Ever spent a bunch of time and budget refreshing your logo and brand platform, only to dread how soon you might need to update it all again?

It’s the inevitable cycle of marketing: Businesses trapped in an infinite loop of building, consolidating, and refreshing their brand.

How much capital is there in consistent branding? What’s the lifespan of design trends? How do you know if branding will continue to resonate as your audience grows? And how do you know when it’s time to burn it all down and start again?

Contents:

What’s in a trend?

How does graphic design shape branding?

Should you follow industry trends?

What makes a good logo?

What does a successful rebrand look like?

Finding the right balance

How to use design trends to your advantage

What’s in a trend?

Trends are a funny thing. Whether you’re talking about fashion, music, or graphic design, trends come and go frequently. This can be driven by a range of nebulous factors, like the whims of prominent tastemakers, critical mass of widespread adoption, or the natural cycle of trend revival.

But this poses a dilemma: Should you devote yourself to constant reinvention as dictated by passing fads? Or ignore them and risk being left behind?

Graphic design trends communicate via a common visual language. It acts as a kind of shorthand that speaks to evolving consumer interests.

In marketing, there’s also an extra layer to consider in terms of the capital built up over time from consistent, recognisable branding. If you hear ‘golden arches’, for example, pretty much everyone knows what brand that refers to. And you can bet that kids will instantly spot the red and yellow sign cresting over the horizon on a long car trip.

Graphic design trends communicate via the common visual language of the time. It acts as a kind of shorthand for effective storytelling that speaks to evolving consumer interests. The flipside, however, is that it can risk coming across as inauthentic or muddy the waters when it comes to brand consistency.

So, what to do? What are design trends worth? Is it even worth being trendy? And how do you evolve a brand without losing what you’ve built?

How does graphic design shape branding?

Whether we like it or not, every piece of brand output — from logos, to typography, to colour palettes, to tone of voice — exists relative to the public’s general perception of trends.

A lot of graphic design is underpinned by deep symbolism and lengthy rationales around why a certain line is at a certain angle in a corporate logo. From an audience perspective, where people aren’t obliged to pay attention to anything beyond their own convenience, the end product largely boils down to ‘vibes’.

Visual branding is littered with clever touches that most casual observers won’t even notice on first glance. Like the arrow hidden in the FedEx logo. Or that the ‘smiley face’ arrow in the Amazon logo goes from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ (while also ignoring that there’s a whole other ‘A’ right next to the Z).

These elements tie together to create something cohesive and memorable. The audience might not always know why it works, but it does. And it’s thanks to the attention to detail applied by designers.

Consider another example. One of the simplest, most recognisable logos: the Nike swoosh. Like the FedEx arrow, it points to the right — the direction our reading eye associates with progress. It also angles upwards, reflecting the positive reinforcement of a tick. It swoops around and tapers to convey dynamic motion — perhaps tracing the path of a tennis racquet, a golf club, or the arc of a leg as it kicks a ball. All of these micro signifiers align coherently with the brand identity. As an audience, this all flickers instantly in our subconscious. Nike = Sport. Sport = Nike.

Should you follow industry trends?

As trends become more widely adopted, they start to form a recognisable language. At the same time, perhaps that style starts to lose what made it striking in the first place. For example, tech companies have traditionally favoured the colour blue for its clean, understated aesthetic.

Some of these brands have existed for a long time (IBM’s blue logo has been in use since 1946), and aren’t seen as quite so cutting edge as they once were. More recently, Facebook has seemingly become a refuge for ‘boomers’ as younger generations have moved on to other social platforms. Suffice to say that this colour palette which once stood for innovation may now be more associated with legacy organisations. A quick look at popular apps probably reflects how tech and social media brands have since embraced a broader colour palette.

But it can get tricky. Trends are interwoven, and their presence is felt differently by different segments of your audience, depending on their demographic. The perfect font for a 45-year-old builder might be different from a younger architect’s tastes, even though these are both part of a supplier’s audience. That sentence in itself is a pretty absurd thought to consider. So brands often have to exist in the ‘in-between’ in order to balance tastes.

