered to uniquely. And salespeople are primed to do that. They are the modern consultants who will guide their buyers to success and growth. Leaders and sales teams must understand that sales are the guardians of profits for any organization.

By understanding the nuances of organizational sizes, a sales team can position their solution as the only one capable of solving their particular problems.

And Ciente.io understands this complex interplay of sales and orchestrates an experience for your buyer. We enable leaders and organizations to streamline their marketing and sales processes for increased success.

Moving Beyond Traditional B2B Cross Border Payment Methods website
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Moving Beyond Traditional B2B Cross-Border Payment Methods

Moving Beyond Traditional B2B Cross-Border Payment Methods

B2B buyers demand secure integrated payment solutions. Will cross-border businesses adopt new methods or find a balance with the conventional ones?

The need for secure and fast B2B cross-border payments has changed the course of digital economic development. With economic activities across borders leaping ahead with globalization, we require efficient and secure financial services management.

Even when businesses take a breather, trading continues. With a huge boost in the number of companies sprouting worldwide, the frequency of imports and exports has also escalated. This calls for continuous and connected payment solutions to avoid any hiccups.

One of the major challenges of cross-border payments is slow settlement – the material goods shipped from Hong Kong arrived faster in Singapore than the payment for the goods!

Today, with the widespread domestic adoption of FinTech, we can confidently define our domestic payments as secure, seamless, and fast.

Customers, merchants, and enterprises expect similar efficiency from international payments. Digital transformation has propelled shifts in financial services, and international growth has been steady but slow.

This has been highlighted as a major gap within frequent conversations surrounding digital development, especially traditional cross-border payment methods.

Additionally, to understand how tech has enabled changes in the financial systems, it is crucial to have a brief glimpse at the process involved in traditional international payments.

Simplifying Traditional B2B Cross-Border Payments

Cross-border payments are monetary transactions between a buyer and seller located across two different countries. They generally involve low-value payments across the B2B landscape.

The advantage here is the low currency conversion and transaction fees, given that the money is transacted internally.

The primary step of seamless cross-border transactions is highlighting three significant points – amount, currency, and method. Both parties should come to terms with these three factors to avoid miscommunication.

Next, regulations compliance is necessary, especially Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. Verifying the receiver’s identity in line with other relevant compliances can help you comply with the legal regulations.

Third, a reliable payment provider will help avoid any financial fraud. To select the appropriate one for a secure transaction, we factor in the currency exchange rates, the platform’s workability in the country, and overall intermediary fees.

Fourth, focus on accuracy. It is necessary to outline the correct payment details before making final transactions including the recipient’s name, your name, SWIFT or IBAN.

After gathering all the payment details and checking whether the details are correct, the next step is initiating the payment. Once you have submitted the request, the provider will process it through proper banking channels and convert it into the required currency.

Several payment providers allow you to track and monitor the payment, ensuring transparency regarding the status of your request. And when the status is visibly successful, you can notify the recipient party by sending them the confirmed receipt.

We have a simple understanding of how B2B cross-border payments work in our hands. And with the escalating economy and evolving market, cross-border payments need to keep up. This has led to challenges that must be addressed to make them accessible and convenient for end users.

Do We Need to Move Away from the Traditional Methods?

Across the functioning of traditional B2B cross-border payment platforms, one of the major concerns would be its effectiveness and flow. The absence of one leads to a waste of resources and substandard user experience.

Imagine the international payments network as a random patchwork, instead of a unified system. It is cluttered and disorganized.

The greater the number of banks involved, the longer the transaction and the higher the collective processing fee. This is because different banks have different formats, regulatory protocols, and compliance requirements they follow.

Due to such complicated threads between different banking services, a structure is required. The market for cross-border payments is set to increase to $250 trillion in 2027.

Any hitch could result in an unsatisfactory customer experience, especially when it does not meet the requirements on the ground.

To navigate these concerns during business transactions, an uninterrupted, reliable, and convenient payment means is necessary.

In B2B, clients are the drivers of growth and revenue. Client satisfaction, trust, and long-term loyalty are paramount.

The Disadvantage of Bilateral Networks

However, with glitches and obstacles in the payment systems, their experience can become underwhelming just as easily. This is the disadvantage of bilateral networks.

Bilateral networks work as a patchwork that lacks secure and organizational connectivity. The greater the number of banks involved, the more challenging transparency and timely transaction settlement become.

image 1

As illustrated above, the use of bilateral networks in cross-border payments is complex.

Multiple payment gateways between different banks across varied locations can introduce delays and inconsistencies. It is not cost-effective as the processing fees by each bank accumulate.

These issues are the reason why integrating emerging technologies such as blockchain with Visa is needed to transform cross-border payments. And instill a multilateral networking system.

Visa adopted blockchain technology into its services to improve the payment system.

The head of Crypto at Visa asserts that Visa aims to bridge the gap between cross-border business payments and modern tech.

