B2B Firms Looking to Stand Out in Their Field Must Apply a Conscientious Mix of Color, Content, and Tone

In the competitive business climate, every B2B firm is driven by the assumption that the company with the best ideas, products, or services inevitably rises to the top. But at a time of rapidly changing technologies and conditions that shift the landscape for every vertical, offering what your prospects need isn’t enough.

Whether you work at a startup looking to disrupt the market or a longtime industry leader, you must ensure that your firm stands out in a crowded field in order to compete. Everything is in flux, both in our culture and in the technology industry. If you don’t keep your tech company’s brand presentation current across every prospective channel, you run the risk of looking out-of-date – or, worse yet, effectively invisible. Consequently, your need to ensure your visual presentation remains as strong as possible constitutes more than a one-time effort.

Industry verticals are always shifting based on changing company priorities, but society also plays a role. When an event like the coronavirus pandemic upends the way we work, industries must follow suit. For example, brands that focused on demonstrating value to on-the-go commuters and office environments had to quickly adapt to reflect the current needs of consumers.

Even if you already have an eye on your competitors and cultural considerations, your company could be missing critical opportunities to stand apart from the competing messages and brands within your industry. As new factors constantly arrive and change the make-up of your vertical, your brand must evolve to stay current.

How Thorough Competitive Analysis Keeps B2B Firms Ahead of the Pack

Keeping tabs on changes within your market or the approaches of your competitors is simply good business sense. However, without the help of the right agency partner, brands can’t gain insights into much-needed adjustments that could improve their position.

At Clear Digital, when we’re working to update or redesign a company’s branding, we take a holistic look at the visual presentation of both our clients and their direct competitors. Industry resources like Gartner help provide a snapshot of a given industry and how it’s changing, but the greatest opportunities often come from closer to home.

From your website to its advertising to social media presence, we examine how your brand is being portrayed through logo, colors, and high-level imagery. Then we examine the same details for three to four of your main competitors. By gathering as many details we can find, we begin to form a picture of how they’re using their brand.

At the highest level, we conduct a side-by-side comparison between our client and their competition. By examining all of these visual presentations next to one another, we can determine what color palettes they share and which iconography is commonly used. Once you’ve determined the most common visual traits within your vertical, gaps begin to appear.

Visual Storytelling Provides Separation For Your Tech Company Brand

At whatever position your brand occupies in the market, color provides a critical tool for setting you apart. If you’re a startup looking to cut a path in a vertical, then breaking with industry norms helps your brand be seen as a new, disruptive presence in the market. Or, if you’re looking to stake a claim as being as stable as the competition, your brand can echo their choices with colors, patterns, or type to underscore that connection.

For more established companies who may have a long association with using a specific color in their branding, changes are often met with some resistance. Maybe your brand started using a lot of blue, but your competitors have also adopted that color, which is a safe choice in the B2B and SaaS world. However, as the years go on since your most recent website redesign, what was once an established part of your identity has grown more commonplace.

Color choices should communicate positive associations, and blue is the most common choice across every industry. For years, walking the floor of a trade show revealed a sea of blue logos. By shifting to more vibrant colors, even within the same spectrum, your brand can again stand out in its field.

However, there is a psychological component to color choices for brands and their industries that merits consideration. Ultimately, your color choices as well as the use of shapes and patterns on your website can all be used to better tell the story of your brand.

Standing Out Within Your Vertical is a Matter of Brand Identity

If your brand is struggling to stand out in your vertical, visual storytelling is just one corrective tool at your disposal. Whether you’re a new company looking to establish a foothold in the market or a more established firm, there are multiple factors that affect both how your brand and its competitors are perceived.

Consistently refreshing how your company presents itself on every applicable platform is a natural by-product of a fast-moving marketplace and culture. But the voice and tone of your brand communications must remain consistent with your identity, and is equally critical to your brand’s success. If your identity is warm, friendly, and approachable, your color scheme and content should work together to tell that story. When used in harmony, your content and visuals are the most effective ways for your brand to stand out.

Given the rapid rate of change, making sure your brand keeps pace with shifts in technology and culture that can impact your visual presentation is a critical, complicated task. But it’s not one that you need to try and navigate on your own. With our holistic approach to competitive analysis, Clear Digital has experience guiding companies of all sizes through the changes they need to stay current and competitive. Contact us when you want to find out more.