- In this episode,
I'm gonna be talking about
the two seemingly different campaign objectives,
of brand awareness and lead generation.
What they are, how they're different,
and which one is gonna be best for your business.
Let's get to it.
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Hey there, my name is Adam Erhart.
Modern Marketing Strategist
and welcome to The Modern Marketing Show,
where we help you grow your business
by making way better marketing.
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and greatest marketing strategies,
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All right, let's talk marketing objectives,
specifically two of my absolute
favorite campaign objectives,
one of which being brand awareness
and the other being lead generation.
Now here's the thing
when it comes to these marketing objectives.
Most marketers tend to fall squarely
in one camp or the other.
The brand awareness people, for example,
say that lead gen is too salesy
and destroys the brand image and reputation.
And the lead gen people say that
brand awareness ads are useless,
and don't provide a real and concrete tangible
return on investment,
that's accountable and trackable.
So, which is the better option?
And more specifically,
which one's gonna be right for you?
Well, I'm gonna tell you exactly what I believe
at the end of this video.
But first, let's go over some of the key differences
between brand awareness campaigns
and lead generation campaigns.
Alright, so the very first thing we need to cover here
is what exactly is brand awareness.
You see, when we're gonna be running
a brand awareness campaign,
it's important to kind of understand
what exactly our objectives are,
what our goals are,
what we're seeking to achieve,
and probably most importantly,
how we're gonna measure this.
So at the end of the day,
we can deem whether the campaign was successful,
or whether it wasn't.
So in a nutshell, and really, in its most basic sense,
a brand awareness campaign is really just
how well people know your brand.
Or to put it literally,
how aware people are of your brand,
hence, brand awareness.
Not very original,
but at least it explains it pretty clearly.
Now, the reason brand awareness is important
is kind of self evident, right?
After all, if people don't know about you,
they don't know about your brand,
well, how are they ever gonna do business with you.
But where brand awareness can campaigns tend to fall short,
is because there's a big gap
between someone simply knowing about you,
and then actually going and doing business with you.
All that said, people and consumers
and the customers that we're trying to reach in this case,
well, they only have a limited mental inventory
for brand names or names in general,
which means that you really want your brand
and your business to occupy
that incredibly valuable real estate in their minds.
Now, one of the cliched sayings is essentially,
"You wanna become the Coca Cola of your industry."
Now, the reason we use Coca Cola as an example in this case
is just because it's such a well known brand,
that people actually ask for it by name.
This is the same reason that some brands
have become synonymous with the products
that they actually are.
Good examples here are Kleenex or Band-Aid,
not really products,
they're actually the brands behind them.
But it's rare that somebody asks for tissue paper
or a plaster, or I don't even know what the generic name
for a Band-Aid is,
let's say a plaster, yeah, just sounds wrong.
This is the reason that you really want your brand
to be really well known,
so that it becomes another synonymous and interchangeable
with whatever product, or service
or whatever essentially that you're selling to your market.
And the reason that they're deployed all the time,
and even by some of the more hardcore
kind of lead gen advocates,
well, they still recognize the importance
of this aspect of a brand awareness campaign.
And that is, that people, customers and prospects,
those that you're seeking to essentially sell to,
well, they need a lot of touch points
in order to build that know, like,
and trust factor that is gonna be required
to do business with you.
Now the number of touch points that are gonna be required
to build that know, like and trust factor,
and in order to kind of create a sale,
well, it's gonna vary depending on your business
and your market, and your industry.
But depending what statistic you read,
it's somewhere between six and 12, maybe 13, or 14,
if you've got a higher price point thing for sale,
or if it's sort of a higher trust value industry
and things of that nature.
Basically, if you're selling a pack of gum,
you probably only really need one touch point.
But if you're selling something like insurance, or a home,
or business to business services,
well, you're gonna require a lot more touch points.
Regardless, this is where brand awareness comes into play,
because the more well known you are
and the more touch points that you make,
the more trust that you're gonna be able to establish
with your market.
Also, as consumers,
we've been kind of subconsciously trained
to associate frequency with trust,
meaning that if you can show up more times
in front of your target market,
well, they're naturally more likely to trust you,
and therefore to do business with you.
Now fortunately, when it comes to touch points,
these can happen rapid fire.
Sure, of course, we've heard about
how we need to nurture relationships,
and it can take time to build that trust aspect,
but for some people,
this can happen very fast.
Really, what you wanna do
is you want to facilitate the journey
so that it's up to your consumer to decide
how quickly they want the relationship to progress.