“There is no requirement to do away with traditional cross-border payment methods but to understand how the innovations interact with the conventional ones”, says Cuy Sheffield.

Let us take an example from the current landscape of B2B cross-border payments – real-time payments.

Instant real-time payments are the changing face of cross-border payments. With escalating B2B marketplaces, research illustrates that instant payments can transform cross-border payments.

Payments are completed within seconds with direct proof of credit – a future step in banking.

With global commerce shaping the modern economy, the challenges of traditional banking systems have become detrimental. Delays, high hidden fees, and issues with currency conversion – the three apocalyptic horses of traditional wire transfer across borders.

How do we propel the international trade and address these challenges? By adopting real-time cross-border payments.

Real-time payment systems operate around the clock, ensuring international transactions are completed within seconds rather than hours or days.

This payment method has been adopted in the UK and the United States since 2008 and 2017, respectively.

Real-time B2B payments allow efficient financial transactions between two individuals, an individual, and a business, and two organizations, allowing them to witness the transaction stage in real-time.

Benefits of Real-Time Payments

This has enabled flexibility and transparency in the process, whereas previously, traditional cross-border bank transfers faced challenges in monitoring the origination of the payment to their completion.

The functioning of real-time payments boosts convenience.

There are negligible to no transaction fees included in this payment process, making it affordable and cheaper for regular activities. With lower transaction costs, businesses can diverge the savings into making their products and services cheaper and appealing to the general audience.

This can relatively elevate their profitability across the market, offering them the opportunity to build international partnerships and upgrade their solutions.

Additionally, via instant payments, we get instant notifications regarding the payment status, erasing our worries in regard to any financial fraud that might be involved.

The use of real-time payment methods is increasing as users give precedence to minimal effort.

When payments are initiated directly from the payee’s bank to the creditor, most of the complexities in the middle are erased. The transaction time automatically becomes faster as this can be done reliably using mobile numbers or email addresses.

Real-time payments for B2B cross-border payments could gradually lead to standardization in global payment systems, fitting the unique requirements worldwide.

So, unarguably, to harness the maximum potential of new fintech innovations, it is paramount to study how traditional payment systems are improved to align with emerging tech. They must function together as a unified system.

Visa’s Approach: Bridging Legacy and Innovation

Visa B2B Connect

Another example is the Visa B2B Connect, developed by Visa in 2019, which leverages multilateral networking for streamlined financial transactions across international borders.

image 4

Multilateral networking is straightforward. It enables transparency and facilitates trust between the payer and the receiver. There are no significant hitches due to the limited number of corresponding banks involved, i.e., by shortening payment chains.

It has helped transform the face of cross-border payments.

The goal was to negate the friction and execute security, transparency, and consistency of transactions. And multilateral networks allow us this convenience.

Visa B2B Connect utilizes a unique identity tokenization feature that changes crucial customer payment details, such as the account number, into a unique identifier to improve security.

This has changed how information moves between businesses across borders – fast, secure, and seamless. In its support, the general manager at IBM Blockchain assures us that Visa B2B Connect, with the help of blockchain architecture, has been a great step towards transforming cross-border payments.

Visa and Swift Partnership

Visa’s objective was to become the bridge between cross-border and local payment networks. To connect the two seamlessly, Visa partnered with Swift in 2023 to elevate the transparency and speed of B2B cross-border transactions.

With Swift GPI’s tracking capabilities, not only has the visibility of the transactions increased and become faster. In the traditional bilateral network, participating banks were different patchworks thus Swift GPI, in collaboration with Visa B2B Connect, has transformed it into a comprehensible structure.

This partnership promises clear and accurate data, especially for corporate clients, setting a benchmark for cross-border payments.

Visa studied client demands to give them what they want – reduced friction on payment rails.

While this is a step ahead, it is not the end of the race.

With the world witnessing transformations every breath, there is an urgent need for digital payment solutions. This especially includes the ones that address expanding supply chains, international asset management and investment flows, a rise in trade and e-commerce, and increased migrant remittances.

And we have witnessed drastic changes as cross-border payments aim to keep up with the other financial domains. Financial institutions have adopted blockchain and cryptocurrencies into their operations to enhance their customer experiences.

For example, launching the Visa Tokenized Asset Platform (VTAP) will help institutions issue stablecoins and facilitate the smooth integration of blockchain into their traditional operations.

Propelling the use of stablecoins across the industry, especially by other industry giants such as PayPal and Stripe.

Stablecoins, unlike traditional cryptocurrencies, offer price stability.

Hence, they are gradually becoming significant for large-value cross-border B2B payments. It has instilled connectivity across socioeconomic barriers, kickstarting a shift towards a cashless economy.

The primary requirement in the B2B cross-border payments landscape is seamless and secure day-to-day transactions.

The developing use of digital currencies can make promises by helping businesses tap into markets even with limited digital infrastructure and without the complexity of blockchain technology.

Every fintech innovation can be considered an experiment. Without implementing improvements, we would not understand where different banking solutions lack or emerge victorious.

