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The Best Marketing Strategies For B2B and B2C Businesses | B2B vs B2C - YouTube
Channel: Adam Erhart
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- In this episode,
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I'm gonna be talking about
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the two seemingly different
campaign objectives,
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of brand awareness and lead generation.
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What they are, how they're different,
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and which one is gonna be
best for your business.
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Let's get to it.
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(upbeat music)
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Hey there, my name is Adam Erhart.
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Modern Marketing Strategist
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and welcome to The Modern Marketing Show,
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where we help you grow your business
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by making way better marketing.
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So if you're interested
in learning the latest
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and greatest marketing strategies,
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tools, tips, tricks and tactics,
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well, you may wanna consider subscribing
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and hitting that notification bell.
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All right, let's talk
marketing objectives,
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specifically two of my absolute
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favorite campaign objectives,
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one of which being brand awareness
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and the other being lead generation.
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Now here's the thing
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when it comes to these
marketing objectives.
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Most marketers tend to fall squarely
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in one camp or the other.
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The brand awareness people, for example,
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say that lead gen is too salesy
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and destroys the brand
image and reputation.
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And the lead gen people say that
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brand awareness ads are useless,
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and don't provide a real
and concrete tangible
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return on investment,
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that's accountable and trackable.
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So, which is the better option?
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And more specifically,
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which one's gonna be right for you?
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Well, I'm gonna tell you
exactly what I believe
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at the end of this video.
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But first, let's go over
some of the key differences
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between brand awareness campaigns
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and lead generation campaigns.
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Alright, so the very first
thing we need to cover here
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is what exactly is brand awareness.
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You see, when we're gonna be running
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a brand awareness campaign,
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it's important to kind of understand
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what exactly our objectives are,
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what our goals are,
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what we're seeking to achieve,
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and probably most importantly,
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how we're gonna measure this.
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So at the end of the day,
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we can deem whether the
campaign was successful,
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or whether it wasn't.
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So in a nutshell, and really,
in its most basic sense,
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a brand awareness campaign is really just
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how well people know your brand.
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Or to put it literally,
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how aware people are of your brand,
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hence, brand awareness.
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Not very original,
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but at least it explains
it pretty clearly.
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Now, the reason brand
awareness is important
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is kind of self evident, right?
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After all, if people don't know about you,
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they don't know about your brand,
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well, how are they ever
gonna do business with you.
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But where brand awareness can
campaigns tend to fall short,
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is because there's a big gap
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between someone simply knowing about you,
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and then actually going and
doing business with you.
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All that said, people and consumers
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and the customers that we're
trying to reach in this case,
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well, they only have a
limited mental inventory
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for brand names or names in general,
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which means that you
really want your brand
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and your business to occupy
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that incredibly valuable
real estate in their minds.
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Now, one of the cliched
sayings is essentially,
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"You wanna become the Coca
Cola of your industry."
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Now, the reason we use Coca
Cola as an example in this case
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is just because it's
such a well known brand,
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that people actually ask for it by name.
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This is the same reason that some brands
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have become synonymous with the products
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that they actually are.
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Good examples here are
Kleenex or Band-Aid,
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not really products,
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they're actually the brands behind them.
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But it's rare that somebody
asks for tissue paper
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or a plaster, or I don't even
know what the generic name
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for a Band-Aid is,
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let's say a plaster,
yeah, just sounds wrong.
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This is the reason that
you really want your brand
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to be really well known,
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so that it becomes another
synonymous and interchangeable
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with whatever product, or service
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or whatever essentially that
you're selling to your market.
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And the reason that they're
deployed all the time,
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and even by some of the more hardcore
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kind of lead gen advocates,
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well, they still recognize the importance
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of this aspect of a
brand awareness campaign.
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And that is, that people,
customers and prospects,
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those that you're seeking
to essentially sell to,
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well, they need a lot of touch points
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in order to build that know, like,
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and trust factor that is gonna be required
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to do business with you.
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Now the number of touch points
that are gonna be required
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to build that know, like and trust factor,
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and in order to kind of create a sale,
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well, it's gonna vary
depending on your business
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and your market, and your industry.
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But depending what statistic you read,
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it's somewhere between six
and 12, maybe 13, or 14,
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if you've got a higher
price point thing for sale,
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or if it's sort of a
higher trust value industry
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and things of that nature.
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Basically, if you're
selling a pack of gum,
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you probably only really
need one touch point.
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But if you're selling something
like insurance, or a home,
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or business to business services,
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well, you're gonna require
a lot more touch points.
