If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ll know that bringing in sales and profits is essential to a flourishing business. However, it’s not always easy to decide on the method through which you can attract a larger consumer base. Should you focus on brand awareness efforts or lead generation strategies? Is one a more effective marketing plan than the other?
Most companies fail to understand that you don’t always need to treat these two techniques separately; they can go hand in hand. In this article, we’ll compare brand awareness and lead generation, when to implement each and their complementary nature.
What Is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness is the practice of increasing your audience’s size and ensuring that as many people as possible know who you are. This can be achieved through broad advertising, networking events, promotions, and social media campaigns. Rather than producing sales, you can get recognition through your name and brand, becoming a trusted player in the corporate sector.
Your company’s brand is not just a logo or a tagline. It encompasses aesthetics, customer experiences, your story, the products you sell, and much more. Brand awareness lays the groundwork on which lead generation can build a campaign.
Using Brand Awareness
While brand awareness can overlap in some areas with a general marketing campaign, it has its own distinct indicators, like not being responsible for selling products or collecting customer information. Think of brand awareness as a shop’s front display that draws people in. Now that you know what brand awareness is, let’s consider when you should use it.
When You’re Starting Out
As a new business, you’re an unknown quantity. At this point, you should devote most of your marketing attention toward brand awareness. Tell prospects your story and what you stand for in a manner that makes your brand stand out. Once you’ve locked in a loyal clientele, you can integrate lead generation by encouraging your customers to spread the word and using various other means.
Establishing Trust
When you provide quality products or services, people are more likely to buy them because they trust you. Put out content in blog posts, videos, and white papers regularly, with details regarding what you have to offer. It would help if you also included special discounts or deals to build credibility and interest in your brand.
Warding off your competition requires securing email addresses, receiving feedback, and attracting attention through relevant branded content. You can’t reach ideal growth conditions unless you implement awareness strategies that catalyze your company’s success. A good reputation directly corresponds to widespread recognition, which is the goal.
What Is Lead Generation?
A lead refers to someone who shows an interest in what you’re selling. Lead generation is a more concrete process than brand awareness, aiming to bring in paying customers and increase sales. With this method, businesses target a consumer base for specific purposes and use specific landing page strategies, such as getting an individual to buy a product or sign up for a newsletter. The techniques you can use for lead generation depend on how aware prospects are regarding your brand. You have greater chances of warm leads when you’ve already established brand awareness.
Using Lead Generation
Getting leads can be challenging, requiring a wide range of strategies and tactics. While it’s advised to run frequent lead generation campaigns, here are some situations in which it is especially beneficial:
Contacts Using Emails
One type of marketing that is significantly popular and valuable is email marketing, delivering some of the highest ROI (return on investment). It’s no surprise then that It’s recommended to execute lead generation for building an extensive and profitable email list. Offer discounts to prospects if they sign up for your roster.
Niche Markets
Businesses that operate in niche markets have a smaller consumer pool. This means that lead generation is especially vital for them. If you advertise your product or service in such a market, you should consider adopting techniques like targeted Google ads or a newsletter sign-up option on your social media platforms.
Lead generation and brand awareness boost a company’s marketing efforts, deploying methods that convert prospects to customers seamlessly. If you keep using both campaigns as your brand’s foundation, you’ll quickly rise in the market and establish a leader status.
Referral Sales
Expanding your client base requires considerable effort and time. Fortunately, you can lean on your loyal customers to do some of this work for you. Request them to tell their family, friends, and coworkers about your products or services and why they like them. This type of lead generation is highly effective, especially for local businesses.
Combining Brand Awareness and Lead Generation
One of the best things you can do is combine brand awareness and lead generation for your marketing plan. The sooner you realize that they complement each other, the better. However, it’s essential that you adopt the right strategy at the right time. Consider this two-stage process:
- Start by building an honorable reputation with a brand awareness campaign
- Prove your reputational claims by providing specific content of value through lead generation
Following the two steps mentioned above will enable you to attain quality leads, increased conversions, precise audience segments, and reduced cold calls. If you’re wondering how to split funds as a start-up with a small budget, go for the 80/20 split; 80% funds for lead generation and 20% for brand awareness. On the other hand, if you’re a big corporation possessing a large budget, you can go for a 50/50 split. However, keep in mind that all this also depends on the kind of business you’re running.
This information can be overwhelming to process or might make you feel like you’re out of your comfort zone. If marketing is not your company’s strength or you’re experiencing money and time constraints, you can always hire a management company to do the work.
Endnote
There’s no clear winner in the debate of brand awareness vs. lead generation, as they are not mutually exclusive. By focusing on both, you can achieve visibility through substantial brand awareness work and reach the target market through lead generation activities. Creating an effective marketing time can quickly become overwhelming, especially when you blend strategies together. Don’t hesitate to reach out for outside help, as it might be exactly what you need.
Featured Image by Unsplash
