How to Measure Brand Awareness in B2B?

Brand awareness is crucial in B2B marketing. It's not just about recognition; it's about being known as a solution provider for specific problems that your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) faces. The challenge lies in measuring this awareness effectively. Here's

What is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness in B2B means buyers from your ICP accounts recognize why your company is a viable solution to their problems. It's about being top-of-mind and trusted within your target market. Let's explore four key ways to measure this:

Sales

No Awareness vs. Brand Awareness

When There Is No Awareness:

• Sales teams often complain: "There is no brand awareness in our target accounts."
• Buyers ignore outreach efforts because they are unfamiliar with the brand.
• Comments like "We lose on brand" indicate that buyers prefer better-known brands and are hesitant to risk their social capital on a lesser-known name.

When There is Brand Awareness:

• Sales hear: "People know us and ask specific product questions."
• Buyers come prepared, already considering the brand as a preferred option.
• Instances where buyers bring printed stacks of case studies to meetings, indicating thorough pre-call research.

Attribution

Self-Attribution and Digital Attribution

Self-Attribution:

• During discovery calls, buyers mention that they've been following your brand.
• Buyers hear about your solution from trusted colleagues or industry peers.

Digital Attribution:

• Analytics tools show multiple touchpoints from various people within the target company before the first call.
• Consistent engagement across different digital platforms suggests growing brand awareness.

High-Intent Website Visits

High-intent website visits are a strong indicator of brand awareness:

• Different individuals often make multiple visits from ICP target accounts within the same company.
• High engagement on key pages such as product, pricing, and integration sections.
• Repeated visits to case studies indicate serious consideration and research.

Content Engagement

Content engagement can be tricky to measure but is crucial for understanding brand awareness:

Type of Product and Content

For Expertise Services:

• Repeated engagement with expert content can indicate brand awareness.
• Consistent readership of articles, whitepapers, and industry insights demonstrates recognition.

For SaaS/Tech Products:

• Engagement needs to feature your product explicitly.
• Examples include multiple engagements with product ads leading to high-intent visits or several buyers from a target account signing up for a product-related webinar.

Level of Engagement

• Simple likes or reactions on social media posts do not necessarily equate to brand awareness.
• Look for multiple recent engagements with relevant content that demonstrate deeper interest and understanding.

Why These Metrics Matter?

Discussing brand awareness with executives and sales teams often requires concrete examples of how it impacts the pipeline and deal closure rates:

• Show how brand awareness activities have led to increased engagement and multiple touchpoints with target accounts.
• Highlight how a recognized brand has facilitated smoother sales conversations and quicker decision-making processes.

Closing Thoughts

In today's competitive B2B landscape, simply creating content is not enough. To build and measure brand awareness, you need a strategic approach that integrates sales feedback, attribution analysis, high-intent website visits, and nuanced content engagement metrics.

Hiring a content strategist can significantly enhance your efforts, ensuring that your brand reaches and resonates with your target audience.

With the right strategy in place, brand awareness can become a powerful driver of growth and success in your B2B endeavors.

By focusing on these measurable aspects of brand awareness, you can demonstrate the tangible value of your brand marketing efforts and secure the buy-in of key stakeholders in your organization.

Let's move beyond creating content for content's sake and start building a brand your target market trusts and prefers.

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