Trend saturation can also be a design hazard. The nature of trends can lead to competing brands all jumping on the same bandwagon — to the point that things which once stood out from the pack become ordinary, even stale.

Should you go your own way?

With this in mind, there’s an argument for going your own way — forging your own cluster of signals, with a unique branding approach distinct from the rest of your industry. However, this approach still requires awareness and fluency in what’s being done elsewhere.

Doing your own thing comes with higher risk, but can command more interest. In the same way that whispering can be a powerful tool — provided you’re interested in what someone has to say. You lean in, pay closer attention. If you’re surrounded by a room full of people shouting, you’re more likely to seek out calmer, quieter energy.

Likewise, if a space is quiet, one person making a racket will stand out. Trends are a little bit the same. If everyone’s doing the same thing, there’s power in pivoting to a completely different approach. It commands greater intrigue. But you can’t stay unique forever without a willingness to adapt.

Out with the old, and in with the old (again)

Trends will continue to be cyclical, however. Consider brands that are able to have it both ways. Coca Cola continues to market itself towards younger generations, while also appealing to nostalgia and periodically releasing old-fashioned bottle designs.

The red and white colour scheme is consistent. You can spot it from the end of the aisle in the supermarket whether it's a cardboard carton of cans or bottles in a fridge. The bottle silhouette remains recognisable. The font flourishes are still there. Coke can riff endlessly to keep things fresh while still holding onto its identity because the base elements of the brand are so iconic.

Any design choice that creates a potential barrier for audience engagement is probably not the right choice.

Of course, there are still natural parameters to consider. Overly sleek typography might match a brand’s aesthetic, but could become illegible in some settings. Firmly established brands like Coke can get away with more riffing and experimentation as they’re so recognisable. But, as a rule for newer or lesser known brands, any design choice that creates a potential barrier for audience engagement is probably not the right choice.

What makes a good logo?

Logo design isn’t always an exact science. There are so many contributing factors. For starters, if your product isn’t compelling, there’s only so much that branding can do to garner attention.

Assuming you’ve got a strong product, your logo should be:

In recent times, there’s been a distinct movement towards minimalism in logo design. This is at least in part due to it being ‘fashionable’. It’s likely also an attempt by many companies to future-proof their branding to a degree — leaning into the ‘simple’ and ‘timeless’ criteria listed above. The less elaborate a logo is, the less likely it is to age quickly.

However, as wordmarks lurch towards the trendy homogeneity of sans serif fonts, the end result is a lot of brands starting to look the same. It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between simple and simplistic.

Are the new wordmarks easier to read? Probably. Are they interesting from a branding perspective? Not really. Viewed in isolation in their respective brand guidelines, it no doubt looks nice and clean. In a crowded landscape of very similar branding choices, it starts to feel a little soulless.

Of course, there’s more to branding than logos and wordmarks, but these core graphics set the tone and often provide the basis of visual elements used across the board. There’s also arguably more emphasis placed on logos in the ‘app age’, where brands benefit from being instantly recognisable from a tiny thumbnail.

What does a successful rebrand look like?

When rebranding, there are a few ways to go about it. Most brands opt for gradual evolution – refreshing their branding every now and then to keep up with the times and avoid looking dated. While some brands will opt for a hard reset.

One argument in favour of gradual evolution is to retain the capital built up over decades of brand recognition. There’s been a broader trend towards minimalism in corporate logos, prompting many to bemoan the increasingly widespread uniformity, in some senses this is a natural progression for legacy brands. The longer they exist and the more recognisable they become, the fewer visual cues the audience will need to recognise it. And if you can create a logo that’s recognisable without being a distraction, then it makes sense to use it. For a tech brand like Apple whose trademark is sleek, minimalist devices, the simple silhouette logo makes total sense.

In contrast, a brand like Red Rooster that aims to foster a warmer, family-friendly vibe with a little nostalgia thrown in. Minimalist design isn’t as natural a fit here. Having said that, you’ve got to hand it to the double-R chicken face of its latest iteration.

Ultimately, the job of a logo is the same as the job of copywriting — to say a lot with a little. So, in the case of Red Rooster, being able to create a tangible link to the product using only the company’s initials is *chef’s kiss*.

