Are people talking about your brand?

Before the rise of social media we talked about 'top of the mind awareness'.

So what's all that about then? Put simply if you ask a potential buyer in your market sector what named brands or suppliers come to mind when talking about the product category in question, does your brand crop up? When then prompted with a question such as have you heard of these brands, there may then be recognition, but some names are met with a blank. If your product is say a major and infrequent capital purchase, it is important to have 'top of the mind awareness' during the interim so that your brand is on the evaluation list when replacement time comes round.

Keeping awareness of your brand on their radar is helped if people are talking about your brand. Using a number of different marketing channels helps too and may be this is the best use of social media for b-2-b right now. Some years ago we developed a series of categories to try to evaluate which channels were most successful in generating enquiries. Whether asking for this information at the opening of an incoming telephone conversation, or on an online enquiry form the 'where did you hear about us' question is  getting in the way of the caller's real purpose - to talk about buying your products. Some businesses I  have called to enquire about for example, spare parts, refused to answer unless I gave them my post code; some wanted far more data. In such circumstances you need to be very wary of the accuracy or truth of the information gathered. All too easy
to tick the first box on a list and move on.

What enquiry source demonstrates is that the web site is the major channel for initial contact, although this doesn't mean your web site was the starting point. This may have originated from advertising, reading an article about your product or picking up a leaflet at an exhibition. We should distinguish between the marketing communications channel and the enquiry response channel. For clients with an effective marketing communications plan we find that the leading category is that people making the enquiry already know about the company or indeed are customers.

So keep talking, maintain brand awareness and don't put all your marketing budget into one basket.