A surprising number of organizations get bogged down in debates about which kind of marketing campaign to engage in: brand vs demand? This has always been puzzling to me since it’s clearly not an either/or question. Both kinds of campaigns are needed — and to be most effective, they should be integrated.
To put the brand vs demand argument to bed once and for all, it’s important to understand how the two are different, why they both matter, and how to set goals so they are most effective… together. This blog, and my upcoming series on integrated marketing campaigns, helps clarify all of the above and offers tips for building successful marketing campaigns that deliver results.
To put the brand vs demand argument to bed once and for all, it’s important to understand how the two are different, why they both matter, and how to set goals so they are most effective… together.
Brand vs demand: What’s the difference?
Brand building is about creating and nurturing a strong and positive identity for your company or products — establishing credibility with your target audience and fostering customer loyalty. Demand generation aims to drum up interest in your company’s offerings and convert that into qualified sales leads that ultimately bring in revenue.
There’s obvious overlap between the two: customers want to know both what they’re buying and who they’re buying from. But demand gen focuses on generating leads from existing prospects or those currently in the market for your solution. Brand-building aims to raise your profile with new prospects. It helps you grow your audience so future demand campaigns always have new, warmer targets.
The benefits of a brand and demand campaign
The fact that brand-building helps grow your audience while demand-gen works to convert them is precisely why you need brand AND demand campaigns. And when you integrate them, the results speak for themselves. LinkedIn sees 6 times better results in campaigns that pair brand awareness with demand generation.
The fact that brand-building helps grow your audience while demand-gen works to convert them them is precisely why you need brand AND demand campaigns.
You also gain several other benefits by integrating brand and demand:
- Increased visibility and ability to influence prospects at the right time
- Consistent messaging with a compelling story across the journey
- Better resource allocation by not duplicating effort
- Improved marketing ROI from better aligning tactics with goals
Integrating brand and demand campaigns can be challenging as they are often done by different teams. As well, many organizations tend to have a short-term focus, which leads them to lean more heavily on the demand-gen side of things. Setting clear goals can help resolve some of these difficulties.
A common goal for brand and demand
Brand and demand campaigns have different measures of success. Demand campaigns tend to have concrete KPIs, with metrics ranging from marketing qualified leads (MQLs), pipeline generated and sales qualified leads (SQLs) to conversion rates and more. Branding campaign measures tend to be a bit fuzzier, involving share of voice, click through rates, website traffic or increases in various brand metrics gleaned through surveys.
Those measures underscore the different goals inherent in brand and demand campaigns, which is why it’s important to set an overarching umbrella goal that both types of campaign can support if you want to truly integrate your activities.
which is why it’s important to set an overarching umbrella goal that both types of campaign can support if you want to truly integrate your activities.
That common goal will depend on your business objectives but is most likely tied to revenue generation. Once it’s agreed upon, you can set metrics and KPIs for each campaign accordingly and ensure both keep that mutual end in mind.
How to build an integrated campaign
Over the next few weeks, I’ll explore how to combine brand and demand efforts into a successful integrated campaign. I’ll look at how to leverage each type of campaign across the full buyer’s journey, the effectiveness of different media and content types plus other best practices and learnings.
While brand campaigns are often thought of as addressing the initial awareness stage, they also play a key role in ongoing differentiation. Similarly, while demand generation focuses on engagement and conversion to drive short-term results, it also needs to run over a longer period to help you stay top of mind among potential buyers. Stay tuned for more so you too can launch integrated campaigns that drive growth
Leave a Reply