While the brands mentioned above are examples of evolution, what about the companies that burned it all down and started again? And what was their motivation for doing so?

The obvious recent example is that of Twitter becoming ‘X’. Of course, this was a captain’s call on the whim of new owner, Elon Musk. The shift has been jarring for many existing users, and continues to confuse people trying to find the app icon on their phones. The name Twitter and its iconic blue bird was both instantly recognisable and reflective of the platform’s purpose. In contrast, the X branding seemingly came out of nowhere, didn’t make much sense, and reflected a much colder, faux cool atmosphere. In some ways, the rebrand makes a kind of perverse sense, if only as a marker of a broader vibe shift.

Many long-time users have grown disillusioned with the app and claim the platform has changed for the worse during Musk’s tenure. From the controversial paid subscription model, to the increasing proliferation of bots and of alt-right propaganda — not to mention Musk’s own antics — the vibe has noticeably deteriorated. This is reflected in the drop in active users since Musk’s acquisition in October 2022. For many of the users still hanging on, it’s more a case of morbid curiosity and habit at this point.

Twitter/X active daily users 2019-2024 (in millions). Source: Statista

So, objectively an unpopular and unsuccessful rebrand. But one that at least feels ‘on brand’ with its current identity.

Finding the right balance

Back on the topic of trends, is there a happy middle ground? Most brands inevitably find themselves somewhere in between. No company wants to be seen as out of touch — even if their audience is more traditionally-minded, so it’s important to keep an ear to the ground and stay conscious of changing trends as they emerge and fade around us. A company that was once completely on-trend may fade and become out-of-touch as time passes.

If you’re going to disrupt trends, it can be helpful to keep some familiar elements and not abandon everything at once, at the risk of appearing completely unfamiliar to the target audience. Investment decisions can be made in a split-second, on a subconscious level. So, while you might choose eye-grabbing colour to stand out from competitors, it can be useful to stick to other conventions like typical font choices or website imagery to ensure that connection is still made with your audience.

Sprinkling in trendy surface elements onto a foundation of a brand can be a solid approach. Minor refreshes might include expanding a colour palette to utilise new combinations, or to give a website a touch up with a new font choice.

How to use design trends to your advantage

A unique brand look takes more work, as you need to break assumptions and create new meaning in the mind of your audience. Rather than leveraging established associations, there needs to be a conscious effort to communicate and set your new look as the standard, through marketing campaigns to build familiarity, along with consistent brand story development to ensure that messaging aligns with the brand’s look and feel.

Okay, quick story time. 

In 1999, Salesforce was launched and quickly gained recognition for its cloud-based CRM solutions and unique approach to software delivery. It wasn’t until the late 2000s that they started developing a genuine content-based strategy. This included formats like blog posts, instructive guides, white papers, and webinars.

This strategic shift played a significant role in cementing their position as a leader in CRM and cloud computing. 

Contents:

Salesforce would go on to complement their content strategy with their annual Dreamforce conference, featuring seminars, workshops, and keynote speeches from industry leaders. Over the years, the event has become a content generation machine, providing a focal point for their audience. This, in turn, generates additional assets for engagement and outreach.

Salesforce isn’t the only example, of course. Hubspot, Adobe, and many other B2B companies have made content a key pillar of their marketing strategy. 

A survey from the Content Marketing Institute shows that 88% of marketers have successfully reached their goals of creating brand awareness and building credibility through content.

B2B CONTENT BY NUMBERS

Source: Content Marketing Institute

The role of brand awareness in the marketing funnel

At its core, brand awareness refers to the level of familiarity that consumers have with a particular brand. This is measured by how well consumers can recognise the brand's logo, name, products, and other offerings.

However, true brand awareness means a prospect understands your brand's character, values, and offerings. 

When considering new software, companies are more likely to choose a brand they recognise and associate with quality and reliability. The effect of familiarity makes brand awareness a critical first step in any content strategy.

Brand awareness sits at the top of the marketing funnel. It's the initial phase where a business makes its first impression. This is where brands catch the eye of potential customers and begin to build a relationship. Think of a prospect scrolling through social media and pausing momentarily at a brand's post offering a potential solution to their needs; this is the start of the ‘awareness’ phase.

