8 Brand Awareness Tactics for B2B Brands

B2B marketers attempt to win over buyers by creating vast digital worlds of design and content. However, the most challenging part of the job is proving that you actually generated sales. Brand awareness is one of a marketing campaign’s least measurable outcomes and perhaps the most important. It can directly affect every other performance indicator that matters.

The hard-to-grasp nature of increasing brand awareness is reflected in two key statistics. 84% of marketers list increasing brand awareness as their most important goal, but only slightly more than half have a program in place to measure how their brand is perceived. 

When a lead is aware of your brand, they know who you are and what you do. If they don’t know that, what reason could they possibly have for buying your products or services? Brand awareness is the first crucial step in any buyer journey, and we’re here to provide you with eight effective tactics for spreading it to your audience.

What is brand awareness, and how is it critical for B2B?

Brand awareness measures how recognizable and familiar your company is to potential buyers. It means buyers know your name, what you sell, and have some sense of your reputation (ideally, a positive one).

Say “Apple,” and most people will immediately think of a logo, a memorable ad campaign, a device they were excited to buy once upon a time, and other associations. Apple has excellent brand awareness, which means that when they launch a new product, they don’t have to spend much time reminding their target market who they are and why anyone should be interested. 

If you’re not Apple, you probably have to put a little more effort into ensuring you have strong brand awareness among the audience segments likely to buy from you. B2B sellers in narrow and competitive markets have to make buyers aware of their brand before they can become a part of their purchasing journey.

What are the benefits of brand awareness for B2B?

In addition to being a necessary precondition of the buyer journey, brand awareness is also crucial because of its beneficial derivative qualities: brand trust and brand equity.

Once brand awareness is established, you can earn your audience’s trust and build brand equity by communicating effectively, managing your image well, looking out for your customers, and, most importantly, delivering great products and services.

Brand equity is an intangible asset made up of people’s positive impressions about your company. Brand equity strengthens customer loyalty, establishes credibility and authority within your industry, and gives you a competitive advantage over lesser-known rivals. 
The benefits don’t stop there. With sufficient brand equity, you’ll have an easier time branching out into new markets, commanding higher prices, recruiting top talent into your organization, and getting a higher ROI for every dollar you spend on marketing.

How is brand awareness measured?

Even when you know you’re succeeding at increasing brand awareness, measuring it can be tricky. You can get an accurate view by using both quantitative and qualitative KPIs.

Quantitative KPIs can be broken down into hard numbers. They include metrics like direct website traffic, site referrals from Google and other search engines, web analytics, and user engagement (likes, shares, and follows) on social media.
Qualitative KPIs are more subjective. You can use Google Alerts and social media listening tools to see how much your brand is being talked about online. You can conduct surveys to get objective data about what your audience thinks about your brand. Lead generation and conversion statistics can also give you some insight into the success of your brand awareness efforts.

Even though measuring brand awareness can be difficult, you need to do it to see whether your marketing efforts are paying off. Qualitative metrics are critical because they help determine if increased awareness leads to positive, neutral, or negative impressions.

8 Brand Awareness Tactics for B2B Brands

1. Your Brand Needs a Personality

There are many brand personality “types.” Some brands are irreverent. Some brands are authoritative experts. Other brands are socially and environmentally conscious. You’ll want to pick one that meshes well with your target audience, but the only objectively wrong choice is to be bland and forgettable.

B2B buyers are more than twice as likely to favor a brand that emphasizes personal value over business value because they often conclude that there isn’t a significant difference in product quality. Instead, the decision comes down to what we can reasonably describe as a “vibe check.” They want to buy from a brand they relate to personally and emotionally.

2. Personalize Original Content with Trendemon

You’ll never get a better opportunity to build positive and lasting brand awareness than when leads engage with your website. Nearly two-thirds of B2B buyers report that vendor content significantly influenced their purchasing decision. The expectation that content will be highly personalized and relevant is higher than ever.
B2B sellers can meet and surpass their leads’ content expectations using journey orchestration tools like Trendemon. By mapping out the buyer journey in real-time and serving up personalized original content, Trendemon increases brand awareness and conversion rates.