With digital services evolving at an increasingly fast pace, the need for instant digital payments has risen – for enterprises as well as small businesses.

So, outlining the market preferences is paramount.

While there are yet to be concrete solutions that may permanently introduce stability for international transactions, we have specific tools that map the future direction of cross-border payments.

B2B cross-border payments have already undergone significant innovations that may change the face of digital payments in the near future. And that is the underlying hope.

The Expression of a Brand’s Identity: Graphic Design and Branding
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The Expression of a Brand’s Identity: Graphic Design and Branding

The Expression of a Brand’s Identity: Graphic Design and Branding

With minimalistic branding becoming the trend of the hour, can understanding the narrative behind the design process help brands find their voice?

The traditional definition of graphic design focuses more on its practical functionalities, i.e., illustrating what needs to be communicated, only considering it as a practice of doing.

Today, the domain of graphic design inhibits much more than that.

It does not merely involve typography, illustration, printing, and photography, though these allude to its origin. However, there are nuances involved that highlight why it has become crucial for businesses worldwide for branding purposes.

It involves both – thinking (idea generation) and doing (action of illustrating). In graphic design, these two elements are combined to form a channel of communication and emotional expression for brands.

A channel that helps brands instill unique messages, and appeal to their targeted audience.

In simple words, there remains a huge misconception that collates graphic design and branding with visual content.

However, marketers who leverage graphic design and branding services understand how significant graphic designers are. They know that the process and the product hold similar weight in branding. Its significance is quite visible across the marketing landscape, where graphic design is the guiding framework of the overall branding process. 

It is an instrument of persuasion, instruction, and information while being an expression of a strong brand identity.

Graphic design is the instrument that instills a narrative into your brand.

Your brand cannot remain a hollow echo of products and services but instead something similar to a live strong identity. More than encompassing a corporate value, it should hold a narrative.

Just as different colors in nature add a specific pop to the world, graphic design contributes that flair to your branding projects. So, where does the connection between graphic design and branding begin?

Commercial imagery.

“They are eye-hungry. They pop”, said Andy Warhol on industrial painting, i.e., art consumed by the masses.

This form of imagery didn’t exhibit abstractness but the “literalness” in everything we use and perceive, like a Coca-Cola sticker we paste on our phone cases. Arguably, this is where the idea behind designing unique logos for brands stems from.

But that was the point. With commercialization and the rise of innovations that required a business to stand out, graphic design and branding took on a new meaning.

This new direction of graphic design and branding process was curating a channel of communication in the commercial arena that helped identify products meant to be bought and sold. And the form of illustration designed for identification was used in a unique way.

Repetition and uniformity became the two significant keys of commerce, graphic design and branding, as evident.

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Source: Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans

So, this instituted a visual vocabulary of mass culture. This meant that specific visual identities represented certain commodities used broadly across the market.

This ideology of recognizable imagery is still borrowed from and ascribed to the realm where graphic design and branding intersect. For example, how the half-eaten apple of Apple is recognized by users and non-users everywhere – from MacBooks to t-shirts.

This can be connected to the brand logo, entailing replication and sensibly outlining the meaning behind the intangible idea.

Visualization of abstract concepts entails a profound creativity that corresponds to articulating an idea or communicating feelings by ascribing symbols to what is known.

Your brand’s message is an intangible concept, but you map it into reality through visual elements such as a logo, typography, color, mission statement, etc.

Logos are such channels or instruments of communication that should be provided more consideration.

It is short for logotype, combining the Greek words – logos (word or speech) and túpos (mark or imprint). The concept of a visual identity or making a logo by graphic designers is to give shape to an intangible concept and even to differentiate classes of objects from one another.

The principal reasons why this is necessary – differentiation and ownership.

Imagine there are four different businesses of jeans in the same building in front of each other.

In the modern market where competition is prevalent and persistent, there’s no escape. We know that one jeans seller has higher quality jeans than the other, while the other has lower prices.

We prefer and are loyal to one brand of jeans, so how do we differentiate it from the others?

Yes, word-of-mouth marketing can go a long way and exist before technological tools. What if we combine this with a form of visual identity?

This was also the idea behind Levi being previously known as the “Two Horse Brand” until 1928. The reason for taking on the two horses for their logo demarcated their product’s durability. This was the narrative behind the logo – it entailed a meaning that could make its brand stand out in the market and increase its share.

In simple terms – “thinking about images means being led into certain thoughts by images.”

So, they tapped into the primary step that can boost their brand recognition – the logo. And this was quite successful. For years, consumers attributed Levi Strauss & Co. as the “pants with two horses”.

How else could consumers understand the durability of their product?

Levi Strauss & Co. themselves offer an explanation. Their need to put two horses was to communicate in a language that all their consumers would grasp. There was a cultural barrier, and very few people were actually educated, but through visuals – the emotions one could grasp would remain the same.

If not, everyone could easily describe which brand of jeans they wanted they could always say “the one with two horses”. And this makes a lot of difference in elevating brand awareness. This means a brand is unique, distinct, and successful enough to be recognized through its logo rather than its name.

