We recently started working with a software company whose tagline stopped our team mid-scroll: "The AI time tracker to end time tracking."
In one line, they named the thing everyone in their category hates about their category and positioned their product as the solution to the problem. It’s a bold B2B brand strategy, and it stood out to us after years of frustrating attempts to track time using different tools.
Strong, definitive messages like this are also becoming increasingly rare in a sea of AI-generated sameness.
It’s not because companies don’t care, but because they’re under greater pressure to grow faster, rank at the top of AI overviews and be the answer to an infinite number of questions people can ask the large language model of their choice.
That means figuring out how to create content faster and follow SEO and AEO best practices that are still largely based on what’s already working well.
In other words, you can’t get away from using the phrase “time-tracking software,” all over your website, but you can say what sets you apart from all the others.
It's the kind of brand clarity that won’t come from a prompt. It comes from honest conversations with customers who have suffered through overly complicated solutions and with leaders who dare to share uncomfortable truths.
AI can produce content at scale, but it can't decide what a brand should mean to people.
We still need human judgment about values, culture and the messy emotional truths that create genuine connection. That's the raw material of a B2B brand strategy worth building on.
The B2B Institute's "2030 B2B Trends: Contrarian Ideas for the Next Decade" predicted three major developments in B2B brand strategy that have only grown more relevant since the report was published in 2020. The pandemic, widespread AI adoption, and the deprecation of third-party cookies each accelerated the shift the authors anticipated: brand building is pulling further ahead of sales activation as the long-term demand driver.
Since so much has changed in just six years, we revisited a few of the themes the report discussed and looked at them from a new lens.
What Is a B2B Brand Strategy?
A B2B brand strategy is a long-term plan that defines how a business-to-business company positions itself in the market, communicates its value to decision makers, and builds recognition and trust across the buyer's journey. It encompasses brand positioning, brand story, visual identity, messaging and the consistent experience delivered at every touchpoint, from a prospect's first search to a signed contract.
While many companies tend to focus on sales activation first (How quickly can we get a landing page live and launch a campaign to promote this new product?), effective brand positioning differentiates your business from competitors and communicates a unique value proposition to your target audience over time.
The B2B Institute made a bold claim that B2B brand builders will be among the most in-demand marketers by 2030.
Here's what they predicted — and what we've seen hold up in the years since.
Key Components in a B2B Brand Strategy
Before exploring the three trends, it helps to name what a strong B2B brand strategy includes:
- Brand positioning — How you want to be perceived relative to competitors in your category
- Positioning statement — A clear, internal articulation of who you serve, what you offer, and why it matters
- Brand story — The narrative that connects your mission to your audience's real challenges
- Value proposition — The specific, provable benefits you deliver
- Target audience definition — A precise understanding of the decision makers and buying committee members you're trying to reach
- Visual and verbal identity — The consistent visual and language system that makes your brand recognizable
- Messaging framework — The structured language that guides every channel, from your website to your sales team's discovery calls
- Content marketing — Valuable, relevant content to nurture leads and support decision-making throughout the buyer journey
B2B Brand Strategy Development #1: The Long War on Short-Term Thinking
The B2B Institute recommends a 50/50 split between brand building and sales activation.
Short-term wins are necessary, but they don't generate demand on their own. Strong brand positioning builds both trust and recognition that make sales activation work.
B2B companies that invest in brand building consistently outperform those that don't because brand is what generates demand in the first place.
Playing the Long Game Pays Off
The challenge for many CMOs is demonstrating the value of anything that doesn't produce a lead today. But brand assets compound. A potential customer might encounter a blog post on alternative energy, then a LinkedIn video about a product, then a sales sheet they download and sit on for months. When a retargeting ad finally surfaces a free consultation, it gets the credit — but the brand did the work.
Brand recognition shortens the buying process in B2B precisely because the decision-making cycle is long and involves multiple stakeholders. When decision makers already trust your name, they move through the buyer's journey faster, require less nurturing, and are more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong.
Strong Brand Positioning Increases Revenue
Want to reduce price sensitivity? Invest in your B2B brand strategy. The B2B Institute's research found that increasing price by as little as one percent can yield a 10% profit increase — a greater return than increasing sales volume by the same margin. And the reason buyers are willing to pay premium prices is almost always the same: they trust the brand.
The Institute notes that brand building becomes increasingly important as companies raise prices. That makes sense. If a procurement team spends significant budget on a platform or service, they'll default to the vendor they recognize. It’s usually the one they've seen at industry events or heard speaking on webinars or podcasts.
If your goal is to work smarter rather than harder, elevating your B2B brand strategy is the lever with the most leverage.
Development #2: The Power of Brand Story
The B2B Institute's second prediction is about boldness. Being contrarian and correct is the winning combination — and to get there, you have to be willing to bet on a single, defining creative idea. "If you're not spending at least 50% of your budget on a single creative idea, you are not betting big enough," they argue.
B2B brands that commit to one bold, distinctive brand story — and distribute it everywhere that makes sense — outperform those that make many small, safe bets. Creating valuable content, high-quality, insightful, relevant to professionals, builds authority and trust.