As potential customers move from awareness to consideration, they might start to shortlist their preferred options. This is even more likely when it comes to bigger purchases that require sign-off from multiple stakeholders within a company. Brands that build greater awareness are more likely to be considered because stakeholders feel more confident to give sign-off. For example, a business needing a cloud storage solution is more likely to consider a brand that’s shown relevant expertise in an article they’ve seen online, rather than a complete unknown.

Finally, in the conversion (aka purchase) phase, familiarity and trust built through consistent brand awareness can strongly influence consumer decisions. It's the reason why businesses will often end up choosing a brand they've already engaged with through other channels. For example, they might have previously viewed a webinar, online workshop, or downloaded a product guide.

In short, by including value-adding content as part of marketing strategies, brands can inform, educate and remain top-of-mind, paving the way for consideration and, ultimately, conversion.

Learn how TMP can help you build a successful B2B marketing strategy.

Tangible vs intangible benefits of brand awareness

Brand awareness goes beyond recognition, of course. It offers both tangible and intangible benefits that can profoundly influence business outcomes, particularly in the B2B sector.

Tangible Benefits

Intangible Benefits:

Content marketing: less shiny, more cost-effective

Content stands out as one of the most cost-effective methods for generating brand awareness, particularly when compared to traditional marketing channels. It's estimated that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads.

Why’s that? For starters, paid ads are interruptive. Whether it’s a TV commercial during your favourite show or a sponsored post in your Instagram feed, ads get in the way of the content that audiences are actively trying to engage with. Yes, they serve to increase brand awareness. And yes, sometimes they’re funny or informative to some degree, but ultimately they’re obstacles that quickly become annoying and repetitive. This means audiences are more likely to tune them out, or in some cases, even resent certain brands for their incessant ads.

In contrast, content marketing aims to build positive brand association by creating content of value. While the purpose of traditional ads is to ‘sell’ you something in a short space of time, content marketing is a slower burn. But the content gives audiences a reason to seek it out, rather than something that gets in the way. Maybe it’s a seminar featuring knowledgeable speakers from the industry. If you sell a certain product, you could produce a how-to guide for optimising its use. It could be as simple as an informative blog post or step-by-step video. 

If you can resist the urge to default to the ‘hard sell’ approach in this content, all the better. When you ‘bait-and-switch’ with content that purports to be useful and then serve users a thinly veiled ad, this undermines any trust you’re trying to build and people will quickly disengage. If you can serve a need for your audience by creating content that’s shareable and actually provides value in terms of the challenges they’re trying to solve, the brand recognition will come.

Unlike traditional advertising, which often requires significant investment for media space or airtime, branded content can be housed on company-owned channels at no cost. Creating digital content is generally less expensive than producing content for traditional media outlets like TV or radio, where production costs are significantly higher.

It’s worth considering the lifespan of useful content too. Once published, content can continue to engage and attract audiences over time, unlike a paid ad that stops generating returns as soon as the campaign ends. For example, a well-written blog post or whitepaper can continue to draw traffic and generate leads for years after its initial publication, offering an ongoing return on investment.

A single piece of content can also be repurposed across multiple channels, such as social media, email newsletters and so on, maximising its reach without additional cost.

Content marketing also supports SEO. Search engines favour high-quality content, which can improve a website’s ranking and visibility without the ongoing costs of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

7 ways content amplifies brand awareness

1. Thought leadership and expertise

Customers are much more likely to deal with brands who know what they’re talking about. Publishing insightful articles, industry reports, and expert commentary can establish your brand as a thought leader while addressing the needs and challenges of the target audience. 

Salesforce and Canva are good at this. By regularly producing and sharing in-depth analyses, trends, and innovations in CRM and cloud computing, they showcase their deep industry knowledge and build their reputation as an authority in their respective sectors.

2. Storytelling

Sure, ‘storytelling’ can sound a little pretentious in a marketing context. But really all it means is using a narrative framework that resonates with the audience. We all prefer having things explained using real-world examples. Show, don’t tell – as they say. This can help create an emotional connection and make content more relatable. 