See, how much significance does a brand logo entail in entering a new market?

Not only did they hope to communicate what their brand is known for – durable denim – but they also understand their audience. So, those “pants with horses” did not merely become their logo but also their persona: a strong identity for their brand.

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But this has undergone a transformation since.

With Levi’s growing popularity across the entire world, this logo was deemed unnecessary. To keep up with the changing market dynamics, minimalism has taken root.

While brand identity is significantly crucial to narrating the product that your business offers, graphic designing and logos keep pace with the changing rules of aestheticism. And the trendiness of how people perceive color schemes, typography, layouts, and the overall brand design.

A design does not comprise colors and lines, but it contains hidden meanings and an effective use of space.

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As soon as Levi started to take off, minimalism impacted its old logo. Once the brand is built, recognition comprises a singularity, as we have noticed in several huge brands.

The ‘F’ for Facebook’s app, the bird for Twitter, the half-eaten apple for Apple, and the list goes on.

Brands have incorporated minimalism in their designs and layout.

This is also relevant for the B2B landscape.

Simulation has become an escape. Any aesthetic that catches our attention occupies less space and a convenience that affords comfort to our naked eyes.

Taken as a mode to demonstrate elegance and clarity, minimalism holds a bright future.

The use of pastel colors, alignment, negative space, and bold typography is the essence of minimalism today. With immense competition across the market between businesses that sell similar products, graphic design and branding processes can change everything.

Like the Pop Art movement, we might say that minimalism opposed abstract expressionism. This form of art did not ask its viewers to instill meaning into the work or extract metaphors. But instead, assess the space and body around the art piece.

It is paramount to understand why minimalism was established to further outline why it is much preferred in the designs and advertisements that we have today.

Frank Stella, a minimalist artist, said, “What you see is what you see.” And what they popularly meant is less is more, even from a design perspective.

But in graphic design and branding, a diagram might possess something more. It doesn’t merely start with a logo or end there. Either way, it constitutes a value. The brand’s value is communicated through this.

And the very exercise of expressing oneself or recording a message began with visual art.

Surely, tech advancements have transformed our way of expression or communicating but the underlying elements remain loyal to the traditional forms of storytelling – the crux of visual art. It’s the significance of art encompassing a narrative. In graphic design and branding, logos, color palettes, typography, and use of space – the elements that construe modern design – entail a narrative.

And in branding, the entire vision and statement that the brand is built on holds meaning.

A brand doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

With the figures etched onto the walls, doors, collaterals, business merch, etc., how does this not contain any similarities to cave paintings?

Yes, the art of storytelling is not limited to stick figures, monochromatic colors, or just filling in random colors. But, at the core of marketing, creativity aligning with the business objectives is in the driver’s seat. The businesses and the audiences, in a dynamic and constantly spiraling market, demand much more.

So, the combination of graphic design and branding changes how we utilize and engage with visuals, according to how they take root in a highly commercial and mechanical world.

However, design is not merely art. It enrolls a meticulous use of colors, space, lines, font, and alignment for successful branding.

For example, the use of red and yellow in the McDonald’s logo is not random. It holds psychological significance, according to Karen Haller, a UK psychologist expert in color and design psychology, i.e., to trigger hunger:

“Looking at the positive psychological qualities of red and yellow concerning the fast-food industry, red triggers stimulation, appetite, and hunger, it attracts attention. Yellow triggers the feelings of happiness and friendliness,” Haller said. “When you combine red and yellow, it’s about speed, quickness. In, eat, and out again.”

A simple Google search tells us that red and yellow are common colors for fast food restaurants, and due to the reason stated above by Haller. Visual perception, human behavior, and emotions result in specific reactions and triggers.

Red offers that excitement because often it is associated with a ripe strawberry, sweetened candy, or tender meat. On the contrary, its association with intense emotions such as anger and rage works in favor of these brands. It calls for an urgent response, proactively influencing mood and behavior. This is why it’s used to illustrate danger.

Color holds a crucial space in graphic design and branding.

The whole element of branding is to induce consumer loyalty, boost purchasing intent, and expand market share. And in this case, its identity matters tenfold. In the examples above, from Warhol’s soup cans to Levi’s logo, color aids have been the steering wheel to propel your brand.

Colors in graphic design and branding leverage their significant influence as different forms of signals in nature and culture.

Why?

Because they help in scene segmentation, object recognition, and stimulus discrimination. The sense of specific colors leads to attraction or repulsion, depending on how they rattle our emotional stimuli.

But just as the use of red and yellow in fast food chains exhibits a sense of hunger and satisfaction, the use of colors and the reaction it harnesses depends on the context, which is not uniform.

This is why blue is often used for corporate and more conservative brands such as Facebook, LinkedIn, PayPal, Intel, Phillips, and Visa, among 43% of other Fortune 500 companies. Blue is trustworthy and calming, and all graphic designers are aware of this.

