Brand Strategy for Small B2B Businesses with Lorraine Carter

In this episode of WeMarketers podcast, Andrew interviews Lorraine Carter, the founder and director of Persona Design Consultants. Lorraine shares her extensive experience in brand strategy, offering insights into how businesses, from global enterprises to SMEs, can drive growth without a big marketing team.

Lorraine underscores the importance of brand strategy over visual design, outlines key components necessary for any brand strategy, and provides practical advice on launching brand initiatives. The conversation touches on topics such as customer psychology, brand audits, and the importance of consistent brand messaging.

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Connect with Lorraine Carter:

Website: https://www.personadesign.ie/

Email: lorraine@personadesign.ie

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorrainecarterpersonadesign/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJXieVMLQ_WibgD3ocqoetg

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Connect with Andrew Demianenko: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-demian

Key Takeaways: Developing Brand Strategy for Small B2B Businesses

1. Brand Strategy Drives Growth

• Competing on price is a race to the bottom; instead, build premium value.
• Brand building should focus on the future, not just immediate needs.

2. Branding Is Not Just Visuals – It’s Strategic

• Many businesses mistakenly believe branding is about logos, websites, and brochures.
• Before diving into design, develop brand psychology, customer avatars, value proposition, and messaging.

3. Key Components of a Small B2B Brand Strategy

• Understanding Customer Psychology: Identify pain points and emotional triggers that influence purchasing decisions.
• Gap Analysis: Find opportunities for differentiation in the market.
• Customer Personas: Map out target customer profiles for clear messaging.
• Productization: Package services or products in a compelling way that adds perceived value.
• Value Proposition: Clearly articulate the unique reason customers should choose your brand.
• Brand Personality & Archetype: Define how the brand behaves, speaks, and engages.
• Signature Language & Messaging: Develop a consistent communication style.

4. Brand Perception Matters More Than Product

• 60% of branding is perception, only 40% is the actual product.
• Positioning a brand with a clear emotional appeal is more effective than just listing features.

5. Avoiding Common Mistakes

• Jumping into visual branding before defining brand strategy leads to wasted resources.
• Decisions should be market-driven, not based on personal preferences (e.g., color choices based on a favorite sports team).

6. Testing Before Full-Scale Launch

• Soft launches (small-scale market tests) help refine positioning and messaging.
• Gather customer feedback before making large investments in marketing and branding.

7. Brand Audits Are Essential for Growth

• A brand audit helps assess:
  • Current market position.
  • Consistency of brand assets (website, messaging, visuals).
  • Competitor landscape and industry trends.
• Even with budget constraints, audits can be done using customer feedback, surveys, and competitor analysis.

8. Measuring Brand Strategy Success

• Define what success looks like (e.g., sales growth, premium pricing, brand awareness).
• B2B brands need consistent visibility across multiple channels to build trust.

9. Budgeting Wisely

• Invest first in strategy, not just aesthetics.
• Align brand strategy with business strategy to ensure sustainable growth.

10. Final Advice for B2B Marketers

• Map out a clear brand strategy document before launching campaigns.
• Ensure team alignment—internally and with external agencies.
• Focus on long-term brand positioning rather than short-term marketing wins.

Transcription

[00:01:08] Andrew: Hello and welcome to the WeMarketers podcast. I’m Andrew, and I’m happy to introduce today’s guest, Lorraine Carter, founder and director of Persona Design Consultants, a multi-award-winning brand strategist who helps businesses, from global enterprises to SMEs, go from good to great. With over 20 years of experience, Lorraine specializes in brand leadership, differentiation, and commercial growth through powerful positioning strategies.

[00:01:39] Andrew: Lorraine, happy to have you today.

[00:01:42] Lorraine: Thank you, Andrew. And thank you for that very kind introduction.

[00:01:45] Andrew: Can you tell us a bit more about your background and how you became a brand strategy expert?

[00:01:50] Lorraine: Oh gosh, now you’re making me feel a little bit ancient. I’ve worked in this area of driving brand growth for a very long time. But if we go back to the early start of my career, I worked with a number of agencies. I also worked with the national television station in Ireland, and then across multiple different sectors.

[00:02:12] Lorraine: After that, I started developing my own business, much of which involved working as an interim and fractional executive for organizations, as well as on independent projects. That involved working with brands and companies across many different countries, which has been really exciting, spanning nearly all sectors. As you kindly mentioned in your introduction, my work extends from large enterprise organizations and the EU, down to lean challenger and startup brands that are changing the status quo and redefining how things look in the world. So, I guess the compelling reason why I’ve worked so much in this area is that I really believe in helping organizations use brand strategy to drive growth.