3. SEO-driven content

SEO-driven content focuses on creating material that ranks well on search engines, making the brand more discoverable to those seeking related information or solutions. By targeting specific keywords and addressing relevant topics, companies can attract organic traffic, increasing brand visibility and authority.

4. Social media engagement

Social media engagement is about actively interacting with audiences on various platforms, sharing timely content, responding to queries, and fostering a community. This approach helps humanise a brand and keeps it top-of-mind.

5. Educational / how-to content

Providing educational and how-to content positions a brand as helpful and knowledgeable in its field. This type of content often addresses common questions or challenges faced by the audience, establishing your brand as a go-to resource.

6. Case Studies & Client Stories

Case studies and client stories are a powerful tool to demonstrate how a brand's services or products can solve real business problems, which adds credibility to the company image.

Deloitte showcases its expertise and problem-solving capabilities through effective written and video case studies which include project insights and demonstrable client results.

7. User-Generated Content (UGC) 

Marketers can develop user-generated content to create a sense of community and authenticity around the brand, as potential customers see real stories and experiences rather than just brand-driven narratives.

By encouraging travellers to share their Australian journey using specific hashtags, Tourism Australia leverages the power of user-generated content. The real stories and visuals, shared on Tourism Australia's platforms, serve as genuine, relatable endorsements that seamlessly leverage customers as brand advocates.

Summary

The significance of content’s ongoing role in nurturing leads is clear. With prospects’ behaviour increasingly influenced by the quality and relevance of the content they interact with, B2B companies must recognise that investing in content is a viable path to growth. 

The brands that stay on top of these trends, while adapting and innovating their content strategies, will be the ones to secure higher brand visibility and loyalty in the years to come.

This requires an approach to developing content that’s strategic, engaging, aware of the opportunities offered by the latest technologies and aligned with the evolving preferences of their target audience.

The AI tide has been rising for some time. That much is clear. If you’ve been anywhere near social media in the past 18 months, you’ve probably been bombarded with monstrous AI-generated images and absurd ChatGPT prompts. But beyond providing experimental fodder for people’s LinkedIn posts, the practical application of AI for content creation still feels like it’s yet to fully take shape.

Of course, there’s all the usual double-edged discussion around its potential for outsourcing menial tasks to make our jobs easier, versus the risk that it will make more of us redundant. And that’s without mentioning the frightening implications of deep fake videos and audio, alongside AI’s potential to be harnessed for the spread of misinformation. 

For the most part, so far it’s been kinda funny, if not fascinating.

Uncanny valley horrors aside, the reality is that AI’s use in marketing isn’t even all that new. But its range of applications certainly seems to be accelerating. At the very least, it’s becoming more eye-catching.

Where are the key growth areas for AI?

The launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI nearly broke the internet. AI now has the ability to write articles, briefs and product descriptions quickly – albeit with varying success – ​​within set parameters. It’s a serious player, and will only improve over time. Chatbots are also becoming more prevalent in customer service, accounting for the majority of initial customer interactions. 

While consumers might argue that this process comes across as impersonal, it’s extremely useful for businesses as a means of triaging customer inquiries. And perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, AI is also becoming increasingly popular as a tool for personalisation.

AI can potentially reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 50%

AI-powered customer service automation is projected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 58.5%

Successful personalisation can result in 20% higher customer satisfaction, and a 10-15% increase in sales conversion

Sources: Marketing in Asia, REVE Chat, McKinsey

AI is showing signs of being a potential game-changer for SEO. Microsoft’s AI-powered (and much maligned) Bing search engine offers personalised targeting for advertisers. Instead of a speculative enquiry, search becomes a conversation with more precision and insight than ever. 

Meanwhile, AI image generators like DALL.E 2 are stirring the pot with the ability to create ads for a fraction of the budget and hassle of organising a photoshoot or hiring a designer. 

For now, the burning question remains: How can you take advantage of AI for your brand marketing? 

How can AI make the most marketing impact?

