Introduction
Delivering buyers a unified brand-to-demand experience is critical for driving engagement and securing competitive displacement in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
However, achieving the alignment of brand and demand approaches remains a common challenge. This is due to both being commonly perceived as separate—rather than complementary—marketing tactics to gain positioning within target markets.
As expanding buying groups face ever more complex and extended journeys, delivering a cohesive branding and demand experience is paramount to ensure organizations resonate with decision makers throughout the entirety of the sales cycle.
This need is both emphasized and hindered by an overt focus on demonstrating marketing performance and contribution to revenue. Added pressure to deliver results quickly has the potential to harm efforts to build long-lasting brand identity and client relationships, through personalized experiences that solidify trust and brand reputation.
This article explores how to bridge the gap between demand and brand, to enable predictable and scalable growth while reinforcing your brand presence.
“The work that many B2B companies perform can be compelling and consequential, but few of them communicate in ways that bring this to light for key stakeholders. After all, brand marketers are rarely forced to appreciate the full sales funnel, and demand marketers are rarely asked to build audience enthusiasm.”
INFUSE
How to build your brand-to-demand strategy in 4 steps
Building a brand-to-demand strategy from scratch is a challenging process that can be facilitated by first establishing a core objective (the North Star). This will orient all your brand and demand efforts and inform the best ways to achieve results.
Depending on this goal, you will need to consider:
#1 Define your North Star
What is a North Star?
Your North Star represents the overarching vision for the entirety of your organization, however, it should still be attributable to revenue. As a result, your North Star will act as an anchor for both your aspirational and day-to-day goals to guide your branding and demand generation initiatives through regular benchmarks.
North Star example
Establish a clear, overarching goal to guide all brand and demand activities
Outpace competitor growth by 2026 with product and solution innovation
Recommendations
Develop your North Star in collaboration with your team leaders to ensure the scope and vision of your North Star is appropriate. Holding town hall meetings, company-wide summits, and workshops can be invaluable for collecting feedback and securing alignment around this shared goal.
This approach can also help make your North Star an inspiring objective rather than another performance target.
“A well-defined North Star transforms your brand-to-demand strategy from a set of tactics into a unified, purpose-driven roadmap to revenue and growth.”
INFUSE
#2 Build your initial framework
Given its scope, successfully implementing a brand-to-demand strategy requires a comprehensive framework to ensure interdepartmental alignment for all its required activities.
Adopting a framework helps deliver a seamless and consistent experience for your key buyers, while also supporting performance analysis and optimizations.
A 3-step framework for launching your
brand-to-demand strategy
Define KPIs that align with your North Star
Objective
Determine measurable outcomes that reflect progress toward the North Star
Examples
Attribute brand and demand generation metrics to the KPIs
Objective
Connect branding and demand generation activities (metrics) with your KPIs
Examples
Orchestrate your brand experience to activate demand among buyers
Objective
Align the brand experience across all touchpoints (channels, outreach, sales, Client Success - CS) with KPIs. This will ensure that the experience delivered to prospects drives progress toward your objectives
The key challenge of this phase is to adequately craft multiple touchpoints to engage all stakeholders within buying groups (i.e., multithreading). This requires a brand-to-demand experience that leverages personalization, and, if possible, Account Based Experiences (ABX)
Examples and best practices
Continually refer to this brand-to-demand framework to guide the launch of your strategy, and encourage alignment across teams to deliver buyers a cohesive and relevant experience.
“A successful brand-to-demand strategy connects every touchpoint of the brand experience to KPIs. This ensures that demand efforts deliver tangible outcomes that align with your long-term business goal (your North Star).”
INFUSE
#3 Evaluate performance
Once your brand-to-demand strategy is in motion, be sure to routinely monitor performance to glean insights and inform your future efforts.
Achieving the perfect brand-to-demand experience from your first iteration is highly unlikely, however, it can create the basis for fielding valuable feedback and insights to inform your future iterations.
Below is a framework to effectively evaluate brand-to-demand performance:
Brand-to-demand evaluation framework
Measure performance against KPIs
Objective
Assess KPI performance to evaluate your team alignment, brand experience, and overall progress toward North Star objectives
Recommendations
“The true power of brand-to-demand lies in its adaptability. Consistent performance reviews keep your strategy sharp and buyer-focused, enabling you to pivot in response to market changes and client preferences, ultimately driving sustained engagement and growth.”
INFUSE
#4 Optimize your brand-to-demand efforts
Given the wealth of insights you will have collected in the previous step, identifying which adjustments to prioritize is essential for delivering the best outcomes and ROI. This step breaks down how to orchestrate your data to guide the optimization process.
Leverage the framework below to inform your brand-to-demand optimization process, and assess priorities effectively:
Brand-to-demand optimization framework
Reevaluate your North Star
Objective
Determine if your North Star requires adjustments, in light of findings from your brand-to-demand strategy
Recommendations
Reevaluate your KPIs and metrics
Objective
Evaluate if your KPIs and metrics are effectively guiding your team and resulting in a rich brand experience
Changing KPIs and metrics fleetingly should be avoided, unless highly necessary
Recommendations
Reevaluate your brand experience (channels, multithreading, and nurturing)
Leverage AI to streamline optimization efforts
Objective
Utilize AI tools to streamline optimization efforts for your brand-to-demand strategy. Focus on high-level activities that enable long-term outcomes for your organization, such as increasing Client Lifetime Value (CLTV)
Recommendations
Compile a list of low effort, big wins
Objective
Plan tasks that will result in the best outcomes with the least effort and risk. Rank these tasks accordingly to guide their execution and leverage AI whenever possible.
