Increasing your brand can be challenging. You want to take the time to grow it the right way because brand awareness can drive new leads, especially in B2B markets, and turn them into customers. A brand is a very worthwhile investment but has an evolution process that involves more facets than just products and services. Does branding your business really matter though, and how can we grow a great brand?
Brand Recognition Matters – Branding your Business
Your brand is how people perceive your business before they meet the first person from the business or buy the first product. If people don’t know who you are, then they may not want to buy. Think about all the cereals from childhood that you remember the slogan even now. You know what brand represents what cereal and what that cereal is about just by seeing a logo. Brands do go beyond any logos or slogans. It’s the expression of your company’s core values, product quality, and customer relationships. It communicates to those you interact with or future clients what your company’s characteristics are and what kind of interaction they can expect based on others’ past experience or the masses’ perception of your products or service like with Nike, Apple, McDonald’s, etc. When you are creating your brand or before you start promoting heavily make sure to focus on what sets your company apart, setting the value and key aspects to any B2B marketing your company does.
Current research and data illustrate that brand recognition is still critically valuable, especially for business-to-business (B2B), to grow a business’s footprint in the market. Data like:
89% of B2B marketers say brand awareness is their most important goal
91% of B2B marketers use content marketing to promote brand awareness.
B2B companies with strong brands generate higher earnings
It goes back to the saying “my reputation precedes me”. That’s what your brand can do making new acquisitions easier if your brand is strong. On average, 5 to 7 brand impressions are necessary before a prospect will remember your brand. Awareness is connected to more than just recognition, but also plays into how much your audience is willing to trust your business. So, how does a brand grow when you are branding your business?
Growing Your Brand
Increasing your brand’s recognition can happen from several angles. Leverage each to create a brand that does most of the work for you.
Investing in a professional custom website and lead generator. Using a lead generator like Linkedin who has over 575 million users, with more than 260 million active users on a monthly basis, and 40% of those monthly users access the platform daily. Those users are spread over 200 countries worldwide and consist of 30 million companies. What better way to get your brand recognized locally and worldwide. You will need a website created using customer analysis and research your target market’s needs. It must align with the company’s strategy and business model while being designed to generate leads to the sales force, or to a smaller extent, to be sold directly online.
Successful website creation is the cornerstone of any effort to “raise awareness” of a B2B brand. Websites are the new business card of today. Potential customers will most likely already have been to your website before your meeting or they will go immediately after. Your website needs to be easy to navigate and enhanced to maximize customer engagement. It should communicate your company’s full ideology and core values taking advantage of every opportunity to encourage the visitors to take further action.
Partnering with Digital Ads. Using digital ads can cast a wider net of visibility increasing first-time exposure to your brand. Performance-based ads can target groups predisposed to like your product, but digital brand ads will expose those clients in your genre or business and those in related markets. This advertising can build customer loyalty to future customers who may not be in a phase of life for your product or service. For example, a person doesn’t need tires all the time but knows about Michelin and Goodyear before they can even drive. The brand transcends its target market because of its great and wide-range advertising. It requires some patience and persistence, but these ads can boost your brand to capture immediate ROI while also driving future sales.
Internal brand building. Investing in great ads, websites, and lead generators are great, but if your employees and you don’t know how to speak about your brand and company fluently then it won’t amount to “a hill of beans”. It’s counterproductive to run lead generation campaigns if the sales team that’s conducting the follow up doesn’t know how to properly speak to your brand’s benefits. Educating and ensuring that your team is on the same page and understands what your brand stands for will cast a consistent message along every part of your customer’s journey. You want to create a bond between your brand and potential clients that builds trust driving your conversion rate up of leads turned into customers.
Branding your business correctly and investing in the things that grow it and establish trust with the market will pay invaluable dividends that can exponentially increase your customer base.
