No offense, but it’s a good bet that no one has ever bought your product because they liked your logo.
For companies in the B2B space that have broad brand recognition, some portion of their leads and new revenue can be attributed to their brand. But most B2B companies don’t have that. So where should they focus —on building brand awareness or generating qualified sales leads? Definitely the latter, says Ed Marsh, a founding principal of Consilium Global Business Advisors, a business growth consultant.
“Your brand is really the distillation of what you do, your business philosophy and how you impact others. The first barrier to branding is that many B2B manufacturing companies have never codified those elements into a brand they have internalized. Before a brand can be publicly effective it must first be embraced internally,” Marsh states in a recent blog post on Business 2 Community (Business2Community.com), a purveyor of the latest trends in social media, marketing, branding and public relations.
If you’re like nearly every small and medium-sized business, you have neither the time nor money to tell folks repeatedly how groovy you are. So what do you do? Show, don’t tell, says Marsh.
The “pitter patter” of your content marketing will attract potential customers, establish your thought leadership and introduce them to your brand, convert them to leads and then help you nurture them into customers. Each interaction can establish and reinforce your brand as a byproduct – and as a result of their experience rather than your say so.
“Instead of blathering on about how each glance at the corporate mirror reconfirms your company’s awesomeness, use your digital marketing to reach new folks and legitimately help them with your great content and thought leadership. Simultaneously you’ll spread your message and demonstrate the essence of your brand — and instead of a useless ‘awareness’ metric you’ll have a lead too!”