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Regardless, this is where brand
awareness comes into play,
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because the more well known you are
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and the more touch points that you make,
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the more trust that you're
gonna be able to establish
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with your market.
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Also, as consumers,
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we've been kind of subconsciously trained
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to associate frequency with trust,
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meaning that if you can show up more times
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in front of your target market,
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well, they're naturally
more likely to trust you,
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and therefore to do business with you.
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Now fortunately, when it
comes to touch points,
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these can happen rapid fire.
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Sure, of course, we've heard about
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how we need to nurture relationships,
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and it can take time to
build that trust aspect,
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but for some people,
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this can happen very fast.
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Really, what you wanna do
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is you want to facilitate the journey
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so that it's up to your consumer to decide
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how quickly they want the
relationship to progress.
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As an example, here, you could
run a brand awareness ad,
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they could maybe take some
kind of action on that ad
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on the very first try,
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they might then download a guide,
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or watch a video,
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that might then get
re-targeted with another ad
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and receive an email and then
maybe watch another video.
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And all of this could happen
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in the span of maybe
even just a few minutes.
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Others on the other hand,
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this could happen over a period of hours,
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of days, of weeks, of months,
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and in some cases, even years,
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which is why it's important
to continually drip
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or continually deliver more
and more valuable content
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and brand awareness type
materials to your market.
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Now a really important note here
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when it comes to brand awareness,
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is you need to make sure that the content
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that you're putting in
front of your prospects
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is entertaining, or educational
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or informative in some way,
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And more specifically, that it's on brand.
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Because you wanna make sure
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that these touch points
that you're making,
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well, they all line up with your brand.
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So if you're sending
all sorts of different
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and divergent and confusing messages,
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none of that brand awareness
is gonna carry over
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'cause you're going to end up confusing
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and possibly losing potential customers.
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Alright, so now that we've
got that established,
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let's cover some brand
awareness advertising metrics.
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Because at the end of the day,
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one of the biggest arguments
against brand awareness
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is that it's not really trackable,
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and you can't really tell
if it's working or not.
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So here's some metrics that we like to use
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in order to judge the effectiveness,
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or at least how many
people are getting exposed
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to our potential message.
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The very first metric is reach.
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Reach covers how many different
people saw your message,
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it's a really good indicator
of sort of how wide,
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or how broad, or how narrow,
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if that's the method
you're choosing to use.
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Well, it's essentially just a measure
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of how many different
people are getting exposed
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or have the potential to become
more aware of your business.
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The next metric is frequency.
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And this is how many times
someone saw something.
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Now this one's important
because again as we covered,
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we do need to increase those touch points.
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So by keeping an eye on frequency,
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we're gonna be able to tell how many times
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someone has potentially seen your ad,
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or your content, or your message.
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And the last one is impressions.
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And this is simply just
reach times frequency.
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So how many different
people saw your message,
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how many different times
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and that gives you impressions.
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And this is kind of the
main metric that people use
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when they're looking at
brand awareness campaigns.
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How many different impressions did we get?
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And if we wanna get more granular,
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and look at the budget side,
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what's our cost per impression?
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So basically, how much is it gonna cost us
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to get in front of our target market?
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Alright, so now that we've covered reach,
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and frequency and impressions,
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well, let's take it a step further
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and really dial in how we're
gonna measure brand awareness.
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Because if you've got an agency,
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or someone on your team,
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and they're advocating
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just running brand awareness campaigns,
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but all they're doing is
really spending a lot of money,
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and you don't have a lot of
sales in return for that,
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ah, not a great strategy.
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On the other hand,
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if you can actually track
that yes this is working,
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more people are talking about us,
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more people are trusting us,
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they're hearing about us,
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they're liking us.
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Well, eventually this is going
to correlate to more sales,
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provided you're making good offers
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and have a good product market
fit all the usual stuff.
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Alright, so the first
one we need to look at
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is brand recall.
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This is essentially how well
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people are gonna remember your name.
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Now really hard to go out there
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and survey all of the
potential people and say,
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"What's the first brand you
think of when it comes to cars,
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"or drinks, or services
or whatever it is."
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On the other hand,
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what you can do is simply take a look
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at your Google Analytics
data for your website
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and see how many people are
coming to your website direct.
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This is a good indicator
because it means that
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somebody is actually putting
your name or your brand name,
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in order to get to your website.
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And how are they gonna put it in,
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if they've never heard of you, right?