And if you ask any brand with a blue logo, why blue? The answer always constitutes two terms – innovation and reliability.

What is the narrative hidden beyond the graphic design and branding of Facebook?

On 31st August, Facebook underwent a technical glitch. This put a halt to users’ engagement with the platform because our inbuilt habit of doom scrolling brought attention to this change.

The blue ‘F’ logo turned black. Surprising? Yes. Unusual? No. Applications undergo technical issues all the time and are resolved within a few minutes or hours.

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But why was this newsworthy? The brand that Facebook has built has blue at its core graphic design and branding tactics. We have a simple understanding that Facebook’s blue entails a marketing association. Due to its market share, it isn’t required to stand out and have an eye-catching and impressionable logo.

We all know what Facebook’s logo looks like.

When the glitch changed the color of this F into black, consumers assumed that maybe this was a rebranding effort by the organization. This is how intertwined the color blue is with Facebook across the market.

But you know what the most fascinating aspect of this is? The actual narrative behind the color and the logo – Mark Zuckerberg’s red and green color blindness, alluding to which he said:

“Blue is the richest color for me; I can see all of blue.”

This is a story behind the use of the color blue. It’s out there but hidden behind the marketing understanding of why brands use the color.

Visual accessibility was a huge reason if not one of the only significant ones. The brand’s association with blue color is emotive behind the curtains of the marketing landscape, along with its bold sans serif typography.

In graphic design and branding, every executed design is intentional.

Graphic designers do need to align with client requirements, but the first thing on their minds should potentially be the experience.

Is minimalistic art the future of B2B graphic design and branding?

Where do the pros of minimalism end and the dangers of losing the details begin?

Even though there is a need for a new direction in art and design, where do we lose sight of our vision – art as expression? Isn’t expressing oneself hidden in the details, or is less the new more?

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In the tech landscape, a lot has changed. Twitter became X, and we have built-in AI assistants like ChatGPT. But some things have remained the same. And one of them is the homepage design for the Google search engine.

Google’s search engine homepage grabbed my attention not because of its exceptional use of colors but its simplicity. We can say it embodies absolute neutrality, stripped away of distraction and popping colors. Not much regarding the graphic design and branding of Google’s search engine homepage has transformed.

We have come a long way. While brands have caught up, most users still gravitate towards minimalism, and AI-generated images are widely criticized. And Google retaining its UX design, even in today’s atmosphere, is commendable, to say the least.

The graphic designers know what they are doing with the appropriate spacing and proper alignment of the CTAs spread across the page. It’s minimalistic, making it increasingly user-centric.

It’s minimal with carefully chosen attention-grabbing vibrant colors, such as blue used for their CTAs that provide a clean and formal look, against the white background.

It grabs the reader or scroller’s attention quite instantly.

Every logo, color palette, typeface, or use of whitespace amidst other intricacies of graphic design and branding is an existing proof. Especially in the immensely complex and expansive space of digital marketing.

Visibility, readability, and direct communication.

Expression is an integral component of these platforms, especially Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The platform itself allows space for creativity and innovation in the form of content curation. With a plethora of creative content within the apps, quite evidently, the external graphic design and branding of these platforms are quite minimalistic.

But with minimalistic brand design becoming a trend, are we, as creatives, losing our touch or making the brands lose their personality? Or is minimalism making us rethink whether we need a balance between functionality and creativity to finally stand out in the market?

But one thing is for sure. While minimalism may be the trend right now, it does not project the direction that graphic and branding design might take, especially in the B2B landscape.

Uniqueness and creativity have to remain.

To strip away a brand of any one of these is to take away the trust ideal customers have instilled in it. Art and design have always been the common ground of experimentation, and their future is as fluid as ever.

Your Guide to Mastering Brand Tracking
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Your Guide to Mastering Brand Tracking

Your Guide to Mastering Brand Tracking

Building a strong brand image helps you accelerate your sales pipeline. But how do you set the right KPIs to measure growth?

For a brand that wants to scale, it makes sense to invest time and resources toward your market presence. Having your brand appeal to a wide audience may seem tough to begin with. However, studies highlight that 81% of buyers will purchase from a brand they trust.  Brands can leverage tracking to gauge how well the brand performs among the target audience.

It keeps your brand’s health in check, helping you understand how your customers perceive your business and their patterns of purchasing your offerings. A solid brand tracking shows you what has worked well and what requires improvement. Popular brands have established a strong brand identity by fostering awareness and more loyal customers. 77% of marketing leaders believe branding promotes sustained growth. To become a strong brand, you must understand how this powerful tool can be leveraged in your favor.

Why consider tracking your brand?

Effective brand tracking allows you to identify factors that positively impact your sales cycle. Using the data derived, you can predict the potential threats and opportunities. Optimizing your overall marketing strategy is another key highlight of brand tracking.

