Hamza Abbas’ Post

Building a B2B brand is all about making smart, strategic decisions. In SaaS, I see two distinct approaches. Type A: — Fill communication with buzzwords and empty promises. — Overpromise and underdeliver. — Push the hard sell with their own voice. — Pitch slap at every given opportunity. Spam masters. — Believe their own hype. “We’re the number one”. — Lie. “Yes, we do that”. That = everything. — Only share the good. Usually exaggerated. — Only the CEO has a voice on social. Type B: — Speak with clarity and honesty. — Deliver on promises—every time. — Let customers be the voice of success. — Focus on helping, not just selling. — Open about their strengths & weaknesses. — Transparent. “We’re probably not the right fit today”. — Talk about the good & the bad + what they’re learning. — Everyone in the company has a credible voice on social. It’s no secret which brands are thriving today those built on trust, transparency, honesty, and genuine care. Whatever label you want to put on it. All these things matter. 👉 They lead to TRUST. And this set of CHOICES must come from the top. Nowhere to hide today. PS. No Trust, No Sale.

Transforming your B2B brand isn't just a makeover; it's a leap toward innovation and growth with the potential for an enormous ROI. But it can also feel daunting – requiring significant time and resources. That’s why it’s essential to start with these tips, such as soul searching, working with outside experts, and launching from the inside out. It’s more than just changing your logo. It’s about stirring emotions, making those connections that count, and turning your brand into something memorable.

Great article by Sam Anderson from The Drum about B2B branding. So many companies are focused on the short-term, performance-based approach - cost needs to be tied to a return. Too many view brand building as an expense line on the P&L and not an investment. Branding may not get the immediate return they are looking for but it will affect the multiple on the exit at the end of the day. And it will differentiate it from the competition. It is just as important to build the brand long-term as it is to sell the service or product on the short-term. We have witnessed incredible financial reward for companies that have invested capital in building the brand.

Your D2C brand's revenue won't grow!!🎯 If you don't find a solution to "Paradox of Choice". Paradox of choice is a feeling of being overwhelmed and unsure of your choice. Let me explain it with an example: You go to a pastry shop and see 20 different types of pastry in their menu. You get confused. After thinking you buy a chocolate pastry but later you feel pineapple or black forest would have been a better choice. That is exactly what your customer feels like. Let's say you run a healthy snacking brand. And there are 10 other brands like you in the market. A customer buys chips from you today but later they feel they should have purchased from another brand. So the next time they will go and buy from that brand. It decreases your repeat order rate. The solution: Reduce their options by connecting them to your brand. How? By building your personal brand as a founder. Your personal brand helps you: ✅ Tell your story ✅ Tell your brand's story ✅ Connect with your consumer on a personal level The logic is simple:- Humans trust humans. If they trust you they trust your brand also. And that makes them choose you over all the other brands they discover via social media ads. Gain Trust = Gain customers What methods do you use to gain trust of your customers/ audience? PS: If you are a D2C founder looking to retain your customers for long-term via your Personal Brand I'll help you do that. DM me "D2C Brand".

𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐃2𝐂 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝, and we had a long conversation about it yesterday. He plans to launch a wellness product with an average selling price of under 200/- 💰. I advised him that building a digital-first brand at that price point is challenging because there's little room for marketing and shipping costs 📦. In this case, the ideal strategy would be to launch on an e-commerce marketplace and his own D2C website, but without investing in digital marketing 💻. Launching offline should be a top priority 🛍️. However, I told him that the first goal of a brand is to generate sales and find product-market fit 🎯. Even if a big distributor likes his product and it starts selling, 𝐈 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐢𝐭 𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭-𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐭. Distributors can easily switch to another supplier or brand 🔄. One question to ask yourself is whether you are getting large orders from the distributor because there is genuine customer demand or simply because you are offering good margins to the distributor, which is why he is placing large orders from you 🤔. Selling directly to stores gets you the real feeback from the retailer and consumer. 𝐈 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭-𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 "𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐃2𝐂", 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐚 𝐯𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐦𝐚𝐳𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐝𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬 🚀. Here's the conclusion: to build a business with an ASP below 200, it's practical to focus heavily on offline channels, which can make you profitable from day one 💸. I also suggested that he keep launching new products in that category with higher selling prices above 500 💵. It's crucial to balance both fronts ⚖️. Offline markets grow slowly but can be profitable 🐢. Online markets are harder to crack profitably, but once you succeed, there's no looking back 🏆.

Brand switching doesn’t feel like a high ACV SaaS problem but there’s absolutely a form of it that plays out every day. In the B2C world, despite the idea of brand loyalty, brand switching occurs in every category. Probably the most common moment it happens is at the supermarket, when your preferred brand is out of stock and you choose an alternative. Simple physical availability is a huge factor in brand selection and this also happens at the demo request stage of B2B SaaS. Even with companies like Chili Piper beating the drum daily, companies in our industry are still painfully delayed in their response times to people submitting form fills. During this moment, brand selection often goes to the one who provides availability. In fact, its been found to be as high as 78% of the time (source: Lead Connect). One of the big issues with the demand creation idea is that we convince ourselves that we create singular demand for ourselves, resulting in high propensity to buy audiences. The reality is much more that we create higher propensity to consider us, ideally with perceptions of being the best choice. But little more intent than that. Even if you’re the top choice in your audience’s mind, you’re often one poor availability moment away from a competitor taking your opportunity. Mental availability is easy to mind, and physical availability is easy to find. Make it harder than it needs to be and all your brand efforts count for nothing.