As an example, here, you could run a brand awareness ad,
they could maybe take some kind of action on that ad
on the very first try,
they might then download a guide,
or watch a video,
that might then get re-targeted with another ad
and receive an email and then maybe watch another video.
And all of this could happen
in the span of maybe even just a few minutes.
Others on the other hand,
this could happen over a period of hours,
of days, of weeks, of months,
and in some cases, even years,
which is why it's important to continually drip
or continually deliver more and more valuable content
and brand awareness type materials to your market.
Now a really important note here
when it comes to brand awareness,
is you need to make sure that the content
that you're putting in front of your prospects
is entertaining, or educational
or informative in some way,
And more specifically, that it's on brand.
Because you wanna make sure
that these touch points that you're making,
well, they all line up with your brand.
So if you're sending all sorts of different
and divergent and confusing messages,
none of that brand awareness is gonna carry over
'cause you're going to end up confusing
and possibly losing potential customers.
Alright, so now that we've got that established,
let's cover some brand awareness advertising metrics.
Because at the end of the day,
one of the biggest arguments against brand awareness
is that it's not really trackable,
and you can't really tell if it's working or not.
So here's some metrics that we like to use
in order to judge the effectiveness,
or at least how many people are getting exposed
to our potential message.
The very first metric is reach.
Reach covers how many different people saw your message,
it's a really good indicator of sort of how wide,
or how broad, or how narrow,
if that's the method you're choosing to use.
Well, it's essentially just a measure
of how many different people are getting exposed
or have the potential to become more aware of your business.
The next metric is frequency.
And this is how many times someone saw something.
Now this one's important because again as we covered,
we do need to increase those touch points.
So by keeping an eye on frequency,
we're gonna be able to tell how many times
someone has potentially seen your ad,
or your content, or your message.
And the last one is impressions.
And this is simply just reach times frequency.
So how many different people saw your message,
how many different times
and that gives you impressions.
And this is kind of the main metric that people use
when they're looking at brand awareness campaigns.
How many different impressions did we get?
And if we wanna get more granular,
and look at the budget side,
what's our cost per impression?
So basically, how much is it gonna cost us
to get in front of our target market?
Alright, so now that we've covered reach,
and frequency and impressions,
well, let's take it a step further
and really dial in how we're gonna measure brand awareness.
Because if you've got an agency,
or someone on your team,
and they're advocating
just running brand awareness campaigns,
but all they're doing is really spending a lot of money,
and you don't have a lot of sales in return for that,
ah, not a great strategy.
On the other hand,
if you can actually track that yes this is working,
more people are talking about us,
more people are trusting us,
they're hearing about us,
they're liking us.
Well, eventually this is going to correlate to more sales,
provided you're making good offers
and have a good product market fit all the usual stuff.
Alright, so the first one we need to look at
is brand recall.
This is essentially how well
people are gonna remember your name.
Now really hard to go out there
and survey all of the potential people and say,
"What's the first brand you think of when it comes to cars,
"or drinks, or services or whatever it is."
On the other hand,
what you can do is simply take a look
at your Google Analytics data for your website
and see how many people are coming to your website direct.
This is a good indicator because it means that
somebody is actually putting your name or your brand name,
in order to get to your website.
And how are they gonna put it in,
if they've never heard of you, right?
That's why brand recall is one of my favorite ways to look,
of overall brand awareness campaigns
and making sure that this is increasing over time.
Another good way to do this is with another Google tool,
using Google Trends and tracking the mentions
or basically how many times your brand is mentioned
on social media, or across the web.
And again, what we're looking for here
is an upward trend in those number of mentions made.
Again, clearly indicating
that more people are talking about you,
and therefore more people know about you.
This next one's a little more advanced,
but it involves search volume.
And essentially, if your brand starts becoming
a targetable keyword,
meaning that people can bid against it on Google ads,
or it's showing some kind of search volume
on the search engines,
well, this is a good sign that again,
more people are searching for you,
and your brand is actually becoming so valuable
that people are willing to bid against it,
in order to rank above you for your own brand.
It sounds frustrating actually,
if someone's willing to bet against your own brand.
But it's actually kind of cool,
because it shows that you've really solidified a position
in your consumers minds.
Plus, for what it's worth,
it's gonna be really hard for someone else
to rank against your name.
So as long as you do proper optimization
and make sure that you're continuing
to market your business,
well, you should be okay.
Lastly, we have things like vanity metrics.
Now vanity metrics are easily
my least favorite metrics of all.
These are things like likes, comments, and shares,
basically things that make you feel good
and make you look really good,
but don't really relate to more sales,
or more customers or more leads
or more revenue for your business.
