Marketing with the door open, part three: Measuring B2B brand strategy impact

Measuring the direct commercial impact of a campaign isn’t necessarily easy, but the steps are at least well-known (we covered them in our last blog in this series). If nothing else, trying to connect lead-gen to revenue is a well-trodden path.

That’s not as true for brand-lift. But we’re trying to prove in this series that brand-led activities A) matter as much to revenue as lead-gen, and B) are measurable in their success.

Because here’s the thing: the last few years in B2B marketing have felt like waking up with a hangover. The lights are blinking on at the end of a great B2B marketing party, and the old playbooks aren’t delivering like they used to. The market is screaming for change.

That’s why we set out to measure something deeper: influence. Not just whether people saw our content, but whether it changed how they think about B2B marketing. 

Did we move the needle on the shift from short-term lead-gen obsession to long-term brand strategy? Did our audience walk away seeing the world — and their own marketing priorities — a little differently?

We’ve built a research framework to find out. Here’s how we approached it, what we asked, and what the results tell us about measuring brand impact in B2B.

The New B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign

In mid-February we launched our “New B2B Manifesto” campaign with an appeal to think beyond faltering B2B MQL machines by:

1. Building sustainable audiences and communities
2. Prioritizing longer-term marketing initiatives
3. Smashing silos between brand and performance teams

The first two reflect our long-held worldview and the third reflects our key point of market differentiation — that our brand and performance teams work closely together because strategy and creativity both matter.

We published two marquee pieces on brand strategy and 16 supporting articles, often with key industry opinion formers — think Jon Miller and Jay Acunzo — across organic and paid channels.

One year on: How did we do?

In October, we published statistics on the commercial impact of the campaign.

Measuring that impact is the standard. But how can we show the longer-term brand impact — and what it means for brand resonance?

Advocating that companies redirect some efforts from short-term lead gen to longer-term brand plays felt like a lonely stance 12 months ago. But have you noticed the groundswell of support for sustainable brand activity lately? LinkedIn is teeming with posts — of varying degrees of quality, subtlety and utility — on brand-first approaches.

So let’s explore how we set out to measure the brand impact of our own campaign.

Tackling brand awareness research

Marketing teams view measuring brand uplift as hard and expensive, often prohibitively so for B2B companies. And it can be. But — under the right conditions — not to the extent advertised.

Smash your silos early

Creating credible brand data is a skill. But one that performance marketers can build into brand campaigns at the planning stage. Usually campaign measurement is considered much later in the process, but we created a blueprint that set out KPIs everyone could work from early. Start collaborating ASAP.

Explore an MVP strategy

Running relatively low-fly options such as LinkedIn’s Brand Lift testing demands a minimum campaign investment of $60,000, so we considered some MVP alternatives.

We settled on a survey approach to test our influence hypothesis on two levels:

1. Did our target market agree we influenced their views on messages?
2. Did our market messages resonate?

Building a research methodology

With a classic “think slow, act fast” approach we planned out the measurement strategy before launch against three criteria.

Focus on a manageable sample

Restrict measurement to people meeting our ICP and who signed up for Velocity’s newsletter or followed our LinkedIn during the campaign.

Keep a tight question focus

Resist the temptation to ask too many or elaborate questions. We committed to sticking to the core research questions.

Avoid complex data analysis

Stick to categorical (easily grouped or categorized) data to keep questions simple and prevent data analysis becoming overly complicated.

The approach focuses on hand-raisers with an interest in Velocity — it doesn’t represent every voice in B2B marketing. We want to see if our work inspired action and ongoing interest. 

We settled on four questions:

1. Are you familiar with Velocity Partners?
2. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: Traditional B2B marketing strategies are becoming less effective.
3. What is the single biggest change you could make to improve your Go-To-Market strategy?
   1. Alignment of sales and marketing teams
   2. Connecting brand and performance
   3. Focus on audience and community building
   4. Prioritizing long over short term marketing strategy
   5. Integrating cross-channel marketing
4. Has Velocity Partners influenced your position on what needs to change in your Go-To-Market strategy?

So how did we do? Do you agree B2B marketing needs to change? And have we influenced where changes should happen?

A brand research snapshot

Overall we’ve got to be pretty happy with what we found. Here are six key stats:

• 91%  say they’re familiar with Velocity Partners. And people familiar with us are over 50% more likely to agree on the need for strategic change than unfamiliar people.
• 62% agree traditional B2B marketing strategies are becoming less effective. And 55% of those agree Velocity directly influenced their position on what needed to change.
• 50% agree Velocity has influenced changes to their go-to-market strategy. 61% of them agreed B2B marketing is struggling with effectiveness.
• 33% say they’re focused on audience and community building. 58% of people choosing this option agree Velocity has influenced their thinking.
• 26% say they’re focused on connecting brand and performance. 67% of people choosing this option agree Velocity has influenced their thinking. This is lovely.
• 19% say they’re prioritizing long- over short-term marketing strategy. 45% of people choosing this option agree Velocity has influenced their thinking.

These are pretty good indicators of some influence over a message taking shape in the market (particularly on the campaign’s differentiation points). It’s certainly consistent with our inbound business messaging over the past six months.

(Though I’ll be forever lost on what to do with the 9% of followers who, in the face of all that effort, still don’t know us from Adam. You can’t win them all.)

How does brand lift become revenue?

We’ve written a few posts recently about the value exchange imbalance at the heart of the marketing effectiveness crisis, and why value symmetry is an essential part of the solution. And back in December Stan interviewed Jay Acunzo about why resonance matters more than reach.

You don’t have to squint much to infer that a significant proportion (in some cases a majority) of the people who know us find our output credible and valuable enough to think or act differently.

Today, we’re getting organic inbound enquiries that specifically reference the campaign and its outputs. If there’s a secret to any of it, I think it’s that we’ve focused on giving as much value away for free as possible. It’s a long-term endeavor — but it’s every bit as practical and accountable as lead-gen.

The community question

We were especially pleased to see the biggest ongoing focus is on audience and community building to improve Go-To-Market strategies. 

So, in our next post mining the survey data, we’re taking a deep dive into the difference between newsletter sign-ups and LinkedIn followers. Let’s look at the strengths and weaknesses of each when building your community.

See you there for the next installment.