[00:03:06] Lorraine: In large organizations, brand strategy can help with more effective acculturation, productivity, morale building, and enhancing engagement, particularly within multicultural, international organizations whose employees come from many different cultural reference points. Even SMEs and lean startups are often very multicultural now. The difference is that smaller businesses operate with much leaner resources. A lot of that work involves reevaluating or developing a brand strategy from scratch. And if there isn’t a strong or large marketing team, I help them with implementation to drive growth. My philosophy is using brand strategy to drive growth, even without a big marketing team. I work as much as a practitioner as I do as a leader and a knowledge-transfer educator.

[00:04:12] Lorraine: Some projects require all those skill sets; others require only one area or another.

[00:04:16] Andrew: As a head of marketing in a small B2B company, I’m particularly interested in the key components of brand strategy for small B2B companies.

[00:04:26] Lorraine: B2B is somewhat different from B2C. Typically, the way you develop a brand has different factors, but the fundamental underlying principles are the same. There are 12 areas we look at when building a brand strategy. For leaner businesses, we usually reduce that to seven or eight areas because otherwise, it becomes overwhelming.

[00:04:49] Lorraine: Large organizations have bigger resources and can develop strategies with more depth and sophistication. For smaller businesses, the key areas would start with the psychology behind your audience’s buying decisions. When looking at the psychology of influence, you have to identify your customers’ biggest pain points. Typically, customers want you to solve a problem, save money, or help them achieve outcomes faster. Once identified, it’s important to articulate your solutions in a compelling way.

[00:05:35] Lorraine: Before you even do that, gap analysis is fundamental to building any brand—where do our greatest opportunities for growth lie? You’re looking for gaps and opportunities in the market that can give you a competitive edge, a compelling proposition, and a strong point of differentiation. Once you’ve identified your core target audience—SMEs might have two or three personas, or even up to 20, although that’s unusual—you need to map out your buyer personas or customer avatars to develop your brand in a way that resonates with them. This involves stepping into your customers’ shoes because, in reality, regardless of where someone comes from, people always think, “What’s in it for me?”

[00:07:12] Lorraine: So all your customers immediately ask, “What’s in it for me?” It’s about making your messaging entirely customer-centric. Next is productization, which applies as much to services or tech products as it does physical products. It’s about packaging your offering in a way that makes sense from the customer’s perspective and allows you to build premium value. Competing on price is typically a race to the bottom, especially for smaller businesses. You want to build premium value to command a premium price.

[00:08:07] Lorraine: A crucial point smaller businesses often miss is that branding is 60% about perception and only 40% about the actual product itself. This means understanding the emotional drivers behind your target audience’s decisions. Then you build a clear value proposition and communicate it in simple terms that even a seven- or eight-year-old child can understand. Leaders often get caught up in technical features, forgetting that humans are irrational and driven primarily by emotions, with rationale kicking in afterward.

[00:08:55] Lorraine: You also need a compelling brand story. Storytelling isn’t just about historical facts; it’s about creating narratives that people remember. Stories are 22 times more effective than facts and figures at embedding into memory, making your brand referable.

[00:09:13] Lorraine: Additionally, because humans naturally personify things around them—like calling a ship “she” or naming a car—brands also need to be humanized. That means establishing your brand’s personality or archetype, which shapes how it communicates and behaves. Is it playful, witty, serious, or knowledgeable? Defining the personality influences everything else—your productization, messaging, and communications.

[00:10:57] Lorraine: You also need to develop your signature language and messaging frameworks. Those eight areas are the initial essentials for SMEs. Mapping these elements provides clarity.

[00:11:07] Andrew: So, you can develop a competitive edge and drive growth. You mentioned brand personality. If we consider that a brand has a personality, does this mean we perceive a company similarly to how we perceive people and can describe it in human terms?

[00:11:25] Lorraine: Yes, absolutely. That’s exactly what it means. I’m talking about how the brand behaves through the people who represent the business—the customer-facing team, sales team, CEO, or managing director. They represent the brand and communicate its values, aiming for complete consistency across the business. Everyone is effectively an ambassador of the brand, even employees without direct sales roles. They’re interacting with others who know they’re associated with the organization, so indirectly, they represent the business too. They can become your secret sales force behind the brand because they’re effective ambassadors. To achieve that, you need a cohesive team, strong morale, and clear purpose.

[00:13:05] Andrew: On a very practical note, how do we define the current state of our brand? I saw your YouTube channel has a video about brand audits. Is that correct?

[00:13:20] Lorraine: If you are already an existing business—and this is not unusual—say you’re an SME (as this is your primary audience), take Thunders Bakery in Dublin, for example. That’s a business over 50 years old, selling highly perishable products like cream cakes. Many traditional businesses in that sector have disappeared, but Thunders Bakery developed significant online sales, now making up 50 percent of their business. Their cakes range anywhere from €50 up to €700, achieving premium pricing. They have a clear sense—developed strategically—of key differentiators built into their product and brand, so when someone needs a special occasion cake, there’s simply no other choice but Thunders Bakery.

