Own the 2: Build Your Brand by Celebrating People

As a B2B agency, we talk a lot about the 2 in B2B marketing. The 2 represents a personal, authentic relationship between a brand and its customers. In industries with lots of copycats and product parities, great B2B marketing must go beyond the features and benefits. Smart marketers know that the key to building brand preference is celebrating people and elevating relationships.

How? By focusing on the positive impact your product makes in your customers’ lives. Marketing that promotes the good that happens every day helps brands forge better and stronger relationships with their customers.

Celebrating what’s good

Now more than ever, we need emotional, authentic connections. We need to recognize the good in people and the value in everyday achievements. When given the chance, everyone will choose to smile and feel pride in their work. When brands provide channels for people to share their interests and celebrate one another’s accomplishments, great things will happen.

Tapping into emotion

The first step is to create a marketing formula that’s based on emotional, engaging, and energizing content. This is how you’ll reach your audience and build true brand advocates.

An easy way to start is by spotlighting achievements — showcase your industry’s contributions to society, celebrate advancements made in your field and, most importantly, acknowledge the people who make and use your products and services.

When you share stories about your customers’ and employees’ contributions and skills, you’ll find you don’t need to talk about your products’ features and benefits nearly as much because your audience will be doing it for you.

For over two decades, Two Rivers has built marketing strategies that spotlight the men and women behind our brand partners: the builders, farmers, engineers, welders, equipment operators, fleet managers, chefs, salespeople, dealers, drivers, and everyone else who plays a role. Without fail, when our marketing focuses on their passion, other customers join in and share their enthusiasm and support. It’s authentic. It’s uplifting, And it’s effective. 

Marketing campaigns that celebrate people and encourage relationships consistently earn higher engagement, more leads, greater views, increased likes, happier clients and associates, and ultimately sales growth.

Creating a culture of celebration

Next, incorporate celebrating the good into your company culture. Prioritize it and provide ways for your team to live it out.

Here’s how our agency culture celebrates people. At Two Rivers, we create strong bonds between our associates by making a big deal out of life’s everyday celebrations — like bringing in chocolate chip cookies to announce a new family member or sharing photos of newlyweds. From start to finish, our quarterly meetings showcase and recognize our associates’ great work, anniversaries, and accomplishments. We created an online kudos board for real-time recognition. Feel-good experiences are everyday occurrences.

Why is the celebration approach successful? Because everyone wants to be recognized for hard work and accomplishments. And they value opportunities for that to happen.

When we focus on positive achievements, we create the key to long-term business success: highly engaged customers and employees who believe that what they’re doing makes a difference.

Marketers who strive to celebrate will be more relevant and build strong and loyal relationships with their audiences.