When was the last time you measured the success of a campaign in anything other than the number of leads it brought into your business? If it’s been a while, you’re not alone - many B2B marketers are now so focused on lead generation that brand awareness goals fall by the wayside.
We get it. When it’s time to report on your marketing efforts, we know that your senior team wants to see tangible results. To them, fifty sales-qualified leads are likely to mean more than 500 extra visitors to your website. But although lead generation often provides short-term growth, and delivers sales quickly, it’s vital to ensure that you’re putting just as much time and effort into building brand awareness - or you may find that your success is short-lived.
Securing leads in the long term
Whenever you engage with a prospect, there’s a high chance that they’re not ready to buy your product and service at that time. In fact, recent research by LinkedIn revealed that businesses typically change their service providers around every five years, which means that in a given year, just 20% of your audience will be in the market for your services. So if you run a campaign for a quarter, just 5% of your audience will be ready to buy your service - 95% will not be in the market at all.
Any messaging that’s designed purely to convert prospects into leads is therefore likely to fall flat with the vast majority of your audience, because they are simply not ready to hear it. You may secure some leads among the 5% that are in the market, but how will you ensure that you’re still front-of-mind when the rest of your audience is ready to buy? This is where brand awareness activity provides real, long-term value, as it ensures that your prospects are consistently reminded of the benefits of working with you, which means they will be more likely to come to you when they make a purchase - whether that’s six weeks or a year down the line.
It’s time to amplify your brand awareness
Last year, many B2B marketers shifted their budget away from brand-building and onto tactical, lead gen activity as Covid-19 created uncertainty for businesses across all sectors. But Google’s SVP and chief business officer Philipp Schindler recently noted that from Q3 2020, “marketers realised that even if there was a pullback in consumer demand in the short-term, they needed to keep their brands in front of people to stay top of minds when spending picks back up”. So if you’re still focusing solely on lead generation, it’s time for your business to get back to building brand awareness - if not, you could find that your prospects turn to your competitors instead.
There are so many ways that you can build awareness of your brand within your target audience - here are the three brand awareness activities we most often recommend to our clients:
1. Secure features in trade titles
PR is one of the most useful tools you can use to introduce your brand to a wider audience - so research which titles your target audience are reading, and strive to secure features in them. It can be tempting to stick to what you know and pitch for features within your own industry - if you’re an energy business, you might aim for Utility Week or Current+, for example - and that is important, because having a presence in these publications will establish your business as an authority in your industry. But we always encourage our clients to identify which sectors they would like to target, and pitch to popular titles within these sectors, too.
If you’re aiming to reach a fintech audience, for example, you may want to strive for features in Global Finance Magazine or Banking Technology. With many workers now set to work remotely for the long-term, they’re more likely to read trade publications in order to stay up-to-date with their industry. If your business is contributing valuable content to their favourite titles, you can steadily build brand credibility and trust among this audience - and ensure they think of your brand when they’re ready to buy. Securing features isn’t always easy though, especially now that many magazines have shifted to a digital-only model - check out our guide on Developing a Digital-First PR Strategy for our top tips on getting started.
2. Switch up your ad approach
According to LinkedIn, the majority of ads that run on their platform are run on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, rather than a cost-per-impression (CPM) basis - which means most marketers are optimising their ads for lead gen rather than brand awareness. Their survey of over 4,000 B2B marketers also revealed that just 4% measure the impact of their campaigns beyond 6 months, even though research has shown that brand building effects take at least 6 months to kick in.
Running lead gen ad campaigns can be a great way to build your short-term sales pipeline - but it’s also important to undertake long-term, brand awareness ads to boost brand recognition among your audience. LinkedIn’s data shows that when an audience is served only with lead generation ads, designed to prompt the audience to convert immediately, their conversion rates are typically low. When an audience is first exposed to brand awareness ads, which simply portray brand values and benefits, and then see lead gen ads from the same brand, conversion rates are typically much higher. BT lowered their acquisition costs by 17% and improved their ROI by 316% by employing brand awareness and lead gen ads in this way - how much could your business benefit from switching up your ad approach?
3. Don’t neglect your nurture journeys
How long do you pursue a potential lead before giving up and moving onto the next one? We’ve all experienced the disappointment of securing a lead and finding out that they’re not actually interested in buying your product or service, they just wanted to read your gated content. After a few attempts to secure a sale, you might just leave their data to sit in your prospect data list - or maybe you even remove them.
Either way, you’re making a mistake. Once you have prospect data, you need to make sure that you continue to engage with them until they are in the market for your product - within GDPR guidelines, of course. So make sure that whenever you carry out a campaign, you have a nurture journey in place to follow up with your prospects long after they first interact with your business. This can be as simple as sending out a weekly or monthly email, but you should make sure that you’re always providing them with useful content when you contact them, as this will encourage them to see your business as a valuable partner. Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to mean lots of extra work for your team - with marketing technology tools like HubSpot, you can automate your emails to ensure you’re regularly checking in with your prospects.
Boost your brand awareness
At The Marketing Pod, we’re passionate about helping B2B businesses to build brand awareness and expand into new markets - so if you need any support from our strategic experts, email hello@themarketingpod.co.uk or call us on 01564 742848.