“Your memory is the ultimate search engine which comes first and then Google Search comes second!”
So how do we connect brand marketing and awareness (memory recall) with investment from the C-Suite?
The B2B Institute at LinkedIn is focussed on researching marketing effectiveness in B2B Marketing, and what learnings can be taken from B2C and applied to improve marketing in B2B. The focus of this podcast is to help B2B brands grow, and how you can focus as a marketer on working with finance to get more investment in marketing to help business continue to grow and thrive.
You need to think about the funnel on its side, customers are either in market or out of market in B2B. And if they're out of market they're not thinking about your products or services. This is where the 95/5 rule comes in to play where 95% of customers are out of market at any one time, and 5% are in market.
With 95% of your customers potentially not in market you need to be front of mind with awareness when they do become in market. This is the future sales view.
Finance determines your budget and your compensation; marketers should be deeply invested in working with finance.
Connect your future sales to the finance department. Valuations of business generally look at the value being derived from 20% current sales and cashflow and 80% future sales. Your short-term customers provide you your current cashflows, and your long term customers provide you your future cashflows and you have to reach both to grow. This is a good way to link brand marketing to short term sales marketing to help your conversation with the CFO for more investment.
Make sure you're connecting your brand messaging with category entry points, so that you don't just have awareness, but you have situational awareness and customers can connect your brand with when and why they should purchase your product or service.
There is so much good stuff in this discussion and combined with having a read of the actual paper at How B2B Brands Grow (linkedin.com), I'm sure you'll find lots more nuggets than my top 5! Would love to hear what others have taken from this episode and paper. Enjoy!