Brand is critical to a company’s growth strategy – but how often does it play a bit part in demand generation initiatives?
According to Forrester Research (2018): ‘CMOs must shift from a company-centric approach of managing a brand as an asset to a customer-centric one of creating a resonant brand experience’.
If your product or service value proposition doesn’t resonate with B2B customers - it doesn’t matter how well thought through your demand strategy, how great your content is or how effective your marketing tech is. You’re not maximizing your impact unless your brand is centre stage.
1. Refresh your brand promise to build trust that powers demand
Many organizations don’t put in the necessary resource to keep refining and refreshing the company’s brand promise to the customer. Delivering consistently on expectations is key, especially in the first client engagements. Brand and value proposition development deserve a committed effort.
By being clear and consistent, you can make sure prospective buyers, customers, influencers and partners quickly see what your company stands for and what your brand is all about, so they can more easily decipher whether your solution is the right one for their organization.
Benefits include – greater lead volumes, shorter sales cycles, higher conversion rates, more impactful & effective advertising and, more often overlooked, a more confident company and sales team.
2. Create unique brand experiences to drive demand generation
Companies that invest in delivering exceptional brand experiences and communicating thoughtfully produce positive associations around each customer touchpoint. In turn, these companies win engagement, business, preference and, ultimately, loyalty. This disciplined effort improves demand marketing results over time and allows you to scale.
One of the best ways this can be applied is in content marketing. Providing educational information that informs your prospective buyers is one approach. It’s often really hard for your brand, content or offer to stand out. This is where brand comes in. Don’t do the same old white paper or webcast. Think about putting your educational information, for example, into a workbook of some sort or make it come to life using a video or live chat with your team members as subject matter experts. This will showcase your authentic, unique brand while creating demand for your solutions. So does your brand resonate?
3. Map content and messaging to buyer journeys that's true to your brand
Developing interesting and compelling content is a major achievement, doing it in a way that's reflective of your brand multiplies its value. Product positioning, key benefits, brand pillars, value proposition, audience, and tone are just a few items that need to be taken into consideration. Together, these elements combine to create a full messaging framework that can guide your marketing across every piece of content and every channel. Everything you create, both internally and externally, should be able to map back to this messaging.
4. Leverage your brand to create customer advocates that
drive profitable demand
As you build trust, more of your customers become brand advocates. Ideally, because of the work you’re doing, it becomes organic and word-of-mouth referrals will grow.
It’s productive to put customer brand advocacy to work in your demand effort. And don’t settle for just case studies - mix in creative ways to have your customers share their story and their work. You can include them as subject matter experts on key topics at industry conferences, roundtables or articles in high-profile sources. Having customers talking about the issues provides brand association and momentum. This fuels brand trust that powers demand.
5. Brand-driven demand generation is a winning formula
Sustained demand marketing success relies on brand strength and differentiation. Having a differentiated, relevant solution with a consistent brand promise is essential to a marketing team’s ability to drive revenue and increase sustained sales.
Don’t leave your brand with a bit part role!
How Fire NBM Digital can assist you with prospect and account based marketing:
· BRAND INSIGHT, POSITIONING AND PROPOSITION DEVELOPMENT
Our experienced researchers conduct brand perception surveys, insight programmes and phone interviews for businesses to discover what challenges their prospects and existing clients face, what they are looking for in service and product providers and how they make their buying decisions. Our strategic marketers and creatives then bring this to life!
· CREATIVE DEMAND GENERATION Fire NBM Digital works with companies to develop B2B prospect personas, content marketing strategies, brand propositions, campaigns and creative execution. We assist clients to optimise the best mix of outbound and inbound techniques to drive new business growth and our social media specialists ensure messaging and content works well across all digital media, with our our content team including qualified journalists.
· INTEGRATED DIGITAL SERVICES Bringing our extensive knowledge of attracting and engaging customers to well defined digital relationship models, both standalone or integrated to offline channels. We assist clients in a range of digital areas from UX design workshops and web design and development to conversion optimisation, SEO, PPC and social sellling.