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That's why brand recall is one
of my favorite ways to look,
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of overall brand awareness campaigns
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and making sure that this
is increasing over time.
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Another good way to do this
is with another Google tool,
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using Google Trends and
tracking the mentions
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or basically how many times
your brand is mentioned
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on social media, or across the web.
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And again, what we're looking for here
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is an upward trend in those
number of mentions made.
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Again, clearly indicating
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that more people are talking about you,
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and therefore more people know about you.
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This next one's a little more advanced,
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but it involves search volume.
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And essentially, if your
brand starts becoming
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a targetable keyword,
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meaning that people can bid
against it on Google ads,
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or it's showing some kind of search volume
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on the search engines,
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well, this is a good sign that again,
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more people are searching for you,
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and your brand is actually
becoming so valuable
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that people are willing to bid against it,
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in order to rank above
you for your own brand.
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It sounds frustrating actually,
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if someone's willing to
bet against your own brand.
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But it's actually kind of cool,
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because it shows that you've
really solidified a position
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in your consumers minds.
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Plus, for what it's worth,
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it's gonna be really hard for someone else
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to rank against your name.
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So as long as you do proper optimization
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and make sure that you're continuing
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to market your business,
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well, you should be okay.
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Lastly, we have things
like vanity metrics.
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Now vanity metrics are easily
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my least favorite metrics of all.
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These are things like
likes, comments, and shares,
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basically things that make you feel good
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and make you look really good,
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but don't really relate to more sales,
[573]
or more customers or more leads
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or more revenue for your business.
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That's it as a brand awareness thing,
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now they're not too bad
[578]
because more likes, more
comments, more shares,
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means more engagement
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and more engagement typically means
[583]
that more people know about you
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and are talking about your business.
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All right, so why do
the brand awareness camp
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and the lead generation camp,
[590]
why don't they get along?
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And what is it about brand awareness
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that the lead geners just don't like?
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Well, for starters,
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attribution with a
brand awareness campaign
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is a little trickier.
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After all, it's really hard to figure out
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where exactly that sale came from,
[603]
where it originated,
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and what factors were in place
in order to deliver the sale.
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And if you can't figure out
where the sale came from,
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or what's working and what's not,
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well then, how do you know
what part of your marketing
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you should do more of,
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and what part's completely useless
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and you should just
stop doing all together?
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The other problem that lead
gen has with brand awareness
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is that brand, well, they do recognize
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that it is a valuable asset,
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does take a long time to build,
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which means that you're
gonna have to put in
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potentially a ton of time,
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a ton of money and a ton of energy
[630]
into creating content,
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running brand awareness campaigns,
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and all of these things
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that are gonna help to build trust
[635]
and people be more aware of your business,
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but don't necessarily
equate to short-term sales,
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which a lot of businesses are governed by.
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Alright, so now that we've
gotten all that covered,
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let's dive into lead generation
as a campaign objective.
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Alright, so for starters,
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what is lead generation
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or lead gen as it's more commonly known?
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Well, essentially lead gen
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is just attracting and converting people
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who have no idea who you are,
[657]
or may not have heard about your business
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and converting them into prospects
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and people likely to do business with you.
[662]
Basically, if brand awareness
[664]
is generating more
awareness for your brand,
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well, lead generation is generating
[668]
more leads for your company.
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Basically, again, the name kind of implies
[671]
and says exactly what it is.
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Now, lead gen is typically done
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by providing something
of value to your prospect
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or potential customer,
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in exchange for their contact information,
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which allows them to become a lead.
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Now the first thing you need to understand
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when it comes to running an effective
[686]
lead generation campaign,
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is that nothing happens
without a good offer.
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All the touch points in the
world simply don't matter
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if the touch points that you're making
[694]
aren't irresistible enough,
[695]
or they don't incentivize
your prospect to take action
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and hand over their contact details.
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At the end of the day,
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whether people buy or not
[703]
isn't simply because they're aware of you,
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it's because they liked the
solution that you're proposing.
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They like the offer,
[708]
they like your product or
your service or your business.
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Basically, they like
what you can do for them,
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not just the fact that they know you.
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We all know somebody that we really like,
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but we're not exactly gonna
hire them to do important tasks
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if we don't feel they're up for the job.
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Now, just like with a
brand awareness campaign,
[723]
the touch points required in the funnel,
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as we call it with lead generation.
[726]
Well, the funnel or the steps
that someone walks through,
[729]
these can happen rapid fire as well.