[00:14:13] Lorraine: The same applies to MGI Learning in the UK, another SME punching above its weight with clients in Australia, continental Europe, Ireland, and the UK. Despite massive, multi-million-pound competitors, they’ve developed strong intellectual property and a compelling proposition. When I started working with them, they were over 20 years old. Like Thunders Bakery, they needed to reevaluate their current state and plan strategically for the future. Brand building is about preparing for the future, not just the present. Those businesses were successful over a long period, but to continue success, they had to examine market changes and evaluate what they needed to hold on to or let go.

[00:15:21] Lorraine: That’s exactly what a brand audit enables you to do—evaluate your baseline. The scale and depth of an audit depend on your timeline and resources. Large organizations invest heavily and do extensive research, but smaller businesses might use surveys, social media feedback, or direct customer feedback. You could also seek insights from customers you’ve lost. Competitor analysis and sector trends also inform the audit.

[00:16:26] Lorraine: Additionally, evaluate your brand assets—your website, brochures, PowerPoints, social media visuals, and graphics. Are they consistent and reflecting your value proposition? How do they compare to competitors? Identify what needs changing or isn’t working. A brand audit helps establish your strengths, weaknesses, and growth opportunities.

[00:16:56] Andrew: When I think about small companies, one of the first things I consider are budget constraints.

[00:17:03] Lorraine: Oh, yeah.

[00:17:04] Andrew: From your experience, which assets should companies invest in first to start working effectively with their brand?

[00:17:13] Lorraine: The biggest mistake smaller businesses make is thinking branding is all about logos, websites, and brochures. Before diving into that visual side, pause and start with a strategy underpinning everything. Those key strategic areas—brand psychology, gap analysis, customer avatars, productization, value proposition, brand story, brand personality archetype, signature language, and messaging—must be mapped out clearly before developing visual assets.

[00:17:48] Lorraine: Too often, companies reach out saying, “We need to do something about our brand,” but they’ve already started developing a website without a strategy to inform its structure, customer journey, color palette, or messaging. Sometimes clients have even chosen brand colors based on their favorite football team, but color selection should reflect brand psychology, not personal preference.

[00:18:44] Andrew: How do you convince stakeholders to start with psychology and strategic depth? Because, obviously, colors, logos—these visual elements—are the fun part for people since they can tangibly see them, as in your football team example.

[00:19:01] Lorraine: When you clearly explain the strategic rationale and use case studies demonstrating the process, people better understand. Often, people come to me after spending money on design without a clear strategy, and it’s not performing. Usually, it’s not because the design is poor; it’s because there wasn’t strategic clarity guiding the design or messaging decisions. These projects were subjectively driven by the designer and business owner rather than by market insights, customer needs, or competitive differentiation. My advice is: Don’t invest heavily in design until you have at least a lean, clear brand strategy mapped out.

[00:20:08] Lorraine: It doesn’t need to be overly complex—you can do this leanly—but approach it strategically as you would any other element of growing your business. Branding is highly strategic and aligns directly with your business strategy. Those two strategies go hand in hand, informing decisions around sales growth, people management, marketing campaigns, and design execution.

[00:21:08] Lorraine: So, first, map out a clear but simple brand strategy before investing heavily in marketing or visual design.

[00:21:19] Andrew: On a practical note, how long does it usually take for a company to develop a brand strategy?

[00:21:26] Lorraine: Well, that’s a bit like asking, “How long is a piece of string?” If doing things leanly, start with a lean brand audit. There are three stages: A for Audit, B for Build, and C for Conversion—the ABC of brand strategy.

[00:21:49] Lorraine: The initial brand audit establishes your baseline, which can take between two to eight weeks, depending on whether you’re gathering extensive customer feedback. Next is building the brand strategy, usually done collaboratively with the leadership team and potentially involving broader team members later. Initially, sensitive strategic discussions happen at leadership level, but your frontline team provides valuable customer insights, so involving them is also important.

[00:22:46] Lorraine: Previously, we did intensive two-day sessions, but now it’s often spread across two or three working sessions, as this approach is less overwhelming and more effective. We gather insights, develop the strategy, then present it back to the leadership team to sense-check it: Does this match your goals and vision based on everything we’ve discussed?

[00:23:43] Lorraine: Once the brand strategy is signed off, you move into the C stage—Conversion. At this point, you know clearly what the brand stands for, what differentiates it, and how you’ll execute that in the marketplace to generate interest, attract leads, and engage customers. You decide on the most relevant channels, always looking at multiple channels for outreach, never relying on just one.