That's it as a brand awareness thing,
now they're not too bad
because more likes, more comments, more shares,
means more engagement
and more engagement typically means
that more people know about you
and are talking about your business.
All right, so why do the brand awareness camp
and the lead generation camp,
why don't they get along?
And what is it about brand awareness
that the lead geners just don't like?
Well, for starters,
attribution with a brand awareness campaign
is a little trickier.
After all, it's really hard to figure out
where exactly that sale came from,
where it originated,
and what factors were in place in order to deliver the sale.
And if you can't figure out where the sale came from,
or what's working and what's not,
well then, how do you know what part of your marketing
you should do more of,
and what part's completely useless
and you should just stop doing all together?
The other problem that lead gen has with brand awareness
is that brand, well, they do recognize
that it is a valuable asset,
does take a long time to build,
which means that you're gonna have to put in
potentially a ton of time,
a ton of money and a ton of energy
into creating content,
running brand awareness campaigns,
and all of these things
that are gonna help to build trust
and people be more aware of your business,
but don't necessarily equate to short-term sales,
which a lot of businesses are governed by.
Alright, so now that we've gotten all that covered,
let's dive into lead generation as a campaign objective.
Alright, so for starters,
what is lead generation
or lead gen as it's more commonly known?
Well, essentially lead gen
is just attracting and converting people
who have no idea who you are,
or may not have heard about your business
and converting them into prospects
and people likely to do business with you.
Basically, if brand awareness
is generating more awareness for your brand,
well, lead generation is generating
more leads for your company.
Basically, again, the name kind of implies
and says exactly what it is.
Now, lead gen is typically done
by providing something of value to your prospect
or potential customer,
in exchange for their contact information,
which allows them to become a lead.
Now the first thing you need to understand
when it comes to running an effective
lead generation campaign,
is that nothing happens without a good offer.
All the touch points in the world simply don't matter
if the touch points that you're making
aren't irresistible enough,
or they don't incentivize your prospect to take action
and hand over their contact details.
At the end of the day,
whether people buy or not
isn't simply because they're aware of you,
it's because they liked the solution that you're proposing.
They like the offer,
they like your product or your service or your business.
Basically, they like what you can do for them,
not just the fact that they know you.
We all know somebody that we really like,
but we're not exactly gonna hire them to do important tasks
if we don't feel they're up for the job.
Now, just like with a brand awareness campaign,
the touch points required in the funnel,
as we call it with lead generation.
Well, the funnel or the steps that someone walks through,
these can happen rapid fire as well.
For example, they could see the ad,
they could hand over their contact information,
they could be re-targeted,
moving them further down the funnel,
and basically move them closer and closer to a sale,
and all of this can happen very quickly.
Alright, so if lead generation is all about generating leads
by essentially providing something of value
to your potential customer,
in exchange for their contact details,
well, what are some of the metrics you wanna take a look at
to make sure you're on the right track?
Well, one of the first things you wanna look at is CTR,
or click through rate.
This is basically showing how many people saw your ad
and then clicked on it in order to take action,
basically indicating that it was interesting
and relevant to them.
The next metric is CPC or cost per click.
This basically tells you how much it's gonna cost you
every single time someone clicks on your ad.
The next metric is conversion rate.
And what this shows is of the people that clicked,
how many people actually went all the way through
with the action by handing over their contact details,
in exchange for whatever you were promising.
Finally, we have CPA or cost per acquisition.
And this is probably the most important metric of all,
when it comes to lead generation,
because it's the cost that you're gonna end up paying
in order to acquire a lead.
Now how much you can afford to pay to acquire lead
is gonna depend on a number of different factors.
But most importantly,
is gonna be the lifetime value of your customer.
For example, if you've got a customer
that's worth 10 bucks over their entire lifetime,
well, you're obviously not gonna wanna pay
more than 10 bucks to acquire a lead.
And that's assuming you have 100% conversion rate
by turning that lead into a customer.
On the other hand,
if you're selling a product or service for 10,000,
20,000 or $50,000.
well, paying 10 bucks a lead sounds cheap,
might even be willing to pay 20 bucks or 50 bucks
or maybe even 100,
depending on how fluid
and how greased up your funnel really is
at converting them from lead to paying customer.
All right, so how can you measure the effectiveness
of a lead generation campaign?
Well fortunately, when it comes to measuring lead gen
compared to brand awareness, it's actually really easy.
Essentially, all you need to know is,
are you acquiring leads for an acceptable cost,
meaning that you're profitable,
or are you not and you're paying too much,
meaning that you're losing money.