It is equally useful whether you are starting up or have successfully established your brand voice. Brand tracking helps you gather customer-centric data, including their feedback. Such details give you a better idea of what your target audience thinks of your brand and its products/services, how they benefitted, and what challenges (if any) need attention.

You can also benefit from this approach by testing strategies, watching out for competitors and what they are up to, and performing a comparative analysis. These enable you to determine your strengths and uncover new opportunities. When you continuously track your brand, it allows you to assess its performance over some time. The good thing about real-time tracking is the scope to flag issues before they become a problem.

With the booming tech landscape, customer engagement with your brand can happen across various channels. When you integrate the right brand tracking tools, you can assimilate data with KPIs relevant to brand awareness and preference among a target audience. The key significance of brand tracking is to identify trends and acquire data-driven insights that uncover potential threats and opportunities in the market.

Use cases of brand tracking

Let’s look at the top three use cases of brand tracking

Use cases of brand tracking

Understanding your brand’s performance

You can utilize metrics to track shifts in customer perceptions and evaluate the ongoing trends that can impact your brand’s performance. This approach lets you tweak your marketing strategies to stay ahead of the competition.

Finding out your potential threats and opportunities

Brand tracking brings you closer to analyzing changes in customer preferences and awareness. You will tap into the competitive brands that can impact your performance and growth. Once you have these details in place, you can proactively address the roadblocks, make the most of the new opportunities, and protect your brand reputation.

Optimizing your marketing efforts

Since brand tracking provides data-driven insights, it optimizes marketing strategy and allocates budgets accordingly. It makes the marketing activities behind brand growth clear. You can allocate your resources to the initiatives likely to create a large impact and move the audience.

The Metrics for Measuring Brand Tracking

Measuring your brand health with a tracking tool is a way to understand the commercial value of your brand while recording changes and optimizing your strategy. While doing so, you can decide on a timeline for tracking performance efficiency. If you are running a few ad campaigns, it’s a good idea to have more frequent analyses.

You need to measure your brand regularly. This will make it clear the metrics that work best for you over time, enabling you to identify the scope for improvement. However, if you’re launching new advertising campaigns more regularly than this, it’s a good idea to increase the frequency of metric analysis. This allows you to see how they’re contributing to your brand.

Brand awareness

It’s a perfect KPI to measure how many customers know your brand and its offerings. The brand awareness metric is also a reflection of your brand’s marketing efforts toward connecting with your audience. When you can foster awareness, it wins audience trust and ultimately, boosts the sales cycle.

Brand recall

This metric stems from the lasting impression of your brand among your target customers. When that happens, they can remember your brand when prompted or when they think about a specific pain point. With the help of brand recall, you can understand the depth of your brand positioning and the efficacy with which the brand message is retained in the audience. It promotes greater awareness and holds the potential to influence purchase decisions.

Brand consideration

The B2B landscape is highly competitive. Your customers will probably check several options before purchase decision. Keeping tabs on brand consideration will help you assess how potential customers perceive your brand. It also offers the benefit of crafting marketing strategies to increase the chance of being considered for purchase.

Brand preference

There are so many brands in the market and more than one could be offering similar solutions or products as your brand. Your target customers may be weighing these competitors as potential options. Brand preference offers clarity on the chance of them choosing your brand. It gives you an idea about the competitor’s position and your brand. Brand preference also sheds light on the factors that can influence customers’ purchase decisions.

Brand loyalty

To think of it, brand loyalty is the ultimate goal for every brand. If there is brand loyalty, customers are likely to keep choosing your solution or product. The brand loyalty metric gives you an idea of the probability of customers to continue purchasing from your brand. If it is strong, the chances of customers returning for purchase is quite high. This metric is perfect for eliminating doubts about whether a client is there for the long haul or only temporarily. Moreover, you can receive an estimate of the proportion of customers likely to purchase again from you.

Brand associations

As customers continue to choose your brand, they may form opinions and create a perception about what you stand for. The brand associate metric helps you see whether the brand image in the market aligns with how you want to portray it. However, the targets should be achievable, allowing you to measure what makes you unique. Ensure that your strong points are highlighted and if not, there is time to make that change. It’s all about conveying the uniqueness of your brand and letting the customers know your values. A way to execute this could be to measure associations through open-text feedback, which gives you an accurate picture of how your audience feels about the brand and what connects them. You can dive deep into the negative and positive associations and then work on having more positives.

Brand usage 

Your brand is out there and you have a fairly decent number of customers. But how do you calculate their dependency on your brand? This metric will give you a clear picture of how often customers buy your products or services. You can add questionnaires or surveys on your website or purchase page to track user frequency.

Best practices for brand tracking

Although brand tracking may seem like a complicated marketing activity, it is worth your time and effort. This step-by-step guide will help you develop a complete brand tracking report.

1. Define your goals

Setting clear objectives is the starting point for a smooth brand-tracking experience. Focus on improving your brand identity or calculating the ROI from a particular campaign. The idea is to utilize these goals as a roadmap for choosing the right metrics. Your KPI must align with the business objectives and help attain the desired results.

