Brand rejection is less of an issue for B2B marketers than low brand awareness

Lack of brand awareness is a much bigger barrier to customer acquisition for B2B marketers than overcoming rejection, according to a report from The B2B Institute, and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.

The research 

The ‘Brand Rejection in B2B: Incidence, Reasons and Implications’ report looked at the buying preferences of 600+ buyers of business banking in the UK and 600+ buyers of business insurance in the US.

Key findings 

• Brand rejection averages 11% for UK business banks and 7% for US business insurance firms, which is similar to the 9% found in similar B2C markets.
• Two in three lapsed B2B buyers of UK business banks, and four in five lapsed buyers of US business insurance companies, would consider buying from the brand they defected from again in the future.
• The vast majority of a B2B brand’s non-buyers (90%) do not hold any negative attitudes that could be a barrier to becoming a future customer.
• Lack of brand awareness is a 4-8x bigger problem than brand rejection, particularly for smaller B2B brands (smaller B2B brands are small primarily because most potential customers do not know the brand exists)
• The most common reason for brand rejection in both categories is company history, but no single issue accounts for more than 20% of brand rejection. Therefore, using reasons for rejection as a basis for designing your sales or communications strategy will be difficult and unrewarding. 

Key quote 

“B2B marketers should stop worrying about whether people dislike the company or if people are saying negative things to others. Instead they must focus on building memory structures so the brand is front of mind when they are in the market to make a purchase” – Professor Jenni Romaniuk, Research Professor and Associate Director (International) at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.

Sourced from LinkedIn