There’s a lingering belief in B2B that brand is a consumer game. That business buyers make rational decisions based on features, specs, and price. That emotion is for sportswear and soft drinks, not services, enterprise software, or industrial components.

It’s wrong. And it’s costing businesses more than they realise.

The rationality myth

Ask most B2B companies about their brand strategy and you’ll hear the same things. We need to demonstrate our expertise. We need to communicate our capabilities. We need to show our technology is superior.

All very reasonable. Necessary. And insufficient.

Because here’s what happens in a B2B buying decision. One person does the legwork. A team – often five or more – need to agree on a choice. They’re spending significant money (someone else’s). The consequences of getting it wrong are professional, not just financial. Nobody ever got promoted for choosing the vendor that caused a six-month implementation disaster or a failure to launch.

So what do they do? In the absence of a strong feeling about any option, they do nothing. They defer the decision, extend the evaluation, ask for another round of proposals. Or they default to the safest choice – the brand they’ve heard of, the one that feels like it won’t get them fired.

That ‘feels like’ is key. It’s entirely emotional.

The numbers back this up

Research from the LinkedIn B2B Institute found that emotional campaigns in B2B are significantly more effective at driving long-term revenue than purely rational ones. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s work shows that B2B brand building follows the same fundamental principles as consumer brand building – mental availability, distinctiveness, and emotional association matter just as much.

And then there’s the most telling statistic of all: studies consistently show that upwards of 38% of B2B sales processes end in no decision whatsoever. Not a loss to a competitor – a loss to inertia.

Your prospect simply couldn’t muster enough conviction to act. That’s not a failure of your feature list. It’s a failure of your brand to make anyone care enough (or trust enough) to push the decision through.

What ‘emotional’ means in B2B

Talk of emotion makes many B2B marketers (and CEOs) nervous. They hear ‘emotional’ and picture a John Lewis Christmas ad. That’s not what I’m talking about here.
Emotional connection in B2B is about how your brand makes the buyer feel. Confident that they’re making the right choice. Reassured that you understand their specific problem. Excited about what’s possible. Proud to be associated with you. Safe enough to advocate for you internally when the procurement committee pushes back.

These aren’t soft, fuzzy feelings. They’re the feelings that close deals.

‘Feels close deals’

Think about the brands that dominate their B2B categories. Salesforce doesn’t win purely on functionality – there are capable competitors at every level. They win because they’ve built a brand that feels like the smart, progressive (and safe) choice. HubSpot hasn’t conquered inbound marketing by having the best features – they’ve built a brand that makes mid-market marketing teams feel understood, supported, and capable. Even in the most technical categories, the brands that win disproportionately are the ones that make people feel something beyond ‘this meets the spec.’

The comfort zone problem

So if emotion matters, why do most B2B brands ignore it?

Because rational feels safe. You can prove rational. You can put a feature comparison on a slide and point to where you win. You can show a spec sheet. You can build a business case with numbers. Nobody challenges you for being too functional or rational.

Emotional positioning requires a creative leap. It requires deciding what you stand for beyond what you sell. It requires a point of view, a personality, a way of showing up that’s distinctly yours. And that means making choices – which means some people internally will be uncomfortable.

So most B2B companies default to the same territory. ‘Professional. Reliable. Innovative’. Words that could describe literally any business in their sector. A visual identity that looks like everyone else’s because it was designed not to offend rather than to be distinctive. Messaging that's technically accurate and completely forgettable.

Don’t confuse ‘professional’ with ‘bland.’ You’ll hand the emotional territory to whichever competitor is brave enough to claim it.

What happens when a B2B brand finds its emotional footing

I’ve worked with B2B companies across life sciences, payments technology, SaaS, and professional services. The pattern is remarkably consistent.

When the work is purely rational – features, capabilities, credentials – the brand blends in. Your pitch sounds like everyone else’s pitch. Your website reads like everyone else's website. Sales conversations become feature comparisons, and feature comparisons become price negotiations. The team knows they’re better, but they can’t articulate why in a way that makes anyone feel it.

When we find the emotional connection – the thing that makes people lean forward – everything shifts. Generally, it’s not something exotic. It's often a benefit the company took for granted because it felt too simple or too human to lead with. The way their product takes away a specific anxiety. The confidence their service gives to someone who’s making a high-stakes decision. The sense of partnership rather than vendor relationship.

Once that’s articulated clearly and expressed with conviction, the brand stops competing on features and starts competing on meaning. The sales team has something to say beyond ‘here's what we do.’ The marketing has something to express beyond ‘here's what we offer.’ Prospects remember you – not because your logo is nicer, but because you made them feel something your competitors didn't.

The opportunity is open to you

Here’s the good news for any B2B brand willing to make this shift: the bar is still remarkably low. Most of your competitors are still hiding behind rationality, still producing the same safe, functional, generic brand communications. The emotional territory in many B2B categories is virtually unoccupied.

That means you don’t even need to be radical. You just need to be the one that makes people feel something. In a landscape of grey, even a small amount of colour is distinctive.

But it starts with clarity. Not just knowing what you sell, but knowing what you stand for. Not just listing your capabilities, but understanding what your best customers actually value – and finding the words that make that resonate with everyone else.

That’s the work. Not soft. Not fluffy. It’s a hard-edged, valuable strategic decision for a B2B brand to make. (The one most of them are avoiding).

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