Building a B2B Brand that Buyers Will Remember
Below is a playbook derived from the webinars delivered in this video (45 min webinar)
This playbook outlines a strategic framework for leveraging Category Entry Points (CEPs) to drive brand salience (meaning your brand is recalled when buying needs arise - which is different than just ‘brand awareness’).
CEP Core Principle | Key Idea |
Salience > Awareness | Be the brand that comes to mind first when a buying need arises |
The Brand that Gets Remembered Gets Bought | Don’t just show up in search; show up in memory |
Create Future Demand | Focus on attracting the 95% of the market that is not currently looking for a solution |
Strong Brands Command Price | A strong brand associated with a specific need enables greater price elasticity, making buyers more willing to pay for your solution |
Phase I: The Strategic Imperative
1. The Real Competition is Forgetfulness
For most B2B marketers, the biggest competitor is not rival companies, but forgetfulness.
When a need or buying situation hits, customers first search their memory. If your brand is not mentally available in those moments, it is as if it doesn’t exist, regardless of product quality.
Key Insight: The most important search engine is still the one in your mind.
Goal: Ensure your brand makes it onto the RFP list from day one.
2. Defining Salience
We must move beyond merely raising awareness (knowing the brand name or logo) and instead aim for salience.
Brand Salience >> Brand Awareness
Salience Defined: The ability to recall a brand in a buying situation, meaning when a need arises, your brand comes to mind.
Strategic Outcome: Associating your brand with a trigger moment tells buyers how and when you can help them, creating future demand.
Phase II: Category Entry Points (CEPs)
3. Understanding CEPs
Category Entry Points are real-world triggers, needs, reasons, motivations, or events that push someone to consider a category or enter a buying state.
Example CEP Trigger | Example Brand Association (B2B) |
|---|---|
A breach hits the headlines | Cyber security solution |
Need to reduce compliance risk | Service Now |
Scaling and needing to centralize data | Snowflake |
Supply chains can’t take another hit | SAP (Be Ready) |
4. Setting Growth Targets
To grow faster, a brand typically needs to own and associate itself with ~5-7 Category Entry Points.
If resources are tight, start by focusing on the most frequent and important buying situations where your brand is best positioned to win, and then expand associations as the budget allows.
Phase III: The 4-Step CEP Framework
Building a CEP framework involves a continuous loop of Discovery, Prioritisation, Activation, and Measurement.
Step 1: Identify CEPs (Discovery)
Identify the need states and triggers that push buyers toward a solution.
Customer & Sales Dialogue: Talk to existing customers and sales executives. Ask: “What needs do you have?” or “What brings you here?”.
Market Analysis: Talk to prospective customers or customers of competing platforms to understand why they chose a certain brand and how that brand helped with their need state.
Deal Review: Analyze triggers found in both lost and won deals.
Output: Create a short list of potential CEPs.
Step 2: Prioritise CEPs (Selection)
Select the CEPs that are the right fit for your business using three guiding principles:
Principle | Description | Strategic Consideration |
|---|---|---|
Frequency | How often the specific need/trigger happens in the real world (e.g., Mergers and Acquisitions in data integration). | Focus on the CEPs that occur most often. |
Relevance | How well the CEP maps to your current offer or portfolio. | Avoid associating with CEPs where a competitor offers a better solution. |
Ownership | How ownable the association is for your brand. | |
Legacy: Has your brand communicated something similar in the past? | ||
Distinction: Does your portfolio answer the need better than anyone else? | ||
Theft (Challenger Strategy): If necessary, smart challenger brands can steal CEPs from competitors by making the association incredibly memorable (e.g., through humour or distinctive language like “supercharge”). |
Step 3: Activate CEPs (Execution)
Map your selected CEPs across all marketing channels to turn content into a memory machine.
Integrated Activation: Organize paid media campaigns, content marketing calendars, and sales enablement materials around the chosen CEPs.
Demand Strategy: Use CEPs to capture both the current demand (the 5% of the market looking right now) and create future demand (attracting the remaining 95%).
Step 4: Measure & Optimise (Continuous Loop)
Monitor performance and refine your approach.
Measurement Tools: Use quantitative studies (CEP recall surveys) or brand trackers with a CEP overlay. Track content engagement by CEP.
Monitoring Timeline: A year is a solid time frame for meaningful results, though monitoring every six months is recommended if budgets allow.
Optimization: Review results annually to assess: Is this the right CEP? Is our content bold and memorable enough? Is the competition starting to challenge our ownership?
Phase IV: Driving Memory Structures
5. Content as a Memory Machine
The content you create must meet the chosen need state head-on.
Write for Recall, Not Just Search: Great SEO helps you get found, but great salience gets you chosen.
Discipline and Consistency: True salience is built through repetition, not novelty. Resist the urge to switch content strategies too soon.
Use Distinctive Language: Use unique phrasing to anchor the CEP in the audience’s mind (e.g., Xero using “supercharge” for ‘grow faster’ or “run your business without the drama” for simplicity).
Leverage Humor: Humor and memorable execution help anchor the specific CEP in the mind.
Content Example*
Thought Leadership: Ebook titled, “The Hidden IT Risks that can Derail Mergers and Acquisitions Deals.”
Social Ad: “Merging companies is hard. Merging systems shouldn’t be.” Links to an integration playbook.
Case Study: Publication on how one company integrated seven business units easily after an acquisition.
* Hypothetical SAS Company owning ‘Mergers & Acquisitions’
6. Balancing Brand and Performance
A balanced investment in both brand-building (creating memory structures around CEPs) and performance marketing (short-term conversion tactics) is crucial.
The Lift: Research suggests that when utilizing both brand and performance tactics, companies see a 60% lift on performance. Investing too heavily in one area (e.g., only performance) results in a 40% penalty.
Integrated Approach: CEPs facilitate this balance because you can deploy performance-based tactics (like paid-per-click) to capture people searching right now for that specific need (e.g., mergers and acquisitions), while simultaneously building the long-term pipeline of future demand.
Stay in touch with what new we are up to at Story99; Subscribe to https://story99.substack.com/