The biggest strength of artificial intelligence in its current form is wrangling data much faster than humans are able to. It can pull vast amounts of info from every corner of the web in moments – analysing, organising, and applying it to algorithms, potentially saving hours of research.

Another upside is in automation. AI is naturally more willing than most of us to carry out monotonous tasks, over and over. Other areas where AI excels include: 

Intelligent, maybe. Imaginative, not so much

Marketing with genuine cut through is about more than implementing a strategy off the back of data. There’s an element of creativity at play too. What works isn’t always 100% intuitive or logical. AI still struggles with the kind of complex thought required to create something that adds up to more than the sum of its parts. For example, it can’t single-handedly write a script for an ad that will become a timeless classic. But it might be able to give you some useful thought starters along the way.  

Another blindspot of AI is its lack of humanity. Shocking, right? Standout marketing and advertising material relies on appealing to emotions, which requires empathy. As does the best customer service. AI tends to stick to parameters, with little flexibility and the inability to go above and beyond to retain a customer’s attention.  

Other AI shortcomings include:

So, can we trust AI enough to hand it the keys to the castle, or should we continue to proceed with caution?

We’re still in the trial and error phase

The recent exponential growth in AI has been so fast and unregulated that the world is finding it hard to keep up. It’s almost like we’re all guinea pigs for a clinical trial that we never signed up for. It’s a wild west kind of energy, which makes it all the more important to have your wits about you, both as a consumer and marketer. 

As with any new technology, there will be wins and losses, as well as challenges in deciphering which of the many existing and emerging applications are actually worth your while. It remains a time of trial and error, but how will we know when it ends? And by the time we have sufficient confidence in the tools available to us, will they already have been superseded?

Whatever your stance on the use of AI, I think we can all agree that its peak use remains in covers of famous songs by animated characters.

So, where to start?

It’s okay to have FOMO, or feel overwhelmed by relentless requests to ‘do something with AI’. Suffice to say, it’s probably not time to fire all your staff and kick back in the Bahamas while robots run your business for you. But it might be worth dipping your toes in the shallow end of AI possibility. See what works and what doesn’t on a few smaller projects, without totally flipping your business on its head.

It’s not time to hold up the white flag of redundancy either. There’s still plenty of purpose for us puny humans. There are some things that AI does very well, but a lot that we can still do better.

In a nutshell, AI tools should continue to become more sophisticated and free us up to put more energy towards creative endeavours and big picture thinking. You know, all the ideas you wish you had the bandwidth to execute and wow your clients with, if only this damn admin wasn’t always getting in the way. 

That is, at least until the machines grow tired of doing the donkey work and the uprising begins in earnest. But hey, try not to think about it too much. 

Marketing goalposts tend to keep moving. Best practice and tool capabilities are constantly evolving. In the last two decades, we can pretty much boil it down to a shift from ‘spray and pray’ to a ‘track and stack’ approach.

Once upon a time, the only option for marketers was to invest budgets across different activities and take an educated guess at how that translated into sales. Today, with the marketing tools and measurement capabilities available, you can monitor campaign performance from the minute it goes live to understand what channels, initiatives, and messages generate the best results. This means you’re able to optimise and double down on what works.

So, what is marketing attribution?

Marketing attribution is the process of being able to track how certain messaging and channels are actually affecting your customers’ willingness and ability to make purchases. In other words, what’s engaging them and what obstacles are making them drop off?

For example, you might be running a really effective ad with eye-catching visuals and a value-driven tagline. It gets a lot of attention, but when users click through to your website, the UX is clunky, the CTAs aren’t clear, so a lot of people drop off before completing a purchase. Maybe your ad creative isn’t clearly conveying the benefits of your offering. Or maybe you’re focusing on posting to LinkedIn when more of your audience is on Instagram. Attribution is your means of diagnosing what’s working and what isn’t.

Why does attribution matter?

To ensure you’re spending your time & money in the right places, giving your audience a compelling reason to convert, and making that path as intuitive as possible.

This is extremely useful because it informs a lot of strategic decisions. For example, are you spending time and money in the right places? Are you generating a lot of leads which aren’t translating into conversions?

