Brand Awareness vs Lead Generation. What’s More Important In Marketing? 

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First, let’s explain what each of these marketing terms mean. 

What’s brand awareness?

Brand awareness is all about increasing the visibility of your business: Getting your brand name out there, putting your business on the radar of prospective clients and crafting an identity that evokes certain ideas for a potential customer. 

What’s lead generation?

Lead generation, on the other hand, is a marketing strategy dedicated to attracting and converting those potential clients into making an enquiry. It’s all about targeting the right person at the right time, hooking their interest and cultivating a long-term relationship that will transform them into a customer. 

Sometimes for small business, it can be difficult to discern what marketing strategy should be prioritised. But the reality is that these marketing approaches work hand-in-hand and are complementary to one another. Brand awareness drives lead generation, and lead generation helps transform brand awareness into tangible results.

In this blog, we’ll give you the run-down on both marketing strategies and how you can use them to drive enquiry.

A worthwhile marketing plan is a long-term one 

First off, there’s no magic, speedy solution that will have clients knocking down your door tomorrow. A good, effective marketing strategy requires a long-term, holistic plan that builds its impact incrementally. This is especially true for building and construction businesses, where clients are making a particularly large investment, both financially and emotionally. To build trust with a potential client, as well as pique their interest, takes time.

Building effective awareness

The best way to build awareness for your brand in 2020 is obviously online, via social media and digital channels. The internet is the first thing people reach for when searching for anything and everything. You can make your brand far more visible by cultivating an active presence online through social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin. 

You’ll also want to guide possible customers to your website, by investing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You’ll then want to create an easy-to-navigate website full of information about your company that features frequently updated blog posts to keep potential clients engaged and interested in your brand. 

This is not to say offline marketing strategies aren’t effective. If your business operates within a local area, a really effective offline strategy can be to sponsor sporting or other local events, purchase billboard space and place simple ads in print publications, on TV and community radio stations.

When devising your marketing strategy for brand awareness, it’s not only about making your business far more visible, but cultivating an idea and image around your brand. You need to really think about what your unique selling point is (why would someone choose you, and not the builder down the road?) and how you want to convey your values and ideas to leave an impression on your potential customers.

If we take social media for instance, Instagram and Facebook can serve as platforms for builders to share testimonials, on-site progress, team updates and photos of your spectacular projects. This will translate to potential clients as a transparent and trustworthy business that is proud of what it does. These are all good connotations for a potential customer to have about your company! 

Funnelling brand awareness into a successful lead generation strategy

Now that a pool of potential clients are aware of your brand, you can start a more aggressive marketing strategy with the objective of lead generation. This is about capturing the attention of those potential customers, in the right place, at the right time through targeted advertising.

Facebook ad campaigns and Google AdWords are advertising platforms that analyse user data, particularly online searches and activity, to specifically select those of certain demographics, in geographical locations that are searching for what you’re offering.

For this type of advertising, you can direct clicks to a landing page which is a standalone web page, created specifically for a marketing campaign. Unlike your website, which contains lots of information about different services, this page will have a specific focus or goal, with a clear call to action on it.

For example, if they are looking for a building company that offers a design and build service, you would make the landing page specifically about that service, and ask them to download your free guide on the ‘9 things you need to know before you design + build’.

That brings the next point, when talking about lead generation it’s a really good idea to have an opt-in, where you offer a free guide or brochure in exchange for the client’s email address. From there, you can sign them up for email marketing campaigns that give regular updates on your latest projects, industry updates, team news and articles so you remain top of mind for when they are ready to build. 

To work with a company that has extensive experience using both brand awareness and lead generation marketing strategies for building and construction companies, get in touch with Sea Salt Marketing today! 

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