Developing this list helps guide your teams with tangible “to-do’s” to improve brand-to-demand efforts consistently
Recommendations
Relaunch brand-to-demand and monitor performance (continuous optimization)
Objective
Once optimizations have been actioned, re-launch the campaign to feed this process and yield better outcomes.
Recommendations
Consider these frameworks as an initial step to executing, monitoring, and optimizing your brand-to-demand.
Brand-to-demand is an approach that requires precise alignment across teams and a nuanced approach to content, outreach, and buyer enablement to ensure exceptional buyer experiences.
“Optimizing your brand-to-demand means focusing on what truly drives results. Prioritize smart, low-effort actions that offer the greatest return, and continuously evolve your strategy to meet buyer expectations.”
INFUSE
“Demand intelligence transforms data into decisions. By aligning insights with action, marketers can elevate their brand-to-demand efforts and deliver exceptional value at every buyer touchpoint.”
INFUSE
INFUSE BRAND-TO-DEMAND USE CASES
Below are two use cases of brand-to-demand strategies that INFUSE delivered to clients, engaging key buyers and generating long-term interest in their brand and offerings.
Case #1: Educational approach for a software company
For this client, the key objective was to generate awareness for their brand and UVP by educating prospects through a comprehensive, educational content hub.
Below is a complete overview of the strategy delivered:
Educational brand-to-demand strategy
#1 Identify unique pain points of prospects and craft personalized content
INFUSE demand experts analyzed the client’s buyer personas/Ideal Client Profiles (ICPs) and content library to determine:
Based on this audit, brand-new, personalized content was crafted, and key existing content pieces were optimized to fuel touchpoints.
#2 Educational hub and 6-month nurture program
INFUSE launched an educational hub, complete with personalized content for key accounts, under an ABX approach.
This content hub empowered personalized nurturing sequences for each buyer persona, engaging key buyers with relevant data and assets that addressed their unique challenges.
As a result, the client was positioned as a trusted source of information, encouraging repeat engagement by stakeholders, and advocacy within buying groups.
This customized hub has increased video views by 258.7%, page views by 78.5%, and the average session duration by 59.8%. With over 7k repeat visitors, the hub attracts an average of 37k page views each month.
#3 Precision demand generation for 2 months
INFUSE launched a highly precise demand generation campaign to re-engage key buyers, as well as expand the pipeline with qualified prospects.
This demand campaign leveraged an omnichannel and content activation approach, seeking to address any remaining concerns and prime key buyers for sales conversations.
#4 Routing of qualified buyers to sales teams
Buyers were then qualified, with those demonstrating clear intent and meeting the client’s criteria being routed to sales teams.
Buyers who were not sales-ready received continuous nurturing, until they met the client’s qualification criteria.
Case #2: Targeted Display and qualification surveys for a data management client
For this client, INFUSE demand experts leveraged targeted display to re-engage key stakeholders and launched surveys to qualify buyers and glean unique insights into pain points for future strategies.
Brand-to-demand strategy fueled by Targeted Display and survey insights
#1 Engagement via Targeted Display
INFUSE demand experts engaged, re-engaged, and guided stakeholders within target buying groups with strategic content.
These assets provided compelling data to showcase the client’s unique value to prospective buyers.
#2 Email nurture and survey
Buyers were also nurtured via personalized and targeted emails.
This sequence incorporated surveys to qualify prospects, as well as glean unique insights on their specific pain points, budget, and technographics.
#3 Analysis and reporting
By adopting a demand intelligence approach, INFUSE demand experts analyzed the brand-to-demand campaign’s performance and crafted a wrap-up report for the client.
This included key insights designed to enable them to make strategic decisions for future demand initiatives.
#4 Sales enablement
The client’s sales teams received:
Key takeaways
When planning your brand-to-demand strategy, keep in mind these takeaways to enable positive, enduring outcomes:
- Define your North Star and set KPIs and metrics for evaluating progress: As the grand vision for your organization, this serves as a guiding compass for all branding and demand generation efforts. Defining clear KPIs and metrics is essential for driving progress toward achieving objectives
- Launch your initial brand-to-demand strategy and glean insights: Monitor performance to yield actionable insights into your brand experience to engage key buyers
- Adopt a continuous learning and optimization approach for brand-to-demand: Success from brand-to-demand comes from continuous optimization. Focus your efforts on strategies that further performance with each iteration, and maximize outcomes
LEVERAGE A BRAND-TO-DEMAND STRATEGY CRAFTED TO EXCEED YOUR UNIQUE GOALS
INFUSE demand experts can identify and engage your key buyers with a custom-tailored brand-to-demand strategy—empowering you to achieve your growth objectives
Contact the team to craft your brand-to-demand strategy and drive qualified engagement
