Plagued By A Performance Plateau? Stop Over-Indexing On Demand & Try This Instead

B2B marketers are accustomed to seeing their sales pipeline increase with demand-focused marketing. And while that works in the short term, it fails to have staying power — the kind that grows revenue and accelerates sales years into the future. As a result, many businesses are seeing their demand programs plateau and recognizing the need for change.

That’s a big reason brand marketing has been on every agenda recently. It’s been a marquee topic at events, and we’ve seen a rise in brand strategy work across B2B verticals. The pendulum of focus appears to have swung from demand to brand as an imperative to drive results.

And while interest is high, I still notice that B2B marketers struggle to implement brand marketing alongside demand. Case in point: I recently conducted a workshop for B2B marketing leaders and strategists and found that among the highly proficient audience — whose businesses ranged from medium to enterprise — many recognized the value of brand, yet demand still dominated their budgets and their efforts.

And I get it — change is hard. B2B marketers have deep roots in demand. We have buying groups with varied needs, long sales cycles and lengthy buyer journeys that require coordination, content, measurement and optimization strategies. With that reality, it’s easy to make demand the focus. But what we miss from using demand marketing alone is sustainable business growth.

The majority of any addressable market — 95%, according to a recent study from The B2B Institute at LinkedIn — is not active right now, and no amount of demand marketing is going to expand the active opportunity. B2B marketers must leverage brand marketing to seed future preference and intent among that 95%. It’s what will get B2B marketers over that plateau and back on an upward growth trajectory. 

Balancing brand and demand marketing is the key to overcoming that growth plateau and improving the performance of your marketing efforts. Here’s what to…