Show, Don't Just Tell
Figma is a great example here.
The design platform doesn't lead with a capabilities list. Its website invites you to experience what the software makes possible — with prompts like "Make an infinite canvas gallery" and "Make this design move with a parallax effect" appearing directly on the page.
The value proposition is demonstrated before it's ever stated. That's the brand story and the product experience working in the same direction.
Most B2B companies aren't designing collaborative software tools, but the principle applies broadly: the most effective brand stories don't explain why you're useful, they show what becomes possible when someone works with you.
The Disney analogy from the original B2B Institute report still holds, too.
Familiar stories told in a distinctive way, distributed across every channel will work if they’re strong enough.
If you’re not as established as Disney though, that approach requires an additional layer. As AI-generated content floods every feed and inbox, the brands that break through are the ones with a specific point of view and the commitment to express it consistently.
B2B Brand Story Success: The Groove
When The Groove — a consulting firm founded by Workday boutique veterans — came to Kuno, they had deep expertise and ambitious goals, but no brand identity or digital presence. With a major industry event on the horizon and a two-month deadline, we partnered with them to define their voice, develop a visual identity, build a messaging framework, and launch a site from scratch.
We helped their team build a brand foundation that showed prospects exactly what The Groove stood for, why it was different, and what working with them would feel like.
Their organic traffic grew by more than 1,600% and ranked keywords increased by 150%. The Groove is now recognized as the fastest-growing Workday partner in the platform's history.
That kind of growth comes from brand strategy and website design built to work together from day one.
Development #3: Brand Value Clarity in the AI Era
The B2B Institute's third prediction concerned hypertargeting. While the underlying argument (that category-level reach outperforms individual-level obsession) still holds, the more pressing question for B2B brands today isn't who you're targeting. It's what you're saying when you reach them — and whether your value proposition is clear enough to cut through a landscape flooded with AI-generated sameness.
When any company can produce polished content at scale, the brands that earn attention are the ones that can articulate something specific, true, and human that no one else is saying.
Clarity Is the Differentiator
The brands navigating this best aren't avoiding AI. They're using it precisely enough that the human signal stays strong. The distinction is between using AI to express your unique point of view more efficiently versus using AI as a substitute for having one.
ZoomInfo is a good example. Their messaging is built around a specific, quantified value: sharper data, better intelligence, faster pipeline. They explain how that’s amplified with AI and display prominent results that speak for themselves right on the homepage.
Apollo.io takes a similar approach but ties the value to concrete time savings. They show how their AI capabilities reduce time people spend on outbound email research, digging up contact data, and summarizing calls so reps can spend less time on notes and more time on conversations.
That's what separates strong from weak B2B brand strategy right now. Weak positioning says ‘AI-powered.’
Strong positioning says, ‘Here's how many hours your team gets back, and here's what they can do with them instead.’
Using AI To Become More Human
The brands pulling ahead right now are using AI to do things that give their people more time for the human work: the customer interviews, the internal debates about who they're really serving, the editorial judgment about what's worth saying. They're using it to scale the execution of a clear positioning — not to generate the positioning itself.
That's the standard worth holding. As we've written about in our SEO and storytelling framework, content that resonates in AI search environments is content that has a clear point of view, structured logic, and a human voice behind it. AI systems surface what's authoritative and specific — which means brand clarity is now a search strategy, not just a marketing strategy.
The B2B companies that will earn the most visibility — in traditional search, in AI overviews, in the conversations buyers have before they ever reach out — are the ones that have done the foundational work of knowing exactly what they stand for and why it matters to the people they serve.
What B2B Brand Strategy Looks Like in 2026
The three developments the B2B Institute predicted have all aged well — but the urgency around them has compounded. AI has raised the noise floor for content quality to the point where volume is no longer an advantage. The brands that earn trust are the ones that have done the harder work: the internal conversations about who they're really serving now, the customer interviews that surface what actually changed, the editorial discipline to say the specific true thing rather than the safe generic one.
B2B brand strategy in 2026 isn't about being louder. It's about being clearer — clearer on your positioning, clearer on your brand story, clearer on the value proposition that only you can credibly own.
The elements of a strong B2B brand strategy haven't changed. Consistent messaging, a distinctive visual identity, a brand story your target audience can see themselves inside, and the discipline to invest in brand building even when the returns aren't immediate — these have always mattered. What's changed is how visible the gap has become between brands that have done this work and brands that haven't.
As we've written in our brand strategy messaging framework: brand storytelling is the art, brand strategy is the architecture, and brand messaging is where they meet. You need all three working together.
For a closer look at how leading companies are putting these principles into practice, explore our brand strategy examples for 2026. And if your brand is due for a clearer positioning, a sharper story, or a website that finally reflects the company you've become, let's talk about what a brand refresh could look like for you.
Build a B2B brand strategy that drives long-term growth. Start the conversation with Kuno's brand experience team.
Editor's note: This post is revised and updated from a post published in November 2023.
Annie Zelm
