Why is it that some brands, no matter how saturated the market, or how strong the competitor are still able to succeed? 

So what is the 10X factor?

Matija shares her 2 secret weapons – brand equity and content marketing 

1. Brand Equity

Including

• recognisable name or symbol, 
• superior quality 
• reliability 
• the culture of the company
• the feeling of success 
• the soft skills 

The  “behavioural or intangible assets”.

So how do businesses gain a better understanding of the role of soft skills, so that they may effectively leverage their behavioural assets? The answer – Emotional Intelligence (EI).

Chance’s are you’ve heard this term before and in some ways it is self-explanatory. Emotional Intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth. EI is what the most successful brands in the world have in common. To put it frankly, it only makes sense that if the interpersonal relationships within an organisation are strong and you have emotionally and intellectually equipped employees, then you will also achieve strong, trustworthy relationships outside of the organisation as well.

Traditional marketing tended to concentrate on hard selling a brand with product outcomes alone, but as we are evolving in the way we are doing business, with a strong focus on relationship building and solution-based selling, EI has become essential in building connection and trust with stakeholders and consumers alike. Now we know why we need to leverage behavioural assets with EI but how exactly do we action this knowledge?

2. Content Marketing – 

By creating content that leverages the intangible assets, it brings about a level of authenticity not achievable with tangible methods alone. One of my favourite types of content is creating the story of the brand from a values, attitudes, beliefs and expectations framework. 

When a company is open and honest about what it really cares about and it’s employees consistently reflect that – branding takes care of itself.

Another approach to content marketing is the provision of value. This takes the focus away from selling and shifts it to the value that consumers can gain through the content being shared by the organisation. This may be achieved by sharing learnings gained through experience, covering new projects or a behind the scenes account of what it takes to achieve positive outcomes.

The concept of offering content that the customer values without overtly selling a product allows for a deeper emotional connection and increased engagement with the audience, and requires not only having a deep understanding of what will resonate with the audience, but it also requires putting oneself in the shoes of the audience, which typifies EI.

Goleman determined that one’s ability to understand and appropriately use EI accounts for over 85 per cent of a top leader’s performance. If this is true at the individual level, then organisations that cultivate and use EI stand to out-perform those organisations that do not. Overall EI Improves performance in communication, responsiveness and empathy toward others which in turn, bolsters positive brand associations and a positive brand image.

Best part about it – EI can be trained, so any company can invest on growing the EI of their staff! There’s much more to be researched and written about EI but I hope this has provided an insight into the value present in understanding how it differentiates the best from the rest and the role it has to play in not just B2C but also B2B.

If you’d like to read more about EI in B2B I recommend reading the text, The soft side of branding: leveraging emotional intelligence by Jennifer Hutchins from The Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, which was referenced throughout this article.

-Matija