5MetaCom - B2B Marketing for Technical and Scientific Products

Brand Enrollment

Helping employees live your brand, so customers will want to buy it

With “considered” purchases, behaviors of your people are key to making the sale

Purchase decision making for business-to-business (B2B) products is often complex. Sales cycles tend to be long, with multiple stakeholders involved on both the buyer and seller sides of the equation. These types of thoughtful purchases are called considered purchases. Successful branding efforts for considered-purchase products need to account for behaviors much more than logos, fonts and color schemes. Brand enrollment is a process that helps move employees from mere brand awareness to brand adoption, so they demonstrate the core behaviors of the brand every day.

What goes into a considered purchase?

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

  • With considered purchases, your people play a pivotal role in getting your brands bought and sold.
  • When employee behaviors fail to align with marketing messages, buyers become wary. The brand can be damaged and customers lost.
  • Brand enrollment is a process that actively engages employees with your brand to ensure their everyday working behaviors align with the promise of your brand.

Brand Enrollment: The 5MetaCom Process

Brand enrollment is the process of actively engaging employees in the tactical expression of the brand. It is not about implementing a brand, but internalizing it. The process is best done in groups smaller than 50 people. Many organizations enroll customer-facing employees first, like sales and service, but eventually the entire organization should be enrolled for maximum benefit.

Without proper brand enrollment, employee attitudes, opinions and behaviors related to the brand often vary widely. Most weak B2B brands share this common problem. The 5MetaCom 4-step brand enrollment process aligns employee attitudes, opinions and behaviors with the brand.

Why Brand Alignment Matters

When organizations undergo a branding/rebranding effort, employees are often invited to a brief kick-off event that provides a high-level orientation. They often receive plenty of information about when and how to use the new logo, but little about how their behavior should reflect the brand. The result can be brand execution in the marketplace that is misaligned and inconsistent at best; at worst, the brand could be damaged.

MISALIGNED BRAND

When employee behaviors fail to match the brand position, customers have inconsistent and potentially damaging experiences with the brand.

ALIGNED BRAND

When the brand position and employee behaviors are moving in the same direction, customers receive a consistent experience and the brand is enhanced through every interaction.

Brand enrollment recognizes the greatest influence on a considered purchase is an organization’s people. Empowered to live the brand, enrolled employees can deliver a consistent brand experience to customers, making the brand stronger at every customer touch point.

1 Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You: What Research Says About When B2B Buyers Reach Out to Sellers, (2024). 6Sense. Retrieved from https://6sense.com/blog/dont-call-us-well-call-you-what-research-says-about-when-b2b-buyers-reach-out-to-sellers/

2 The Considered Purchase Decision: What Matters, What Doesn’t and What It Means for B2B Marketing and Sales. (2011). TriComB2B in partnership with the University of Dayton School of Business Administration. Retrieved from http://tricomb2b.com/sites/default/files/TriComB2B-UD_Research_Report.pdf

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