Lead generation is often considered the primary goal of B2B marketing. But the idea of “performance branding” offers a more balanced approach and is the key to long-term success.
The B2B customer journey is more complex than ever. It has evolved to include multiple touchpoints across the entire marketing funnel. But how can marketers make the most of each stage and find the perfect balance between short-term sales activation and long-term brand focus?
B2B marketing managers have no shortage of research that can advise them on the more tactical, short-term and narrow end of the marketing funnel, with a particular focus on segmentation and performance marketing tactics because they are so easy to track.
But there is a possibility that this approach is wrong. “Over the past decade, lead generation marketers have dominated B2B marketing by focusing primarily on short-term results (lead generation) and positioning marketing as an exact science,” says Afia Addison, head of market engagement at LinkedIn B2B Research Center. Institute. “It can eliminate all losses, and all actions can make profits.”
However, this focus on generating leads ignores the importance of using brand building to create demand for products and services in the minds of customers. This should not be forgotten because of the 95-5 rule, which states that 95% of segmented buyers are not in the market for goods and services at any given time. As a result, lead generation can only reach the 5% of buyers who are “in the market.”
The advice to marketers is clear. Instead of basing your B2B marketing strategy on lead generation, optimize campaigns to manage “category entry points” throughout the conversion funnel. A term coined by Jenny Romaniuk, a professor at the Bass Ehrenberg Institute, “category hot spots” are “cues that category shoppers use to access their memories when faced with a purchasing situation.”
To generate these signals, marketers must strive to find a balance between lead generation and a strong brand message. Two different approaches requiring different creative, media and measurement strategies as clients evolve.
Focus on building your brand
There are positive signs that B2B marketers are recognizing the need to strike a balance. According to a recent LinkedIn B2B Benchmark study, while lead generation (36%) takes up the majority of B2B budgets, B2B leaders also allocate budgets to brand building (30%) and demand generation (20%).
However, more attention should be paid to the branding element, which is the top of the sales funnel. Marketing effectiveness experts Les Bennett and Peter Field say in a recent B2B Institute report: “Activations should be clearly targeted to potential customers and designed to be easy for them to respond to. It's a world of performance marketing, incentives and lots of digital technology. tactical activities are good for sales.” The short term and ROI can be high.
However, Bennett and Field argue that such activation-based marketing is unlikely to be remembered, and its effects will be short-lived and contribute little to long-term growth. In contrast, brand building “usually operates on an emotional level, creating long-lasting memories and associations that continue to influence purchasing decisions long after the ad has been shown. Ultimately, building a brand is the key to long-term growth and profitability.
In consumer marketing, this balance is optimized in favor of brand building at 60-40% of the cost. However, Binet and Field's models suggest that in B2B this should equate to 46% of the brand budget and 54% of the activation budget. Although it depends on the category and context.
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Brand effectiveness in action
The success of this balanced approach across the sales funnel is demonstrated by recent advertiser activity on LinkedIn.
Fuji Electric has been partnering with LinkedIn since 2021 to reach B2B buyers in international markets. In one campaign, the company sought to promote its retail vehicles globally using an integrated, organic and paid media strategy on LinkedIn.
Fuji Electric's plan was to use the upper and middle funnel of sales to create a more fun and emotional appeal for the brand by sharing fun facts about the history of the vending machine business. The company then created product-focused content about how retailers can use vending machines to grow their business.
The brand also used cross-marketing to attract potential customers through targeting, rotating certain ad formats to gather buyer information and encouraging audiences who had previously interacted with its ads to convert. This campaign achieved higher levels of brand engagement and click-through rates.
Another example is CleverTap, a customer acquisition and retention platform. LinkedIn came to us to solve the problems of increasing brand awareness and opening up access to new audiences, targeting the most relevant audiences to generate leads, leveraging the LinkedIn algorithm to maximize organic reach and lead conversion sales. It becomes a transformation.
The solution included a multi-product strategy that leveraged LinkedIn advertising formats such as Sponsored Content, Dynamic Ads and InMails to deliver content relevant to market segmentation and customer lifecycle.
CleverTap was also able to reach a wider range of professionals similar to their “ideal client” through carefully curated audiences and supported the use of industry hashtags to reach a wider audience. Meanwhile, Sponsored InMails are used to attract potential customers to the platform as they enter the sales funnel.
Each of these campaigns, as well as many others on LinkedIn, highlight the enormous potential of “influencer branding”: creating a brand that generates high levels of lead generation and subsequent sales.
This full-funnel approach engages buyers throughout the buying process and has proven effective in several categories. Sophisticated, simple, and powerful brand outcomes in B2B marketing go beyond click-through measurement and benefit marketers in the short and long term.
To learn more about LinkedIn's approach to the full sales funnel, go here.
