When you think of terms like “brand love” or “brand health,” your mind probably jumps to flashy B2C campaigns or emotionally charged consumer loyalty. But here’s the truth: brand love, and the broader umbrella of brand health, are just as critical in B2B marketing, especially when your company is focused on playing the long game.
Why Brand Health Tracking Belongs in B2B
Only around 5% of B2B buyers are actively considering a purchase at any given time. Most aren’t looking daily—or even monthly—for a new service provider, piece of equipment, or platform. But when that moment of need arises, brand awareness, trust, and familiarity can make all the difference to be a legitimate contender in their purchase decision.
Research shows that a strong brand reputation is a top driver of purchase decisions in B2B, particularly for buyers with complex needs and limited margin for error. This is particularly true in high-stakes industries like medtech, where purchase decisions are often driven by regulatory requirements, clinical credibility, and internal stakeholder alignment. The risks of choosing the wrong partner go beyond dollars and can impact patient outcomes and organizational reputation.
Brand health tracking offers a way to quantify those otherwise intangible assets, such as aided and unaided awareness, purchase consideration, brand perception and sentiment, and loyalty—such as repeat business or referral likelihood—tying them to real business outcomes. Establishing a baseline allows you to see how perceptions shift over time so you can evaluate the effectiveness of marketing and PR efforts. For example, did your most recent campaign improve consideration among the target audience? Did your earned media placements boost unaided awareness in core markets?
It’s not just about staying out in front of a crisis. It’s about creating a strategic advantage for long-term loyalty and sales.
Brand research helps quantify how a brand is viewed today and how that perception evolves over time, providing a valuable benchmark for evaluating the impact of marketing efforts.
I get brand health tracking, but brand love?
Just as with brand health, we need to challenge the notion that brand love doesn’t apply to B2B. B2B customers are people just like B2C customers—with unique values, experiences, and personal preferences that will impact the choices they make.
At EPIC, we’ve seen this play out across multiple B2B-focused industries. Loyalty isn’t just about preference. It’s built on trust, familiarity, and belief that your brand will deliver when it matters most. Brand love in B2B isn’t about superficial emotion; it’s about confidence. And confidence is built over time.
Build Brand Loyalty Through Meaningful Measures
Some marketers are skeptical of “brand love” because it’s not useful without brand relevance, distinctiveness, and consistency. And they’re right; emotional affinity only matters when it aligns with what your customers need, expect, and trust you to deliver.
That’s where brand health tracking adds real value: you’re not just chasing feelings. You’re identifying specific, measurable drivers of perception and tracking how they change over time, including:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Brand preference
- Perceived expertise
- Advocacy
When layered with segmentation or persona-level data, these insights become even richer. You can see how perception differs across key decision-makers and tailor your messaging accordingly.
The Strategic Payoff
Long-term growth in B2B markets doesn’t come from one campaign or product launch. It comes from sustained visibility, trust, and value creation over time.
Brands that invest in brand tracking tend to see better alignment across sales, marketing, and executive teams. They’re able to make smarter creative choices, communicate more effectively with niche stakeholders, and catch perception gaps before they become performance issues.
Want to understand how your brand is perceived across critical buyer groups—or how your next product launch might resonate with a new market segment? Whether you’re aiming to measure impact across a global audience or track loyalty with a specific buyer persona, let’s talk about setting a baseline and building a tracking approach that works for you.