Having this kind of visibility means you’re much better equipped to optimise marketing spend, improve ROI, and gain clearer insights into customer behaviour. This can be even more valuable in B2B marketing where sales cycles are longer and are more likely to involve multiple decision-makers.

The challenge of B2B attribution

Typically, in B2B marketing, advertising generates leads which are then nurtured by sales reps until a purchase is made. In contrast, B2C consumer paths tend to be more direct, especially in e-commerce, where leads funnel instantly through to purchases. 

This longer consideration phase makes B2B attribution more complex, but also a potentially rich source of data. Here’s why.

Multiple touchpoints

B2B transactions typically involve multiple brand interactions across multiple channels. For example, a prospective client might first encounter your business through a LinkedIn post, then download a whitepaper from your website, attend a webinar, and – finally – make contact with a sales rep. Identifying which of these touchpoints is most influential in their decision-making process isn’t always straightforward.

Shift from traditional to digital

New digital channels have created more opportunities to reach specific audiences. But that also means there’s a lot more to keep track of. In the past, B2B marketing might have focused more on offline channels like direct mail, trade shows, and print advertising. Now, the mix favours digital advertising, email campaigns, social media, and SEO. The good news is that digital channels are easier to track through to conversion. The challenging part is that there’s so much to keep track of.

Non-linear customer journeys

B2B customer journeys are increasingly non-linear,  as prospects engage with content at different stages. According to Gartner, customers typically exhibit a behaviour known as 'looping' during a B2B purchase, repeatedly revisiting various stages of their buyer journey. This includes steps like identifying their needs, sourcing a solution, browsing suppliers, and getting internal stakeholders onboard.

Poor attribution in B2B marketing can lead to misaligned strategies, where efforts and resources aren’t focused on the most impactful channels. This results in poor understanding of customer behaviour, inefficient ad spend, and – ultimately – lower ROI. For example, overvaluing the impact of last-click interactions while undervaluing educational content higher up the funnel. This can skew budget allocation away from crucial brand awareness efforts, impacting long-term customer relationships and sales growth.

Different types of marketing attribution models

So, you want to track customer journeys but don’t know where to start? There are many different means of attribution which vary in their level of detail and purpose. And some may be more suited to certain channels than others, or dependent on particular variables you might want to test.

How to choose the best B2B attribution model

Selecting the most effective attribution model in B2B marketing hinges on understanding the complexities of buyer journeys. Here’s what you should consider:

Assess the length and complexity of the sales cycle.

Longer sales cycles with numerous touchpoints may benefit from multi-touch models like Time-Decay or Position-Based attribution, which acknowledge multiple influential interactions.

Understand the role of each channel.

Evaluate the role and impact of different channels in your marketing mix. For instance, if early-stage awareness is crucial, First-Touch or U-Shaped models might be more appropriate. For more conversion-focused strategies, Last-Touch or Time-Decay models could be better suited.

Consider the importance of mid-funnel interactions.

In many B2B scenarios, mid-funnel interactions such as demos or detailed consultations play a critical role. Models like Position-Based attribution, which assign significant value to these interactions, could be more suitable.

Are customer journeys for your brand mostly non-linear?

For highly non-linear customer paths, data-driven or custom attribution models can offer the flexibility and precision needed to account for various journey types.

Factor in offline and online interactions.

If your B2B marketing involves a mix of offline and online touchpoints, consider an attribution model that can integrate data from both worlds, such as custom models or advanced data-driven approaches.

 Leverage analytics and machine learning.

Make the most of advanced analytics tools and machine learning algorithms to gain deeper insights into how different touchpoints contribute to conversions, guiding you towards more sophisticated models like Data-Driven or Custom Attribution.

Review and adapt your approach regularly.

Continually review the performance of your chosen model against actual sales data and be ready to adapt. The dynamic nature of B2B markets means that what works today might need adjustment tomorrow.

8 essential tips for optimising B2B marketing attribution

To ensure effective attribution, here are some key tips that can guide your strategies and enhance the precision of your B2B marketing efforts.