2. Select Your Brand Tracker

Once you have identified your objectives, the next step is to pick the methodology you’ll go by. You may supplement the brand tracking studies with questionnaires, interviews, and digital analytics to collect relevant data. Different KPIs will require different brand tracking tools, thereby providing relevant data. While making the selection, verify whether it supplies the information to calculate these metrics.

3. Collect and Analyze Data

Assessing your brand performance data is a key benefit of implementing tracking. Use the tools that align with your brand to process and download data. As you conduct the analysis, stay tuned to the trends and patterns you observe in the information. You may be surprised to stumble upon some valuable insights.

4. Monitor Continuously and Adapt

Tracking brand performance with metrics is futile if you miss adapting. You can easily accomplish this by setting up automated tools for collecting real-time data. It’s advisable to review these metrics and understand the emerging trends or shifts in customer behavior. The findings revealed in the data can serve as a guide for developing new strategies. But you must be willing to adjust your approach as and when needed.

5. Report Findings and Take Action

And we come to the final step of brand tracking— report what you learned and implement insights-driven actions. To make the most of this step, focus on creating clear, concise reports highlighting metrics and trends. Create a visually appealing report by adding elements, such as charts and graphs for a quick overview of complex data. These insights will drive your next strategic action plan. Don’t forget to measure the impact of these actions on your brand’s overall performance.

Summing up

Branding is all about making an impact on your target audience. This requires tracking how your brand is performing every now and then. Utilize the right metric for getting clarity on how popular your brand is and how often customers purchase. Such details are important to help you understand brand positioning. The insights gained from brand tracking will guide you to making data-driven decisions that optimize your marketing efforts and allocate your budgets more effectively. By understanding which marketing activities drive the most significant improvements in brand performance, you can focus your resources on the most impactful initiatives, ensuring the best possible return on investment.

The Elements that constitute a Solid Brand Strategy
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The Elements that constitute a Solid Brand Strategy

The Elements that constitute a Solid Brand Strategy

An impactful blueprint will set your long-term success in motion. Find out what goes into creating a powerful brand strategy that drives customer loyalty.

The world of global businesses is ever-expanding. It is highly competitive, and without a plan in place, it is next to impossible to imprint your brand in the market. The objective of a brand strategy is to allow more and more customers to remember your business and choose your brand over the competitors.

A brand strategy is designed to future-proof businesses of any size to deliver a cohesive experience. It allows you to maintain consistency across all channels so customers know what to expect while interacting with your brand.

If you are unable to deliver a memorable experience for your prospects, they are likely to move on and forget your brand. Strategic branding communicates your voice loud and clear, helping customers resonate with your offerings. It makes it easier for you to create a lasting impression that has customers coming back.

The 6 elements that make up a powerful brand strategy

7 elements that make up a powerful brand strategy

Behind every brand that aces consumer interactions is a strategy with various elements that determine how you increase audience reach and make informed decisions.

Purpose

The purpose of a brand goes beyond financial gains and captures the components that differentiate you. Clearly defining your purpose demonstrates your offerings to the customers and gives them an idea of what matters most to you. When your brand purpose is out there, it acts as a medium to draw the target prospects and see you as a valuable company.

Vision

Your brand’s vision maps out the route you take to accomplish your goals. It is realistic and a motivation for business decisions. Brand vision and purpose together help propel your business in the right direction. While working on this element, run through questions like Where is your brand going? What are you looking to accomplish shortly and in the long run? Convey the promise, positioning, and performance — the unique solutions you offer, their communication, and delivery.  A clear vision is encapsulated in defining your brand identity and stance in the market.

Values

It’s all about communicating the essence of your brand. These are the principles that guide all your actions and objectives. What your brand stands for helps attract clients who share the same values. It is pivotal in defining how you are perceived in the marketplace. Brand values demonstrate the underlying principles and beliefs you hold. When you make your values clear, it is easier for the prospects to feel connected to something. These ethics and standards shape your company culture and influence customer interactions.

Competitive analysis

Surviving in the B2B market is challenging due to brands introduced now and then. Periodic analysis of the market helps differentiate your brand in the saturated landscape and gives an idea of where you stand. These insights shed light on what makes the other brands successful or if there is anything unique about their solution. You get a better understanding of your company’s market position. And you may be surprised to discover a niche market that has not been tapped into.

Personality

Brand personality is about creating your identity based on brand voice, core values, and visual identity. It is ingrained into how the customers feel when interacting with your brand. What connects them to your company, its offerings, and its vision? If customers feel aligned with your core values, for instance, they are likely to purchase your offerings and even become returning customers. When more customers resonate with your brand’s uniqueness, it strengthens your relationship and improves customer loyalty.

Voice

Your brand voice decides the tone of communication with your audience, establishing brand identity. Maintaining a consistent voice by fusing the brand personality with its core values will help improve your positioning. Setting the tone of what your audience is expecting promotes better customer-brand relationships. The voice needs to align with your brand’s identity to convey the core message of your offerings. When you convey the brand voice, customers will resonate and connect with your brand.

