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One common misconception in business-to-business markets is that a great product guarantees success. While it’s true that an exceptional product, technology or customer experience can rapidly build your brand in the market’s consciousness, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee it.
The real game-changer? The brand behind your product.
Recent studies, including the Liquid x Avasta Challenger Index, confirm this: B2B technology companies need a robust brand to drive profitable growth. In fact, when B2B executives and board members recognize that brand is not only a logo, but rather a shorthand used by current and prospective customers to be comfortable with your products, the growth possibilities are virtually endless.
Yet many executives are still trapped in a cycle of cutting marketing budgets based on short-term outlook or past performance, not realizing that it’s this future potential that fuels growth. Based on our study, it’s clear that many executives are not considering why, when and how the categories are bought by the B2B end customer.
Introducing the Liquid x Avasta Challenger Index
In a marketplace where the lifespans of public companies have shrunk from about 60 years in the 1950s to under 20 today, the strategies for building sustainable business models have fundamentally changed. So have the rules. Until the early 1990s, you had to be historically profitable to even become a public company.
This Index—created in collaboration between Liquid Agency, a brand consulting and activation company, and Avasta, a company focused on measuring drivers of profitable growth—illustrates this sea change in the power that customers have in shaping business category leaders for the next decade. This lens is applicable to B2B products and services, as well as business-to-consumer products and services, with each category examined quarterly. The focus of this article is on B2B products, paving the way for a broader, in-depth analysis across sectors.
In essence, the Liquid x Avasta Challenger Index integrates diverse market segments and provides executives with a comprehensive view of their brand’s standing and potential. It is meant to be a neutral, outside-in assessment of how the end-buyer, decision-maker and/or power user perceives the respective product or service category landscape. To put it another way, the Index poses a set of existential questions: What makes a brand? What makes a company? Can we more empirically understand business strategy through the lens of brand as a competitive advantage?