[731]
For example, they could see the ad,
[733]
they could hand over
their contact information,
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they could be re-targeted,
[737]
moving them further down the funnel,
[738]
and basically move them
closer and closer to a sale,
[741]
and all of this can happen very quickly.
[743]
Alright, so if lead generation
is all about generating leads
[746]
by essentially providing
something of value
[748]
to your potential customer,
[749]
in exchange for their contact details,
[751]
well, what are some of the
metrics you wanna take a look at
[753]
to make sure you're on the right track?
[755]
Well, one of the first things
you wanna look at is CTR,
[757]
or click through rate.
[758]
This is basically showing
how many people saw your ad
[761]
and then clicked on it
in order to take action,
[764]
basically indicating
that it was interesting
[766]
and relevant to them.
[767]
The next metric is CPC or cost per click.
[770]
This basically tells you
how much it's gonna cost you
[772]
every single time someone
clicks on your ad.
[775]
The next metric is conversion rate.
[776]
And what this shows is of
the people that clicked,
[779]
how many people actually
went all the way through
[781]
with the action by handing
over their contact details,
[784]
in exchange for whatever
you were promising.
[786]
Finally, we have CPA or
cost per acquisition.
[789]
And this is probably the
most important metric of all,
[791]
when it comes to lead generation,
[793]
because it's the cost that
you're gonna end up paying
[795]
in order to acquire a lead.
[797]
Now how much you can afford
to pay to acquire lead
[799]
is gonna depend on a number
of different factors.
[802]
But most importantly,
[803]
is gonna be the lifetime
value of your customer.
[805]
For example, if you've got a customer
[807]
that's worth 10 bucks over
their entire lifetime,
[809]
well, you're obviously not gonna wanna pay
[811]
more than 10 bucks to acquire a lead.
[813]
And that's assuming you
have 100% conversion rate
[815]
by turning that lead into a customer.
[817]
On the other hand,
[818]
if you're selling a product
or service for 10,000,
[820]
20,000 or $50,000.
[821]
well, paying 10 bucks a lead sounds cheap,
[824]
might even be willing to
pay 20 bucks or 50 bucks
[826]
or maybe even 100,
[827]
depending on how fluid
[828]
and how greased up your funnel really is
[830]
at converting them from
lead to paying customer.
[833]
All right, so how can you
measure the effectiveness
[835]
of a lead generation campaign?
[837]
Well fortunately, when it
comes to measuring lead gen
[839]
compared to brand awareness,
it's actually really easy.
[842]
Essentially, all you need to know is,
[844]
are you acquiring leads
for an acceptable cost,
[846]
meaning that you're profitable,
[848]
or are you not and you're paying too much,
[849]
meaning that you're losing money.
[851]
Being profitable is good,
[852]
and losing money is bad.
[853]
It's that's simple.
[854]
With lead generation
by tracking things like
[856]
click through rates and conversion rates
[858]
and cost per acquisition,
[860]
well all of the data is easily accessible
[862]
and really easy to read,
[863]
meaning that making decisions
is a lot more strategic,
[866]
and therefore a lot easier
to make the right ones
[868]
for you and your business.
[869]
Alright, so what is it
about lead generation
[871]
that the brand awareness
people just don't like?
[874]
After all, we've just
painted a pretty clear
[876]
and compelling picture of why lead gen
[877]
sounds like a pretty good strategy.
[879]
Well, the biggest problem with lead gen
[881]
from the brand awareness perspective,
[882]
is that lead gen is really
focused on the short-term
[885]
and the short-term alone.
[886]
Where brand awareness is
seeking to build a brand
[889]
and really create an asset
around your business,
[891]
lead generation tends to just
be focused on the short win.
[894]
Acquiring leads, getting
as many as you can
[896]
for as cheap as you can,
[897]
and converting them into customers,
[899]
with little appreciation for
building that longer-term
[902]
and more sustainable brand in business.
[904]
Okay, so now that you
know the key differences
[906]
between a brand awareness campaign
[908]
and a lead generation campaign,
[909]
which one is going to be best
for you and your business?
[912]
Well, the answer there really depends
[914]
on what type of business you're in.
[915]
And whether you're in
a business to business
[918]
or B2B type industry,
[920]
or whether you're doing
a business to consumer
[922]
or B2C business,
[923]
meaning you're selling
direct to the consumer.
[925]
First up, we have the business to consumer
[927]
or B2C type business.
[929]
Now typically, brand awareness campaigns
[930]
are gonna be a lot more prevalent
in this type of industry,
[933]
because it's going to tend to apply
[936]
with more mass market appeal.
