Why it’s still hard to sell brand investments to the management team | Letter to CMOs in complex B2B vol 8, 2026

We put “Leadership teams' new revitalized focus on positioning” as a strength on our SWOT analysis, impacting marketing departments and marketing leaders in complex B2B.

Now, as we approach the half-year mark and get closer to the new budgeting and planning season, this has surfaced from a new perspective: How to secure sufficient investment in brand building?

We know that brand as a topic is on the management team's agenda.

Multiple studies prove that a great brand correlates with great business performance. Even in B2B.

Why is it still hard to sell brand investments to the management team?

Our observations on the reasons why it is hard to sell brand investments to the management team

Based on our work with marketing leaders during the Marketing Function Business Plans and building investment roadmaps for the management team, here are the main observations on brand investments.

Brand building is framed as ineffective, fragmenting the value

Typically, the framing is too vague. We, as marketers, know that a great brand impacts everything. But this framing typically makes the value of the brand initiatives too fragmented.

There is a tendency to frame brand investments as supporting our Pricing Power versus the Commercial Efficiency value lever

This easily makes the cause-and-effect relationship more unclear and the payback cycle longer, contrary to the commercial efficiency lever. This affects your ability to answer: “What in the business improves when we succeed in this 'brand initiative'”.

Mixing marketing and business outcomes

A great brand in itself is an outcome that comes from decisions and activities (outputs), but it is not the result or outcome that directly impacts the business. What in the business improves after you achieve that “Great Brand that our target accounts are aware of?” For marketing, a brand is a tool to achieve your business objectives.

Many meanings of “brand building”

Brand means so many things to different people. This is evident from our stakeholder interviews. For some, it means a new website. For some, it means “brand guidelines” and for some, something else. We have leaned more towards using “positioning” as an alternative to “brand.” Its value is more clearly defined, and it is partly closer to the “business result” than “outputs,” contrary to “brand” without the mushiness and vagueness.

In the end, my experience is that brand investment is as easy (or hard) to sell as any other marketing initiative with a good business case

I think with brand investments, it is important to get the business case right. This forces you, as marketing, to decide how this investment should be reviewed, frame it from the right angle, and concretize the value you, as marketing, expect from it.

Find out more about how to build a business case for marketing.

Challenge: What is the business challenge that you can impact with improved positioning or awareness (Brand)? In other words, how does it show in your business that your brand is not where it should be?

Reason: What is the reason for that challenge that you, as marketing, can impact?

Business Goal: Why is this challenge important to overcome?

Marketing Mechanism: What marketing mechanism can be overlaid to impact this?

Marketing Goal: What goal can marketing be held accountable for that would change the reason or challenge?

How this would impact your business: Forecast how achieving this goal would impact your business. Remember that this always needs to come from outside the marketing department!

Investment: How much FTE and budget would achieving this goal require?

Do you have answers to these business case questions ready for your next yearly planning?

Have a great weekend,

-JH-

Explore more – webinars and articles for marketing leaders in complex B2B 

• Watch now and get the PDF: Marketing investment plan as a tool to change the narrative from cost to investment
• Marketing should not be about campaigns, but a collection of business cases | Letter to CMOs in complex B2B vol 7, 2026
• So, you want marketing to be a business partner? The challenging questions you need to answer
• The end of the form-fill: How will B2B marketing prove value when the lead is gone?

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