Doing stuff you shouldn't do will make your brand stand out. B2B companies, this is important. 👇 Brands that show they care • about their market • their product • their customers • about their employees • the world • and society • And they do it authentically and are definitely on the front foot when representing the best of B2B out there. It's incredibly complicated to get all these things right and to put them into the configurator, press a button, and it all magically happens for you. It's down to amazing leadership, great vision, talented teams, and people free to take risks, be curious, and brave with their marketing, experiment, and challenge what's gone before. When you get that kind of attitude in a good company with good VC or strong stakeholders, you see change happening. But.. It only happens for 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 companies. That type of culture is not being created every day. It's unusual! We're never going to get every company to be able to embrace this stuff. It's as much about the leadership and the culture behind it as it is about the tactics of what we're talking about. Many people have in marketing have incredible maturity these days. They are prepared to take a crazy risk to do something that is going to create real attention and stand out in the market. They don't always revert to that conservative baseline, very common in B2B. It's more important to be interesting than it is to be right.  Every brand will make the right argument about their company being the one you choose, but the ones that interest us are the ones that start the conversation happens. Being interesting in B2B is hard. 1000s of brands in tech, money from VCs.. Noisy! If you're a buyer or a decision-maker, you want a simpler life. You want brands who, when they show up, it's clear what they do, you can get a real pulse check on the kind of company they are. Anything that gets in the way of that (brands that are just too complicated to understand), gets pushed to the side. Do curious and weird and odd things, and create that glitch effect where people just stop and go: "I didn't expect that!". That's a powerful technique in all forms of marketing. B2B or B2C, and sometimes consistency can get in the way. Experimentation, doing unusual things, stuff that your brand shouldn't do, is the kind of stuff that is going to make you interesting and grab people's attention. It gets back to having a culture in marketing and business that is brave and wants to push boundaries, try new things, and find nice middle ground of doing the business as usual stuff as well. ____ I'm Nemanja, a B2B Tech & SaaS Growth Strategist Specialized in High ACV & Long Sales Cycles I help you set up your company for growth You don't need a CMO/VP in-house until you're up to $15M in revenue You need me Ring the bell on my profile for more insights Or schedule a free 30-minute call (link under my headline) #B2B #marketing #culture #funkymarketing

When it comes to starting your own brand, I've got one simple piece of advice. Do what works for the market. First, I'd ask myself these questions: - What is the most efficient way to put something out there? - Do people want it? - Can I build it at the right price point? - How do I promote it? Then I'd focus on these main categories: Business model For an early-stage business, I would try a direct-to-consumer type of model in marketplaces. It's the most inexpensive approach, and if you take the wholesale approach, it can get costly quickly. I would then find targeted-based experts that you can work with to help promote your product. You can find this with agencies or other professional orgs who specialize in helping early-stage businesses. Distribution network As you get going, you can start thinking about a broader distribution network. Is that through retail partnerships? Maybe it's even internationally. Don't be afraid to look internationally. There's a lot of product out there that can be distributed internationally that isn't necessarily being optimized that way. Personalization Having products that can be highly tailored and curated to a personalized style is going to become very important. It doesn't need to be something targeted to only one demographic, but something that really speaks to the customer. You can also do this by building customer experiences that feel personal. Make sure your customer service is attentive, your return policies are forgiving, and your customer always feels taken care of. What else do you think is important when starting a brand? ____________________________ I'm on a mission to help e-commerce leaders sell more. Follow along as I share what I'm hearing from around our industry.

Your brand is your # 1 differentiator. But B2B brands make THIS massive mistake 👇 They don't invest because brand ROI is: ❌ "Too hard to measure" Or worse... They just copy a big brand. 👀 You can picture it right now I bet. Those safe abstract shapes and clean lines. Perfectly safe, yes. But also... Perfectly forgettable. 👋 Your B2B brand does NOT need another gradient. It needs a personality. I loved this POV from Rob Sobers, CMO at Varonis: Walk through any B2B trade show. Cover the logos. What do you see? → Same abstract shapes → Same corporate blues → Same safe choices But the brands we remember? They create a brand that is UNMISTAKABLY them. One that feels "in world" like a video game. 1️⃣ Salesforce: Transforms Dreamforce into a magical forest. Their woodland creatures aren't just mascots - they're part of their story. 2️⃣ Crowdstrike: The falcon isn't just a logo. Their entire brand world revolves around adversaries and protection. Every piece of content feels "in world." 3️⃣ Wiz: They went full wizard when everyone said "keep it corporate." Now they own that space at a $12 Billion valuation. TLDR; Most B2B companies wait too long to invest in brand. They play it safe until it's too late. Make your brand unmistakably you. Make it feel "in world." Or you blend in ✌️

𝐀 𝐥𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐁𝟐𝐁 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐁𝟐𝐂, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭? In this piece written for The Economic Times Brand Equity, Kunal Vora dissects the dynamics of both—trust, emotion, complexity, and speed—and reveals what it takes to craft brands that truly resonate #ABND #BrandStrategy #B2BBranding #ConsumerBranding #Branding ET BrandEquity