[00:24:04] Lorraine: Consistency across all channels is critical. If a prospect sees your brand on LinkedIn, then encounters a different experience on your website or another channel, it creates subconscious uncertainty, undermining their confidence. And uncertain customers don’t buy. Typically, if customers don’t know you, they need about 13 hours of content across seven interactions and multiple platforms before building enough trust to buy, especially if you’re selling something high-value. The stronger you appear compared to competitors, the more confidence customers develop in your brand. Consistency leads to recognition, resonance, and ultimately higher referability.

[00:26:08] Andrew: I’d like to use our company as an example. We offer different recruitment models for our customers. How do we define the right direction our company should move in? And, importantly, what if we invest in brand development and realize later, say after a month, that we’ve chosen the wrong direction? What should we do?

[00:26:45] Lorraine: In recruitment—and I’ve worked with companies in your sector—you start by clearly mapping out your brand strategy. If you’re recruiting internally, you need to attract people who are a good cultural fit. But when launching something new, rather than making a big announcement immediately, I always recommend a soft launch or small-scale testing first. Choose a select portion of your trusted customer base and gather honest feedback. You can tell them openly you’re testing something new and value their perspective. Request first impressions, what works, and what doesn’t. That allows iteration and improvement before a broader, more significant launch. It mitigates your risk by validating your ideas before investing heavily.

[00:28:18] Lorraine: Additionally, if your recruitment business serves different market segments, you might develop a core offering adaptable to multiple audiences. The core remains fundamentally the same, but you adapt certain details to fit different customers better.

[00:29:02] Andrew: Yes, this is a great point—to move step-by-step, testing small before scaling up. Maybe you have memorable examples of helping companies develop their brand messaging or philosophy that significantly impacted how they operate?

[00:29:20] Lorraine: I need to be careful here, Andrew, as most of my work is confidential and subject to non-disclosure agreements. I’ll speak theoretically. Suppose you’re a B2B service business: you could develop a new proposition tailored specifically to a target audience. Instead of launching it fully, introduce it initially to three or four valued customers in a beta phase, openly explaining that you’re testing something new. Position it as offering them early access at a special discounted rate, in exchange for their insights and feedback. That approach gives you market insights before launching fully to the public at the standard rate.

[00:30:52] Andrew: How do you measure the success of a brand strategy?

[00:30:54] Lorraine: It always comes back to clearly defining “What does success look like?” for each client. Success metrics vary widely. I’ve worked with government and universities whose success measurements differ significantly from private-sector companies—often more altruistic in nature. For the private sector, typical metrics include sales growth, profit margin, launching new products successfully, or achieving premium pricing. You never want to compete on price alone; instead, success might mean commanding premium pricing due to higher perceived value. Clearly defining success in advance aligns all brand and marketing activities toward measurable objectives.

[00:32:16] Lorraine: Success can mean different things to different businesses. In private sectors, it’s often sales growth or profit margin increases. But it could also be launching a new service at a premium price. For example, retail grocery businesses typically operate on slim profit margins—around 3–5%—so they rely heavily on volume. But in a service-based business, profit margins might be 50–80%. However, the market will only pay premium prices if the offering clearly demonstrates high perceived value. So, it’s essential to define precisely what success means for you. It could be as straightforward as acquiring 10 new clients, each worth €80,000 to you—or even landing a smaller number of high-value clients, each worth millions.

[00:33:32] Andrew: To wrap up our conversation, Lorraine, what’s your one piece of advice to heads of marketing or marketers just starting to develop their brand strategy? What should they do first?

[00:33:45] Lorraine: Before diving into marketing campaigns or design, get crystal clear and map out the key elements I’ve shared today—particularly brand psychology, gap analysis, customer personas, productization, your value proposition, brand story, brand personality archetype, and messaging frameworks. Ideally, map out all these elements, clearly and succinctly document them, and use this as your central reference point.

This document guides internal implementation and becomes a briefing tool when collaborating with external agencies. Ensuring alignment between brand strategy and business strategy helps guide critical decisions, mitigate risk, reduce mistakes, and stop wasting money on ineffective efforts. So, get clear about your brand strategy first, and only then move forward with design, visual assets, and marketing execution.

I’ve seen so many companies make mistakes by jumping straight into marketing or design without a strategic foundation.

[00:35:13] Andrew: That’s great advice. Lorraine, thank you for participating in our podcast and sharing your insights and great energy. What’s the best way for listeners to connect with you?

[00:35:28] Lorraine: You can reach out by email, or visit our website at personadesign.ie. Either way, you can easily contact us.

[00:35:35] Andrew: I’ll add all the links to the show notes. I also encourage our listeners to check out Lorraine’s YouTube channel. It’s excellent and packed with valuable insights about branding. Lorraine, thank you very much, and bye-bye.

[00:35:49] Lorraine: Thank you, Andrew. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.