Strong brands drive the best leads; high quality, high spending prospects with a high propensity both to convert and to remain loyal over time.
A decade of digital transformation has seen marketing repositioned as a growth driver not a cost centre.
The ‘colouring-in department’ has had quite the makeover, earning a place at the top table armed with prospect-loaded pipelines, data-driven cost per acquisition models and ROI analyses to keep even the most hard-nosed CFO happy. “For every dollar I spend, I give you 10 dollars back.” Measurable. Accountable. Transparent. What’s not to love?
It’s high time marketing got its moment in the sun and for good commercial reasons. However, digital or ‘performance’ marketing only tells half the story. A healthy and high converting prospect pipeline is dependent on more than SEO, social media campaigns and paid ads – important though all those things are.
Strong brands drive the best leads; high quality, high spending prospects with a high propensity both to convert and to remain loyal over time. Ensuring you bake ‘customer lifetime value’ into your cost per acquisition calculations means you are prioritising investments into long term return rather than high churn leads that need replenishing every year.
Arch digital disruptors Airbnb recently announced that they had diverted performance marketing budget into traditional branding and PR activity and posted their best ever results. Branding is a lead generation accelerator par excellence.
Branding? Sounds expensive…
Strong brands are not simply the ones with the biggest budgets. Strong brands win because they resonate clearly with their target customers, solve their most pressing challenges, delight and surprise – all while delivering tangible benefits over the competition. The hard yards in creating a strong brand are not in designing logos and launching multi-million pound ad campaigns but with a deep, visceral understanding of your ‘differentiated value’. In the words of Jeff Bezos “your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room”.
Strong brands are obsessive about their customers. Strong brands don’t just meet existing needs, they anticipate and advocate for them - often before the customer even recognises they need it. And they do it with passion and dedication at a fair price. Good branding is good business.
Invest in your brand fundamentals and your lead generation campaigns will fly.
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