Brand name recognition and awareness hold higher importance near the end of the buyer’s journey. Branding is largely a by-product or bonus of doing everything else right first.
A big thing to keep in mind is, we are in an age where search, social, mobile, cloud, selective consumption, and personalization are things that are a standard and now expected. Your brand is no longer what you say it is. Your brand is what the collective marketplace, search engine ecosystem, social media, and aggregation say your brand is. You can no longer control your brand the way you may have been able to ten or twenty years ago.
Today’s Buyer’s Journey
In today’s journey, your brand is more relevant at the end of the buyer’s journey, when people pass through the Consideration phase and Decision phase, ready to speak with somebody from your team. Your brand becomes the most important in the last 10%-20% of the buyer’s journey or sales cycle.
For the most part, buyers will not care about your brand during the first 70% of the buyer’s journey. Buyers in the early stages of the buyer’s journey are looking for information to help them solve awareness-related issues or consideration types of information.
During the early stages of the buyer’s journey, it is critical you provide helpful, educational content. You and the thought leaders at your company must be perceived as subject matter experts in the marketplace. You must earn that seat at the table before buyers begin to care about who you are, who your company is, what you do, and what your brand is.
The Bottom Line
All of the above factors can be a byproduct of doing everything else right. Do not focus all of your efforts on branding, because none of your resources will be available to attract net new strangers or convert them into leads; it is really important to spread out your resources.
For example, think of somebody playing fantasy baseball. Let’s say they have 100 million dollars to spend on funding the payroll for this team. It is really important they spread it around their budget otherwise, if you put all the money into pitching, how is the team going to be able to hit?
Conversely, if you put all of the money into the players and there was no money left for pitching, that's not good either. You have to be able to balance your resources.
Is your company in an effort to gain brand name recognition? Let us know in the Comments below.
To learn more about how you can improve your brand name recognition, enroll now in our free 7-day eCourse: Go-to-Market Strategy 101 for B2B SaaS Startups and Scaleups.
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