Who wouldn’t want to meet Mickey and Minnie Mouse at “The Happiest Place on Earth?” We all know that the slogan “Have a Break. Have a Kit Kat” refers to a Kit Kat. When we hear the memorable “open happiness,” we immediately think of our favourite fizzy drink, Coca-Cola.
Big consumer brands like Disney, Kit-Kat, and Coca-Cola are household names for most of us, and they can claim responsibility for investing in comparable advertising spend or more because of how effective they’ve been over the years at eliciting emotion and capturing their consumers’ attention.
ServiceNow, is a cloud-based platform that enables businesses to automate routine tasks, it has a larger market capitalization than Ford and Ferrari combined. In addition, nine out of the ten most successful tech IPOs last year were B2B firms that outperformed the world’s largest advertisers.
But why aren’t they as well-known as our favourite household brands?
Perhaps, B2B brands may have neglected brand building.
B2B marketers rely on lead generation efforts to fill the sales pipeline because their addressable markets are smaller and niche. As a result, brand building suffers when the purpose is to generate leads rather than a memory.
Let’s begin by defining a lead, and then discuss lead generation and brand building.
Leads, lead generation and branding building
A lead is defined as anyone who expresses an interest in a company’s product or service. In most cases, leads usually hear from a company or organisation after initiating contact (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription).
Lead generation is the process of attracting prospects to your company and piquing their interest through nurturing, with the end goal of converting them into customers.
Brand building is the process of boosting perception or awareness of a company through advertising campaigns and promotional strategies in order to create a lasting or unique image of the company.
To generate leads and drive conversions indefinitely, you need to consistently utilise strategies that will build awareness and your brand’s credibility, refilling the funnel from the top. Branding and lead generation are inextricably linked, but they also involve subtly different goals that necessitate slightly different approaches.
The most effective full-funnel marketing strategies employ a diverse range of content, delivered in various ways depending on the area of the funnel being targeted. Importantly, they measure the effectiveness of that content differently depending on its role within the funnel. It’s understandable that B2B marketers focus on KPIs like the number of leads, conversion rates, and the time to Conversion etc, but if these are the only metrics you employ. Then your brand awareness may suffer. Ironically, this neglect tends to reduce your effectiveness in generating and converting new leads in the long run.
According to recent LinkedIn research, which was conducted in partnership with YouGov, most B2B businesses are overly focused on performance marketing, i.e lead generation, resulting in a de-prioritization of creative advertising. According to research from Linkedin think tank, The B2B Institute, nearly 80% of B2B marketing budgets are spent on performance marketing, or lead generation.
Furthermore, because B2B sellers are focused on demonstrating the ROI of their typically complex product, they prioritise communicating functional benefits in their marketing over eliciting emotion. This results in a scarcity of impactful B2B creative that undervalues the amount of emotion involved in our decision-making, whether it’s about a product we use at work or in the kitchen.
According to research, creativity is the biggest factor in driving sales in an advertisement (47%), with great creativity resulting in 10–20x more sales.
LinkedIn also discovered that brands that used emotion in their ads gained 198X more followers than the rest of the companies on LinkedIn . B2B buyers are also in search of memorable creative content that has an emotional impact just as much as their B2C counterparts.
Helpful tips for distinguishing between brand building, lead generation content and tailoring your approach accordingly.
The content you intend to create should be guided by your specific goal for your company. More so, the goal of lead generation is to generate consumer interest in your product or services and convert that interest into a paying customer/sale. To accomplish this, you must create content that is enthralling, valuable and relevant for people to share their information. .
Prospects are likely to share their information in exchange for your content if they are already familiar with your brand and understand why it is relevant to them.
This is where brand building content comes in, with the goal of convincing potential customers to adopt your viewpoint and approach. You achieve this most effectively when you identify and solve pain points, address current hot topics in a way that is engaging and digestible.
The goal of brand-building content is to engage the prospect in a conversation and demonstrate that you have will offer value It is critical that there is an indication that they are ready to be contacted; additionally, once a prospect has shared your information, Keep your messaging consistent and deliver on your promise
Gated and Ungated content
The approach you take to targeting and distributing your content should reflect the objectives and role it plays in the prospect’s journey. People want to consume content now more than ever. According to Victor Ijidola, CEO of Premium Content Shop, “You must be very clear about the direct value your visitors receive from you gating your content piece. In general, non-gated and gated content work best together.
What does this look like in practice? Gated content is frequently referred to in non-gated content, for example, imagine there is a non-gated blog post, but it alludes to a marketing ebook, which is gated. For this to work, the non-gated content should pique the visitor’s interest and answer any questions they may have. The gated content could be a comprehensive, practical, or detailed resource that expands on the non-gated content’s information.
As a result, the visitor receives the information they sought and knows where to search for additional information on the subject matter.
Despite the former, Not all of your website visitors are ready to speak with your sales team or see a product demo. A prospect at the beginning of the buyer’s journey might be interested in an informational piece like an ebook or a guide, whereas someone closer to the end of the buyer’s journey might be interested in a free trial or demo. Ensure you have amazing offers at different stages of the buying cycle.
Creating valuable content that teaches and nurtures your leads down the funnel takes time, but you should ensure that you offer value to your visitors even if they aren’t ready to purchase yet. Remember that it takes 7 seconds to make an impression, so getting it right the first time will ensure that your visitors return and eventually buy your product or service.
Maintaining your brand’s identity requires constant monitoring.
Without tracking key performance metrics, it’s difficult to know what you’re doing right or not in marketing. Monitor your brand using Google Analytics, surveys, comments, social media discussions etc to get a sense of how people perceive and interact with your brand .Thus, this will allow you to make changes to your brand as necessary
Delivering on your promise will help you gain traction with your customers.
Creating a memorable brand necessitates the consistent use of typography, colour, images, emotions and language, but it is worth the effort. When consumers instantly recognise who you are and what you stand for based on just your logo, you’ve transcended the status of just a name and symbol.
According to HubSpot Brand Strategist James Zabik “Test, learn, and optimise,”. Determine what distinguishes your brand from the competition and learn to communicate it in a way that fosters trust.
Utilise social media strategically
Although social media is most commonly associated with top-of-funnel marketing, it can still be a valuable and low-cost tool. Lead generation through social media requires a strategic approach. Start by including links to high-performance offer landing pages on your social media pages. Let visitors know they’ll be directed to a landing page. By doing this, you are setting their expectations.
In addition, Conduct a lead generation analysis on your blog to determine which posts generate the most leads and then link them regularly to your social media posts. Use the best platform for your target audience on your social media pages, and make your content enjoyable and engaging for your followers
Branding on social media has changed. However, any brand can grow with its own personal and unique touch.
Lastly, lead generation and branding strategies must be as dynamic as the people you aim to reach. If you effectively coordinate your brand building and lead generation efforts, you will increase your chances of turning initial awareness into leads and then nurturing those leads to conversion. Customise content to their specific interests and needs.
Thus, it is critical to combine lead generation efforts with brand building and you’ve got yourself a well-rounded strategy for success.
