What is Brand awareness?
It is a marketing term that refers to people’s ability to recall and recognize your business, your product or service by name.
Why is it important? When prospects get to know your brand, it is an opportunity for you to build familiarity and gain trust. Modern buyers now research solutions to their problems online first. That’s why building your B2B brand awareness on the web is a great place to start.
A few strategies to build Brand Awareness
1. Build a professional, content rich B2B website
Good planning is essential to building a quality website. First, create a unique selling proposition right at the top to ensure that people will instantly understand the products or services your business offers.
Then, make sure your site is easy to navigate, optimized for mobile, that is holds pertinent information to help your audience find solutions to their challenges. The final key element for lead conversion is to include clear call to actions and forms for prospects to get in touch with you.
2. Leverage Retargeting Strategies for Website Visitors
Once visitors have consulted your website, a good retargeting strategy is a great way to get these prospects to come back and learn more. By continuing to show ads to these visitors who have left your website for the next 60 days or more, your product or service will benefit from extra visibility and you will give more exposure to your brand.
3. Create Blogs that are relevant and offer guidance
A blog is a great tactic when it offers content that shares expertise and experiences that are relevant to your target audience to help them in their journey. It also offers a way to incite visitors to come back. To get more mileage out of your blogs, identify your key words and include the ones that have the highest performance score to increase organic search views. Also promote them to your customers and prospects by inviting them to subscribe to email blog updates.
4. Get active on social media
You will need to do a bit of research, but you have an opportunity to increase your B2B brand awareness using channels that your target audience follows. Then, set a goal to post something valuable to your customers and prospects at a frequency that you can maintain. You can write about relevant industry trends, timely news or events, how to solve specific problems, myths & misconceptions, pros & cons to name a few. Eventually, some prospects will start following and engaging with you.
5. Take advantage of Key Trade magazines
Trade magazines offer focused content that is credible written by industry professionals. This is where your prospects look for news about new products, reviews, competitors, or industry trends. There are many ways to leverage your target audience through key trade publications. You can advertise, create thought leadership content with Partners or offer guest articles.
6. Use Email Marketing to nurture your contacts
If you maintain your customer and prospect database efficiently, you should continue nurturing your contacts through email marketing.
Analyze statistics from past email campaigns to plan and deliver relevant information at the right point during the buyer journey. By developing content that addresses your contact’s interests, you can build trust, keep customers engaged, make prospects more likely to convert and ultimately increase the customer lifetime value.
7. Call your prospects
Cold calling provides the opportunity to present your business and helps foster a relationship between businesses better than reaching out online. You can determine if there is a good fit by simply having a conversation. If your salespeople or inside sales do not have the bandwidth, a specialized B2B telemarketing agency can usually help and qualify potential opportunities while expanding brand awareness.
8. Show Up at key Industry Events
In business-to-business marketing, face-to-face communication is just as important as ever. Potential buyers want to know that they can trust your company and meeting your representatives in person is the first step. Choosing the right event that attracts your target audience is key. When a company is often present at key events, they will likely engage more with their customers and prospects and form a relationship. Another effective way to increase your exposure is by securing a speaking engagement at key industry events. By providing thought leadership, you can earn respect and attract the attention of your audience even though you are not making a sales pitch.
Why B2B Brand Awareness Matters
For people to want to buy from you, they need to know you exist and what you offer. Brand awareness can help set your business stand out. You will need to define what is truly unique about your offer to your target audience to rise above the noise. Your target audience has many roles within their own businesses therefore, you’ll need to refine your messaging to each of these stakeholders, all of whom have slightly different perspectives.