Final thoughts

With an impactful brand strategy, you see the bigger picture and positively head towards goal accomplishment. It involves foresight, thoughtful planning, and hard work to develop a framework that drives results for your brand. Mapping a well-crafted plan is imperative to enhance the sales pipeline and sustain the competitive market. After all, if you don’t communicate with your audience what your brand stands for and why it is unique, they may not connect with your values and end up picking other brands. A strong brand identity inspires a sense of connection among the audience, thus promoting brand authority.

Process Improvement Methodologies to Amplify Productivity
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Process Improvement Methodologies to Amplify Productivity

Process Improvement Methodologies to Amplify Productivity

Adhering to the same process structure may lead to stagnancy. Here’s a list of process improvement methodologies that will help you get out of the rut.

The B2B landscape is ever-evolving, and let’s be frank, the competition is tight. Process improvement methodologies will give you the cutting edge you need— optimizing a business for outcomes. With emerging tech, marketers need to be flexible and adapt to the fast pace as required. You’ll be able to outshine your competitors by evaluating the processes and structure you already have in place.

Analyzing the current methods with a lens will provide clarity on the scope of streamlining workflows, or a specific tech to align with your changing business needs. You may call process improvement by different names: business process management (BPM), business re-engineering, or continual improvement process (CIP). But no matter how you address it, the end goal remains the same— increasing performance efficiency and minimizing errors.

Let’s dive into the types of process improvement methods that will promote your business growth.

Top 6 Process Improvement Methodologies

The B2B market offers several options to reduce inefficiencies and enhance customer satisfaction. We have compiled a list of the seven best process improvement methodologies for you to select.

7 Process Improvement Methodologies 1

Six Sigma

This methodology is designed to keep variations at bay. Six Sigma allows you to understand the efficiency of your brand’s processes and operations. The key objective here is to optimize them for consistency, enhancing customer satisfaction. You can accomplish this with DMAIC- define, measure, analyze, improve, and control and DMADV- define, measure, analyze, design, and verify. After gathering the necessary data, your brand can implement this approach to create a baseline sigma that illustrates when you will achieve the six sigma stage.

TQM

Total quality management is highly customer-centric, promoting continuous improvement. It’s a good idea to apply this process improvement methodology in supply chain management and customer satisfaction projects. While incorporating this, know that it is dependent on data-driven decisions and performance metrics to help understand the initiatives required to improve a process. If you can foster customer satisfaction, it will seamlessly optimize your interactions and deliver the best experience to them. It works well because when you apply a new method, you realize its effectiveness by measuring customer satisfaction.

Kaizen

Incorporating kaizen allows you to implement continuous improvement with a strong emphasis on agile practices. This process improvement methodology is all about leveling-up the quality, productivity, and performance efficiency by making small changes in your daily routine. Alternatively, you can create a work culture that doesn’t punish for mistakes but instead embraces them and works towards preventing them from happening altogether. Your brand can benefit by applying this to optimize activities that add value and eliminate those that do not.

Business Process Management (BPM)

BPM is utilized by brands like yours to achieve targets, serve customers, and generate business value. It analyses and enhances your business processes, employing a structured approach. Your team probably utilized processes that worked when it was small, but as you grow, these may not be enough to support efficient performance. BPM is a robust process improvement methodology that helps you identify bottlenecks, automates manual work, and delivers strategies to overcome the gaps. If your brand grows into becoming too large to be managed without automated tools, BPM products will help you scale up. With advances in AI, these tools have also evolved, providing you with new ways to design, measure, and automate workflow processes. As brands adopt digitization, BPM can be your go-to for optimizing customer engagement.

Plan Do Check Act (PDCA)

The PDCA process improvement methodology can be utilized to amp up your brand’s performance efficiency throughout each of the steps involved. It allows you to recognize the pain point, develop and implement an ideal solution, assess data for effectiveness, and implement the plan if it holds potential. This interactive form of problem-solving is beneficial for making processes more structured and implementing change.

Kanban

It’s a process workflow visualization that focuses on bringing business units, leadership, and employees on the same page for improvement. Kanban stems from another Japanese word that translates to visual card. It is a good pick for enhancing your daily workflows as team members are prompted to take immediate action and ensure that all your projects are on track. Kanban offers you complete visibility into all aspects of a project, simplifying it to track progress in real time.

Final thoughts

Your brand’s peak performance hinges on a couple of processes and operations. Though no process is perfect, having an always-learning mindset will support growth. Each process improvement method strives toward a common goal— enhancing overall performance efficiency. However, every approach is the best fit for a different need. You will realize that some of these frameworks focus on lean process improvement, whereas others align the work culture to improve overall productivity. Integrate these frameworks to visually map out your process workflows. These process improvement methodologies can be a solid starting point for continuously evolving your brand’s performance. You’ll need to incorporate the best approach to stand out in the fast-paced B2B world.