Should You Prioritize Lead Generation or Brand Awareness?

Originally posted on Medium.

Working on smaller marketing teams has its perks. At JotForm, each member of our three-person marketing staff has the ability to try our hand at more fun things than if we worked as a cog in a wheel of some mega corporation.

But there are difficulties as well. JotForm competes in a big space and we have a lot of users, so the demands and possibilities of marketing sometimes exceed the time we have at our disposal. And one of the biggest challenges of splitting of time is determining whether to use it for brand awareness or lead gen efforts.

Loosely defined, brand awareness is a company’s visibility to the public. It’s the emotions and attitude the public associates with an organization. The aim of increasing brand awareness is that when someone is finally looking for a product or service within your company’s industry, that your organization favorably comes to mind.

Lead gen, on the other hand, doesn’t always require brand awareness, but it’s vastly more effective when the two are working harmoniously. Lead gen usually results in a call to action, and a distinct value proposition. However, many businesses depend solely on their ability to connect with prospective customers at the point of interaction without a recognizable brand at all.

At JotForm we think we’ve found the right balance, but it always evolves. We keep an active social media presence, which in effect is lead generation, brand awareness, and even user engagement all wrapped in one. We occasionally set up a booth at conferences (brand awareness) and run different sorts of advertising (lead gen).

Painting it with pretty broad strokes, here’s a breakdown of how we categorize our engagement, brand awareness, and lead gen efforts:

So why’s this important to understand?

No company has unlimited resources, so it’s crucial to know the implications of each of these categories. Put simply, a brand is important when a user doesn’t need your product, but lead gen is important when they do need it.

For JotForm, our brand is our lifeblood. So it’s important to make sure people are aware of JotForm, even if they aren’t in the market for a form building tool right this second. Luckily, our brand has developed on its own for many years, which has been driven by the product’s ease of use. It was refreshing setting up a booth at a conference a few months back and having so many people come up and say they were fans?—?or that they’ve at least heard?—?of JotForm. This is a sign that the brand is doing OK, but that only gets us so far.

Many of our users find us because they’re searching online for “best online form builder”, “form creator” or even recently “best Adobe FormsCentral alternative.” This is why we need to work not only on being a recognizable brand, but being available when potential users are in the market for our service. Many users discover us for the first time when they’re on the hunt for a form builder, but the ones more likely to give JotForm a try are the ones who are already familiar with our brand.

Things have been growing consistently for JotForm, and that’s a sign the company is doing right by its users. That’s why user engagement is also a key element in our marketing efforts. Even more than our competitors, we regularly have dialogue with via feedback surveys, direct emails, and, of course, social media. Keeping an open dialogue with our users gives us the ability to understand what they want to see out of our company. Brand awareness and lead generation play the biggest roles in attracting new users, but engagement and product quality are what keeps them.

Does your marketing department put a higher priority on lead gen or brand awareness?