3. Actively Use Social Media & Social Media Ads

Trending topics and viral moments are driven by social media. Internet users spend most of their time online on social media, and they aren’t just there for idle entertainment. 84% of executive decision-makers use social media to research their B2B purchases. LinkedIn, in particular, is an essential resource for B2B marketers.

Savvy B2B marketers share content and buy ads on LinkedIn and other social media sites frequented by their buyers. Doing this takes advantage of organic and paid exposure to increase brand awareness among key audience segments. Remember that the better your content is, the more likely social media users will share and engage with it.

4. Give Value Away for Free

The majority of B2B decision-makers are hoping to find substantive content when engaging in online research, but most of what they see is promotional content created with marketing goals in mind. You can buck this trend and win them over by freely offering content with real value, such as webinars or how-to guides.

While it’s understandably tempting to gate valuable content behind lead generation forms, the added friction can work against your goals to generate awareness. It’s also worth exploring the possibility of offering freemium software versions or free trials to get buyers to try your product without having to commit to a major purchase.

5. Create Engaging Video Content

Video is the preferred content format for just about every demographic, and 70% of B2B buyers consume video content throughout their purchasing journey. With the right tools, it’s easy to turn your existing articles into videos.

If you want an audience to watch your videos to the end and remember them, don’t make them into extended advertisements. Training videos, explainers, behind-the-scenes content, and thought leader interviews are just a few examples of videos that your audience will find valuable and entertaining. To increase the reach of your video content, host it on sites like YouTube that draw significant traffic.

6. Participate in Live and Virtual Events

Experiences are always more memorable than passively consuming media, so give your audience an event to remember. Organizing and hosting an event is a surefire way to make a lasting impression, but sponsoring an existing event is also a viable option.

Trade shows, conferences, and other events leave 74% of attendees with more positive opinions about the showcased brands. Virtual events are just as good as live events in the post-pandemic era.

7. Run Contests or Giveaways

Everybody loves a contest, and everybody loves free, no-strings-attached goodies even more. Either approach can help you spread positive brand awareness, especially if they tie into your products or services. Use social media to promote your contest or freebie and encourage organic sharing.

Another great way to spread positive brand awareness is to sponsor a review contest. More than nine out of ten B2B buyers cite reviews as an important factor in purchasing, but for specialized B2B companies, thoughtful reviews can be hard to come by. You can fix that by offering incentives for customers to leave honest, detailed reviews on major review sites like Capterra and G2.

8. Have an Optimized B2B Website & Retarget Visitors

Finally, support your brand awareness efforts with a polished, professional website that provides rich content and an excellent user experience for visiting B2B buyers. It should load fast, look equally good on desktop or mobile, and employ the most up-to-date search engine optimizations (SEO).
Once a lead has visited your website, you need to retarget them with ads and content remarketing. Studies have shown that retargeting can help B2B companies meet 71% of their brand awareness goals. It also provides a lift to customer retention, sales, and lead generation numbers. Retargeting ensures that your business will stay on their minds after they’ve left your website, and hopefully, you’ll give them plenty of good reasons to come back.

Brand Awareness Creates Opportunities

Brand awareness is the secret sauce that makes your other marketing activities more effective. When brand awareness has built up trust and equity for your business, it draws your audience’s attention like a magnet, making leads easier to acquire, convert, and retain.

When leads spend time on your website, you have the opportunity to show them content that resonates with their interests and motivates them to stay engaged with you. Journey orchestration and personalization tools like Trendemon can create positive brand awareness by converting anonymous website visitors into sales opportunities with a high conversion rate. 
To see how Trendemon can help you build lasting connections with your buyers, sign up for a free demo today and start boosting your brand’s awareness.