Business purchases are not driven by impulse. In most cases, they are encouraged by a simple, unique message that builds trust and drives sales.
When building a product, it’s easy to put the product first against brand marketing. However, this single approach is one of the worst ways to sell, especially in a business-to-business space.
Whether you’re selling to a startup, entity, or institution, the truth is that products live behind the scenes, and brands are the face that builds trust, signals quality, and opens doors.
Let’s dive into further details below.
Rising Above The Myths: ‘Product vs Brand Marketing’
The popular belief is that - ‘If API works, nothing else matters as much’. However, this is a far cry from reality.
Branding makes a huge difference in API sales strategy, especially when you’re dealing with other businesses. In this case, these businesses are typically conscious, sensitive, and wary of complex or outdated products.
As such, their buying decisions are not based solely on specs, let alone attract them to even consider it.
It’s important to remember that your target audiences are human - whether they are developers, founders, product managers, or others. Humans are influenced by emotions, perception, and trust _and as much as we hate to admit, we judge by covers.
In essence, when it comes to product against brand marketing, there are no parameters as to how much importance each plays in the trajectory of the business cycle. However, what’s important to take home is that brand doesn’t replace technical excellence, but amplifies it.
As much as it’s important to ensure optimal performance of your API, building trust and emotion is a key player in ensuring consistent sales, visibility, and engagement.
What is Brand Marketing for API Companies & How it Works
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of ‘branding’? Design, logos, colors, or fonts, right? While these are important, they also don’t entirely make up the basic side of branding, especially in a B2B API company.
Branding is more than what you see; it is what a company stands for. Branding is what people say about your company behind closed doors. It’s the perception people have of your product or services. It’s the emotion a developer or founder feels when integrating their API into their system. It’s how other companies believe in you because they trust your product. Honestly, branding can be anything you make it to be.
At Miden, we operate in a space where our audience sees our reliability, security, and performance before they interact with our core products. We understand that branding is a key factor in ensuring visibility, global relevance, engagement, and sales.
Here’s what branding truly means to an API-first business:
1. Clear and Confident Messaging:
Every brand starts with a clear and confident message. At Miden, we offer that same approach - Card Issuer & Payment Processor. A message like this is clear, speaks directly to our core offerings, and also targets the right audience.
"When building a brand, your words matter a lot. If your API is too complex for a marketer to understand, chances are that it's just as confusing for your target audience. Clarity isn't optional, it's part of the product."
Isioma Ogwuda, Marketing Lead at Miden
2. Documentation/Developer Experience:
As an API-focused business, your documentation is a part of your brand. Apart from being a unique conversation between technical specialists, it’s also a great avenue to showcase your product offerings - what it does, what your audience stands to gain, how it can be integrated, etc. For example, Miden’s documentation speaks directly to its audience's pain points.
3. Visual Elements:
This entails the visual identity of your company, including website, dashboard UI, logos, social media pages, and many more. These are essential parts of a brand because they influence how your target audience perceives and interacts with your brand.
4. Community Presence:
If your target audiences are other brands, it’s important to attend seminars, conferences, etc., in order to meet other businesses and build an understanding network. You can also go ahead to attend or organise physical or virtual events that speak to your audience’s needs while highlighting your product as the solution.
5. Thought Leadership:
It’s important that you do not just market your product, but also the people who make up your team. It’s beneficial if the team members share insights and establish solid leadership in the industry. These could be through departmental blogs, insightful video guides, etc.
Benefits of Adopting a Branding Approach for API Companies
In most cases, when you’re establishing a business, there’s a likely chance that you’re not offering a unique product. There’s always a competitor (whether newly established or not) that offers the same product as you do.
As such, in this case, the brand becomes the real differentiator.
Here’s the reason why introducing brand marketing into your business is a key differentiator in your industry:
- A strong brand communicates credibility, security, and high repute before anyone can consider the business. In essence, trust is half the sale.
- Branding sets you apart from your competition while highlighting your unique standpoint. In truth, features are getting commoditized, but your tone, visuals, and positioning will single you apart from others.
- A solid brand will attract top talent and partners in the industry. For example, when you showcase your brand goal, stability, and position, it attracts the right people and even helps them believe in your product.
- Branding also helps developers to understand what your target audience needs. This will help them build an API that does not just tick a specific function, but also evokes specific emotions and value in the users.
- Strong brands possess good repute. This creates a conducive environment that encourages community engagement and word-of-mouth recommendations.
Final Thoughts
Whether you’re building an API-focused product for founders or other business owners, it’s important to prioritize the impact of brand marketing.
Without a brand, companies risk losing mass profit and value. Selling APIs does not cancel out the need to brand your products, as well as the company as a whole.
In this article, we divulged several essential elements that showcase the impact of branding in an API-focused company.
We also highlighted Miden as an exceptional example where branding is viewed as a key player in driving sales, engagement, and value.
Found in:
Marketing
