Why Brand Marketing Has to Come First

For b2b businesses:

A great brand drives interest / trial.

A great product drives repeat / word of mouth.

A great customer experience drives loyalty.

(I think the same could be said for consumer businesses as well).

I once led marketing for a b2b market research & technology company that was pumping money into paid ads, and I mean pumping money.

When I took over the team, I identified a critical problem: our conversion rate from ad to site visit was low, our conversion from site visit to form fill was horrific.

Why? Because no one knew what we did, who it helped, how it helped them, and why they should care. And mind you, we were attempting to attract executives at large consumer goods companies, and get them to spend multiple six-figures with us.

I immediately changed our strategy. We reduced spend on paid ads, we doubled down on strategy: executing a category design workshop, defining our category, finessing our narrative, re-branding our product, and then distributing this new, clear, narrative and vision for the future with our product versus the future without our product via industry publications, which were known, liked, and trusted, by those same industry executives we were trying to attract.

Can you guess which strategy performed better? Can you guess which had a better return on investment?

The “let’s just pump money into paid ads” thinking is problematic regardless of your industry, it’s especially short-sighted when your brand marketing is wobbly at best. It’s a short-sighted and feeble attempt to drive revenue, when the reality is your company would be far better served investing in brand marketing and a great product first.

I loved this morning’s article by Ana Anjelic (CMO at Espirit, xBanana Republic, xHavas) on why Brand Marketing comes first, especially as she addresses it from the consumer goods lens.

What do you think?

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January 2024

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Park City, Utah