Why Are So Many B2B Brands Failing at Brand Awareness?

When you’re building your marketing and sales strategies for your B2B company, what do you focus on? If you’re like most modern companies, your executive team will probably pay a lot of attention to high-impact campaigns, designed to create measurable results, like increased leads and sales.

However, earning leads and conversions is something that takes time, strategy, and effort, particularly as B2B sales cycles grow longer and more complex. To achieve “end-game” results, you need to align your marketing and sales strategy with every stage of the buyer journey.

That starts with developing brand awareness.

The first step on any conversion path is when customers become aware of your company and the problems it solves. Unfortunately, what most companies don’t realise is it isn’t enough to simply make sure your brand is “visible” to your customers. You also need to keep your business top-of-mind with your target audience, creating “mental availability”.

So, why is it that only 16% of B2B marketers list “awareness” as one of their crucial marketing objectives in the modern world?

What is Brand Awareness? The Basics

Brand awareness refers to the level of familiarity your customers develop with your brand, its name, service, products, and image. Awareness marks the beginning of a customer’s interest in your product or service. As most business leaders know, “awareness” is also the first step on any consumer’s path to purchase, and their journey with a new brand.

If you’ve ever wondered why, you recognise and remember major brands like Nike, or MailChimp, even if you don’t use their products – that’s brand awareness at work.

Generating brand awareness is about more than just creating an attractive logo or a catchy tagline. It’s about carving a space for yourself in the minds of your customers, so they begin to associate you with the solutions you offer, and the goals they want to achieve.

In the B2B world, successful brand awareness campaigns revolve around not only making customers aware of your company and what it offers, but also ensuring you can retain their attention, as they assess various product and service options, and seek out the right solution.

Why aren’t Companies Prioritising Brand Awareness?

There’s a certain irony in the fact that only 16% of marketers list “awareness” as part of their marketing objectives, but many continue to lament the fact they can’t generate enough leads. Ultimately, nobody wants to buy from a brand they haven’t heard of.

There’s evidence to back this concept up. One report notes that two-thirds of the time when a decision maker purchases new software for a business, they already have a brand they want to work with in mind. 94% of the time, they stick with the brand they already knew when

making their decision, even if they’re introduced to new alternatives.

Elsewhere, studies show that business growth is closely aligned with increasing the number of interactions and connections customers have with your brand.

So, why aren’t companies prioritising brand awareness? Simply put, business leaders know that simply making a prospect aware of your company doesn’t drive revenue. Brand awareness doesn’t guarantee an instant sale, but it’s a crucial first step in the sales process.

Your approach to brand awareness determines whether a prospect decides to learn more about your company and what you have to offer or ignores you completely.

The Benefits of Brand Awareness

Ultimately, a brand awareness strategy helps to drive your business to the top of a customer’s mind when they encounter a specific problem they want to solve or set a new goal.

If your customers aren’t “aware” of your company, they won’t know what you can offer until your sales team actively reaches out to them. This places a lot of pressure on your sales professionals to constantly search for new prospects and leads.

Alternatively, if you have an excellent brand awareness strategy, you can start attracting your customers to you. If people automatically associate your name with what you do and the benefits you can offer, you become the “natural choice” when they’re searching for a solution.

Perhaps even more importantly, building brand awareness ensures you can strengthen your relationships with your audience. A strong approach to brand awareness involves showcasing the key elements of your company that align with your customer’s interests and priorities. It means highlighting your values, your reputation, and your “brand promise” in a way that connects with consumers.

This is crucial at a time when around 79% of global customers say they’re more likely to purchase from brands whose values align with theirs.

Brand Awareness and Building Relationships

Notably, developing brand awareness isn’t just key to capturing the attention of your potential customers, it’s also crucial to ensure you can retain those customers, and earn their loyalty.

While B2B purchasing decisions are often made with a high level of logic and input from various members of a team – those teams are made up of people. The way each of them feels about your brand and its reputation determines whether they choose to work with you in the first place. It also affects whether they decide to abandon your brand in favour of competitors.

Studies show that 49% of B2B marketers achieve better results when they focus on developing relationships with their audience. You can’t create a relationship with your customers if they’re not aware of what you do, and who you are.

A brand awareness strategy ensures you can develop a strong identity, through which you

can share your values and missions. This could even increase your profitability in the long term. According to one global study, 5 out of 10 customers say they would spend extra to pay for products and services from a brand with an image that appealed to them.

Do You Need to Invest in Brand Awareness?

Building brand awareness isn’t as simple as it seems, particularly for B2B brands. You need to ensure you’re actively making people “aware” of your business in as many different ways as possible. This means mapping your customer's journey, seeking out potential touchpoints, and regularly creating campaigns that draw attention to your values and the benefits you offer.

Compared to other marketing efforts, building brand awareness also doesn’t generate immediate “bottom line” results. Just because more people are aware of your brand doesn’t mean you’ll instantly get more sales. However, without brand awareness, you don’t have leads.

If you’re trying to elevate your brand and earn more revenue, you can’t simply start by focusing on new ways to convert customers. You need to think about how you can attract those customers first. This means investing in an ongoing strategy for brand awareness.

The good news? If you take a proactive approach, you can immediately give yourself an edge over the 84% of companies currently failing to prioritise “awareness” in their campaigns.