Get your brand acquired: Crafting a compelling B2B brand narrative

When thinking about how to get your brand involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), a compelling brand narrative is an absolute necessity for securing deals, rather than a nice-to-have or a simple marketing tool. It’s what allows your B2B brand to become a desirable acquisition target and avoid being overlooked. 

This is key for B2B businesses as a strong brand enhances the perceived value of a company and guides the right buyer/partner through the maze of options towards your brand. In essence, a strong brand narrative enhances the perceived value of a company, making it a more attractive prospect for potential acquirers.

So, how do you create a great B2B brand narrative?:

Step 1: Amplify what works, get rid of what doesn’t

Crafting a compelling brand narrative begins with a deep dive into the inner workings of your business. You gain invaluable insights into your audiences’ needs by examining your successes and challenges. This introspective journey helps uncover your brand's essence and leverage your unique strengths to craft a narrative that resonates with your target market.

By aligning your brand with market demands and weaving a clear, focused, and authentic narrative, you create a compelling story that increases your profitability and captures the attention of potential buyers/partners.

Ettyq uses this approach to help businesses determine where their strengths lie and what helps a brand uncover how it should be expressing itself.   

By looking at the last 5 years of your business and evaluating the success and effort placed into each activity, your brand will gain insight into activities which are worth continuing and which bring the best result. 

If you’d like to be guided through these tools fully with ettyq, reach out to us.

Step 2: Market Gap Exploration

In a crowded marketplace, differentiation is key. Rather than engaging in a futile battle for supremacy in saturated markets, savvy B2B brands seek out untapped opportunities and carve out their own niche.

By identifying areas of low competition and focusing on unique value propositions, they avoid getting bogged down in the dogfight and position themselves as pioneers in their respective industries.

Avoid the dogfight

Ettyq’s market gap exploration process takes a brand through a comparison process between your brand and your competitors to gather insight into the commonalities and differences between these brands. 

After gathering these insights your brand should use the trends found to develop a brand narrative that stands out and offers a unique perspective.

Step 3: Unconscious Market Activation

Instead of waiting for demand, successful B2B brands take a proactive approach, illuminating unseen pain points and attracting clients who have yet to consider them.

By reframing their messaging to focus on problem-solving rather than product-pitching, these brands position themselves as innovators, driving industry-wide change and securing their place as leaders in their field. So, when crafting your brand narrative, address the unspoken needs and watch as your brand becomes synonymous with forward-thinking and customer-centric innovation.

Address the problem, not a solution provider

Ettyq’s Unconscious Market Activation uncovers consumer 'need states' by analysing search behaviours and underlying motivations. 

It helps a brand identify the customer's everyday needs you're competing to meet on a deeper level, such as understanding the need before the need and what leads to customers recognising their need. For example, the wish to boost revenue leads to seeking more leads, culminating in the search for marketing agency services.

Armed with these insights, your brand can proactively connect with potential clients early on, even before they're aware of the need your competitors fulfil. With this in mind, your brand narrative can be shaped to facilitate this connection.

Step 4: Be different, not better

The quest for brand superiority often leads companies down the path of comparison—a futile exercise that yields little meaningful differentiation. 

Instead of striving to be 'the best,' successful B2B brands focus on being different. By embracing their distinctive qualities and avoiding direct comparisons, they create a unique brand identity. This distinctiveness forms the core of your brand identity. 

The Only > The Best

This process facilitates precise comparisons between your brand and its competitors, looking specifically at the objective differences between them. These differences must be hard facts and no subjectivity whatsoever.

Focus on areas like geography, customer segments, or workflows. 

From there you can start to create a picture of the uniqueness of your brand.

Step 5: Value Verification

In the pursuit of brand excellence, clarity is paramount. Remove the clutter of subjective language and convoluted jargon to reveal the true essence of your brand. 

Ensure your value proposition is authentically unique and resonates with your target audience. Simplify your strategy to its core elements, focusing on practicality and effectiveness rather than empty promises and grandiose claims.

Is there any value left?

This tool aids in refining your brand's narrative by transforming your strategy and proposition into concise statements free from subjective adjectives or superlatives, that highlight the value your clients cannot get elsewhere.

Remove all subjective adjectives and superlatives, including words like 'best,' and 'brilliant’ from your messaging and review the revised statements to ensure they plainly articulate your brand's unique value without embellishment. 

By stripping away subjective terms, you can strengthen your strategic direction and communicate a clear and impactful brand message.

Crafting a compelling brand narrative is essential for B2B brands looking to enhance their acquisition potential in an M&A scenario. It’s the base for communicating their value and creating a captivating visual identity. 

If you’d like to explore more ways to use design and design thinking to improve your brand’s chances of being acquired, check out our other pre-M&A toolkits or reach out to ettyq for help in perfecting your brand narrative in the pre-M&A process.