The Brand Multiplier

Sales cycles, ROAS, pricing power, and now your shortlist position with LLMs - Ian makes the case that brand is a commercial lever, not a marketing indulgence.

The discussion of the value of brand is seemingly a contentious one within Revenue Departments and senior leadership. I hear stories of experienced CMOs in some of the big B2B jobs afraid to utter its name, and renaming or scaling back brand projects to avoid saying the word.

This friction is often characterised by marketing having a longer-term view, while sales has to deliver more immediate numbers, and it's at this point I am legally obliged to mention the work of Binet and Field, "The Long and Short of It".

Or, more accurately, the company views brand as coming from the crayons-and-unicorns department, only valuable when they need an umbrella at a rainy event, rather than as a strategic benefit to the business.

The problem is that the brand is seen as somewhat ethereal, hard to measure, and disconnected from the hustle of growing a software business and something for the bigger guys.

However, I would contend that even a growing vendor in a niche category can benefit from the market having heard of you, and yes, there is that hard-to-measure long-term compounded value, but there are efficiency gains to be had.

Shorter Sales Cycles

This is probably the conversation I have had the most with sales in emerging vendors. The friction in a deal when they have to explain who they are and the contrasting reaction they get after investing in brand marketing.

These opportunities also require less nurturing, and your internal sponsor or champion's job is way easier when they take your solution to their boss or the broader buying group.

That assumes we get into the deal at all, as today so much of buyer research is done independently before anyone speaks to a vendor; brand awareness and top-of-funnel marketing activities are critical to get onto the shortlist.

And once we are in the process, a lot of the buying process is about managing risk. The buyer's fear of messing up or embarrassing themselves in front of their team or senior colleagues, or of the solution failing to solve the problem, is mitigated by a trusted brand.

After all, as the old adage goes, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM (or insert the leader in your category here).

And, of course, in the age of SaaS, we are permanently in the renewal sales cycle, and the brand's perception among customers is just as important to ensure we don't have a hole in the retention bucket.

Increased ROAS and Campaign ROI

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is the talk of digital marketing right now, and a critical metric, as reach is increasingly pay-to-play and we are well past the halcyon days of organic being predictably effective. It is getting harder to cut through with increasingly expensive paid social, and with the decline in pay-per-click effectiveness today due to Google's new AI answers-led, zero-click interface.

However, brand awareness or trust in your category acts as a multiplier on all of your campaign activities. People are more likely to click your paid ads, open your emails, or respond to any activation if they already know and trust you, so everything performs better and ROAS and ROI increase.

Plus, much like how a salesperson needs to explain who they are in each meeting, the content and creative can focus on differentiated standout messaging, as you don't have to use creative space for table-stakes or hygiene content that describes who you are or what you do.

All of this ladders up to reducing CAC (Customer Acquisition Costs), as the brand greases the funnel, and target opportunities move efficiently from awareness to customer.

Protect Pricing

We all know that in B2C, a strong brand is connected to a premium price, and it's no different in B2B.

If you can strip away the buyer's risk by presenting yourself as the premium option or the category leader, or if your brand messaging is incredibly relevant to the buyer's needs, it's much easier for sales to defend the price.

What I have often heard is that if a salesperson has to explain the proposition fresh to a prospect that has never heard of you, they will say "we are like x only cheaper" which scuppers your ability to differentiate and hold steady on price.

Plus, if we reflect on the first point, that brand shortens sales cycles, the converse must be true: low brand knowledge will lengthen a sales cycle, and to accelerate that, it's tempting for the salespeople to pull on the lever of price.

Brand Campaigns Educate the LLMs

What blog post would be complete in 2026 without mention of AI and LLMs? But, back to the point about getting on the shortlist, we are all aware that buyers are reaching for LLMs to support their early research.

So LLMs are an important audience, but that audience is not reached via ads or email marketing; it's the brand marketing campaign that they will pick up, whether it's your owned assets like your website and socials, what other people are saying about you in earned media like third-party articles or review sites, or your own PR or thought leadership placements.

The Multiplier

Therefore, a strong brand isn't just for marketing; it's a commercial driver, reducing sales cycles, improving demand generation and campaign efficiency, and, in the new age of AI-led research, helping us get on these synthetic shortlists.