For B2B marketers, understanding how “people” respond to your brand can be difficult, since B2B is all about businesses buying decisions. However, buying is still an emotional, personal activity that requires you to elicit positive reactions from end-users and the people signing on to do business with your company.
That means B2B brands need to make an effort to connect directly with the people who are decision-makers or the end users of their products. Consider these KPIs that will help you better analyze how various stakeholders respond to your brand as individuals:
We’ve spoken before about how much customer loyalty means to your success, and it’s worth repeating: your customers’ loyalty plays a crucial role in building your business and furthering growth. The more your customers respond to your brand as individuals, the easier it should be to encourage them to refer your brand to someone else in their network. So track how difficult and costly it is to get referrals, and specifically referrals qualified to do business with your company. Do you need to poke and prod your customers in the hopes that they will promote your brand, or are they already acting as brand advocates? Net Promoter Score® is another valuable measure of how likely customers are to refer your brand to a friend or colleague.
The more your audience trusts you and values your content offerings, the more information they will be willing to exchange for access to gated content or other benefits. Take a look at the forms throughout your website. Are prospects filling out the minimum required form fields or are they volunteering information such as their phone number even when it is not required? Do a decent ratio of your site visitors fill out the forms on your landing pages, or do the vast majority of them redirect away once they realize the content is gated?
If people are reluctant to fill out your forms or fill them out fully, consider how you can present your brand in a more inviting way.
To really understand how individuals interact with your brand, and whether your brand awareness efforts are sufficient, it’s helpful to invest in some research. Get a sense of how many people recognize your logo out of context, specifically in the industries you serve. How many can describe your offerings?
If you find that few people have solid knowledge of your brand, think about ways to broaden your brand awareness, not just among decision-makers but also among others in the organizations to which you sell.
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