[938]
Basically, the goal here with a B2C
[940]
and with a brand awareness type approach,
[942]
is to reach as many of your
ideal target market as possible,
[945]
with a fun and memorable and
on-brand piece of content.
[949]
Your focus here is gonna be less
[950]
on collecting the names and
emails and contact details
[953]
of your specific customers,
[955]
and more essentially,
[956]
on carving your name and
your brand and your business
[959]
into their minds,
[959]
so that you become the most relevant
[961]
and the most memorable brand
[963]
that's gonna be associated
with your industry.
[965]
A key thing to remember is
that repetition is key here,
[968]
so you really wanna focus
on those touch points
[970]
by ensuring that you're
constantly showing up
[973]
in front of them in as many relevant
[974]
and strategic ways as possible.
[976]
And on the flip side of that,
[978]
well, repetition is
important, so is novelty.
[980]
So you wanna keep things fun,
[981]
and fresh and exciting.
[983]
And make sure that the
content you're producing
[985]
is relevant and memorable.
[986]
Because the only thing worse than
[988]
showing up a million times,
[989]
is showing up a million times
[990]
with a completely bland or
boring or vanilla message.
[993]
That's a great way to waste money.
[994]
Alright, so now let's talk about
B2B or business to business
[998]
where lead gen tends to
be the method of choice.
[1000]
The reason lead generation
is the preferred method
[1002]
for business to business markets
[1004]
is that you're dealing with
a significantly more limited
[1007]
and more targeted,
[1008]
and more narrow-focused
part of the market.
[1011]
Basically, we're not trying to go
[1012]
for mass market appeal here,
[1014]
because it simply wouldn't make sense
[1015]
because we just don't have that
many of our targeted buyers
[1018]
out there in the real world.
[1019]
On the other hand,
[1020]
we have a few very carefully selected
[1022]
business to business leads
[1023]
that we wanna acquire and
bring into our funnel.
[1025]
B2B also typically involves
[1027]
a more relational style
marketing approach,
[1030]
rather than a transactional
style approach.
[1032]
Again, we're not selling
a pack of gum here,
[1034]
or a T-shirt or anything like that.
[1036]
We're involved in complicated
and often long-term
[1039]
and very expensive purchases
[1041]
that are gonna be long-term
in ongoing relationships.
[1043]
For this reason,
[1044]
it pays to acquire a lead,
[1045]
so that you can continue to nurture them
[1047]
again and again and again over time
[1049]
with relevant and valuable
and helpful information.
[1052]
Also, brand awareness is much
less of a consideration here
[1055]
because again, we don't need
everyone to know about us.
[1057]
So we don't necessarily want awareness,
[1059]
we want consideration.
[1060]
And moreso we want conversion.
[1062]
And ideally, you want it fast,
[1063]
which means providing some
kind of irresistible offer
[1066]
or valuable content,
[1067]
in exchange for your
prospect's contact information.
[1070]
So which one is best?
[1071]
Well, inside our marketing agency,
[1073]
we use both brand awareness
and lead generation campaigns
[1076]
on a daily basis for both
our B2B and B2C clients.
[1079]
Also, I just touched on there,
[1081]
if it's a B2B client,
[1082]
we tend to air more on the
side of lead generation,
[1084]
and if it's a B2C client,
[1086]
we tend to air more on the
side of brand awareness.
[1089]
That said, if I had to
pick an absolute winner
[1091]
of which one I prefer,
[1092]
nine times out of 10,
[1093]
well, it would have to be
the lead generation side,
[1096]
because I really like
trackable, accountable
[1098]
and measurable marketing campaigns.
[1100]
The reality is whether your B2B or B2C,
[1102]
investing your time, energy and resources
[1105]
in a measurable, trackable
[1106]
and accountable marketing strategy
[1108]
is gonna be well worth it,
[1109]
and will provide a significant
return on investment.
[1111]
Alright, the next thing
you're gonna wanna do
[1113]
is check out the video I
have linked up right here
[1115]
which is going to be released next week.
[1117]
It's part of this B2B versus B2C series.
[1119]
And it's gonna give you
even more actionable
[1121]
and practical tips,
[1122]
that you can use to immediately
deploy in your business.
[1125]
So make sure to check back
next week for that video.
[1127]
Thanks so much for watching,
[1128]
and I'll catch you next time
on The Modern Marketing Show.
[1130]
(upbeat music)
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