Does brand consistency require attention?
Will your customers experience be of a consistently high standard across all touch-points? Walk in your customers shoes and critical evaluate whether you are delivering consistently – many organizations focus on a few key areas and get busy and forget about the rest. Cannabis B2Bs also need to recognize the importance of internal communications and how this reinforces your brand to your employees. Rolling out new business cards, email signatures, presentation and proposal templates, etc. all impact the way your brand is perceived can create a sense of pride amongst internal teams.
The important part:
When you look at the buying priorities of today’s cannabis consumer, you really need to have a two-sided model when it comes to your brand promise and your brand obligation. Number one, you are expected to deliver products and services that help solve problems for your customers while bringing true value. The other half of it is, how are we creating an emotional connection with our buyers? The best way we can do that is by taking our products and services to not only solve the problems our customers are experiencing on a daily basis, but also taking that and solving problems on a much higher level as well.
Believe it or not, emotion plays a part in cannabis B2B purchasing, not just B2C. Everyone categories their buyers, but I believe it will be hard to live in that world much longer. The blurred lines are occurring more rapidly than ever between a B2B buyer and a consumer buyer because at the end of the day, we are all consumers and one thing that the millennial generation in particular is teaching us is that buying decisions are being made more and more through the lens of what matters to a person. In other words, what organization can I go to which will truly be a partner of mine? What organization will give back to the world? What organization can I go to that allows me to feel like I’m part of a community? That’s the other part of a cannabis brand that I think is very important, whereas companies are spending a huge amount of time focused on products and services, which they should be, but I feel like where the most differentiation will occur is on the other side of your brand promise which is how your creating trust and a sense of community that your buyers truly want to be a part of.
At the end of the day, every end user is an influencer that will enable the business decision maker to meet his or her goals.
Let me be clear about something: rebranding is not just a creative exercise. It’s not just about updating your logos and colors although that’s a part of it; it’s a complete update of your company’s foundational positioning, messaging and brand essence based on your corporate strategy. As such, it’s critical to get it right.
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