Being profitable is good,
and losing money is bad.
It's that's simple.
With lead generation by tracking things like
click through rates and conversion rates
and cost per acquisition,
well all of the data is easily accessible
and really easy to read,
meaning that making decisions is a lot more strategic,
and therefore a lot easier to make the right ones
for you and your business.
Alright, so what is it about lead generation
that the brand awareness people just don't like?
After all, we've just painted a pretty clear
and compelling picture of why lead gen
sounds like a pretty good strategy.
Well, the biggest problem with lead gen
from the brand awareness perspective,
is that lead gen is really focused on the short-term
and the short-term alone.
Where brand awareness is seeking to build a brand
and really create an asset around your business,
lead generation tends to just be focused on the short win.
Acquiring leads, getting as many as you can
for as cheap as you can,
and converting them into customers,
with little appreciation for building that longer-term
and more sustainable brand in business.
Okay, so now that you know the key differences
between a brand awareness campaign
and a lead generation campaign,
which one is going to be best for you and your business?
Well, the answer there really depends
on what type of business you're in.
And whether you're in a business to business
or B2B type industry,
or whether you're doing a business to consumer
or B2C business,
meaning you're selling direct to the consumer.
First up, we have the business to consumer
or B2C type business.
Now typically, brand awareness campaigns
are gonna be a lot more prevalent in this type of industry,
because it's going to tend to apply
with more mass market appeal.
Basically, the goal here with a B2C
and with a brand awareness type approach,
is to reach as many of your ideal target market as possible,
with a fun and memorable and on-brand piece of content.
Your focus here is gonna be less
on collecting the names and emails and contact details
of your specific customers,
and more essentially,
on carving your name and your brand and your business
into their minds,
so that you become the most relevant
and the most memorable brand
that's gonna be associated with your industry.
A key thing to remember is that repetition is key here,
so you really wanna focus on those touch points
by ensuring that you're constantly showing up
in front of them in as many relevant
and strategic ways as possible.
And on the flip side of that,
well, repetition is important, so is novelty.
So you wanna keep things fun,
and fresh and exciting.
And make sure that the content you're producing
is relevant and memorable.
Because the only thing worse than
showing up a million times,
is showing up a million times
with a completely bland or boring or vanilla message.
That's a great way to waste money.
Alright, so now let's talk about B2B or business to business
where lead gen tends to be the method of choice.
The reason lead generation is the preferred method
for business to business markets
is that you're dealing with a significantly more limited
and more targeted,
and more narrow-focused part of the market.
Basically, we're not trying to go
for mass market appeal here,
because it simply wouldn't make sense
because we just don't have that many of our targeted buyers
out there in the real world.
On the other hand,
we have a few very carefully selected
business to business leads
that we wanna acquire and bring into our funnel.
B2B also typically involves
a more relational style marketing approach,
rather than a transactional style approach.
Again, we're not selling a pack of gum here,
or a T-shirt or anything like that.
We're involved in complicated and often long-term
and very expensive purchases
that are gonna be long-term in ongoing relationships.
For this reason,
it pays to acquire a lead,
so that you can continue to nurture them
again and again and again over time
with relevant and valuable and helpful information.
Also, brand awareness is much less of a consideration here
because again, we don't need everyone to know about us.
So we don't necessarily want awareness,
we want consideration.
And moreso we want conversion.
And ideally, you want it fast,
which means providing some kind of irresistible offer
or valuable content,
in exchange for your prospect's contact information.
So which one is best?
Well, inside our marketing agency,
we use both brand awareness and lead generation campaigns
on a daily basis for both our B2B and B2C clients.
Also, I just touched on there,
if it's a B2B client,
we tend to air more on the side of lead generation,
and if it's a B2C client,
we tend to air more on the side of brand awareness.
That said, if I had to pick an absolute winner
of which one I prefer,
nine times out of 10,
well, it would have to be the lead generation side,
because I really like trackable, accountable
and measurable marketing campaigns.
The reality is whether your B2B or B2C,
investing your time, energy and resources
in a measurable, trackable
and accountable marketing strategy
is gonna be well worth it,
and will provide a significant return on investment.
Alright, the next thing you're gonna wanna do
is check out the video I have linked up right here
which is going to be released next week.
It's part of this B2B versus B2C series.
And it's gonna give you even more actionable
and practical tips,
that you can use to immediately deploy in your business.
So make sure to check back next week for that video.
Thanks so much for watching,
and I'll catch you next time on The Modern Marketing Show.
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