Tip 1: Implement multi-touch attribution

Multi-touch attribution models, like Position-Based or Data-Driven models, consider multiple touchpoints in a customer's journey. Unlike last-click attribution, which credits the last touchpoint before conversion, multi-touch models distribute credit across several touchpoints, providing a more holistic view of what's driving conversions.

Tip 2: Leverage data-driven models with machine learning

Data-driven models, especially those enhanced by machine learning, dynamically analyse and assign credit to touchpoints based on their impact, adapting to evolving data patterns for improved insights. These models can be very effective in leveraging your data to understand how each touchpoint contributes to your final goal.

Tip 3: Integrate marketing with CRM systems

Integrating your marketing efforts with CRM systems like HubSpot or Zoho allows you to track long-term customer value, not just immediate conversions. This is helpful in understanding which marketing efforts attract customers with high lifetime value and in making strategic decisions to foster long-term customer relationships.

Tip 4: Collect & track data consistently

Ensure that you have robust systems for tracking and collecting data across all channels. This includes setting up proper UTM parameters, using analytics tools effectively, and ensuring data consistency.

Tip 5: Integrate offline and online data

A comprehensive view of the customer journey involves integrating offline data (like in-store purchases, phone calls, etc.) with online data (like email open rates, ad interactions, and eCommerce transactions). This gives you a more complete picture of your customer interactions and how different channels work together, which improves the accuracy of your attribution model.

Tip 6: Track cross-device conversions

Similarly, with users often switching between devices, it's important to track and attribute conversions across different devices. This can be challenging, but it’s crucial for a complete understanding of the customer journey.

Tip 7: Get a holistic view of the customer journey

By mapping user interactions from initial contact through to conversion and beyond, you get a complete view of the customer journey. This is how you can pinpoint which advertising efforts contribute the most to customer acquisition and retention.

Tip 8: Boost your customer targeting

Combining insights from advertising data and CRM enhances customer segmentation and targeting. This results in more effective advertising campaigns, as messages can be tailored to specific segments based on their behaviour and preferences, ensuring greater impact from your marketing efforts.

Looking ahead

Did you know?

In an increasingly unstable economic environment, the ability to pinpoint exactly where marketing efforts are most effective is more important than ever.

In the years to come, B2B marketing attribution is set to become even more nuanced and sophisticated. The integration of marketing tools and platforms will become more streamlined. The advancement of machine learning, in particular, will revolutionise how we track, report, and derive insights from data, making attribution more accurate and accessible.

In an increasingly unstable economic environment, the ability to pinpoint exactly where marketing efforts are most effective is more important than ever. Companies that effectively understand their customer journeys can allocate resources more efficiently, adapt quickly to market changes, and ultimately drive better ROI.

In this evolving landscape, it's vital for B2B marketers to adopt sophisticated attribution models and embrace advanced tools. Doing so not only enhances current campaign effectiveness but also prepares businesses for future market shifts.

Strategic B2B social media marketing is not just about having an account with a pretty feed that attracts a lot of likes. Nor is it about shoving your products down people’s throats. It’s about using social media strategically to build relationships with your prospects.

B2B social media marketing often falls into the trap of being devoid of personality, out of fear of not appearing ‘professional’ enough. But it’s important to remember you’re not communicating to a business—there’s a real person at the other end of your post you’re trying to reach, human to human.

One of the key differences between B2C and B2B marketing is that the sales cycle is usually much longer for us B2Bs than for B2Cs. We need to spend longer building and nurturing relationships with our prospects. Your sales team can be in contact with someone for a year or more before the sale goes through. If you think about your social media audience as that contact, what conversations would you like to have over the course of that year?

You could argue that building relationships through social media is even more important for B2B brands than for consumer brands.

Social media offers us a place to meet our prospects where they are. A smart B2B social media marketing plan will outline the strategies you’ll use to meet your business goals.

The social media lowdown today

More than half the world is now on social media.

Worldwide, more than 2.7 billion people are on Facebook. More than a billion are on Instagram. LinkedIn has more than 675 million users. Closer to home, Australians spend an average of 1 hour and 47 minutes on social media each day, a figure that has been slowly increasing over the past 8 years.

B2B buyers research before making a purchasing decision and they use social media as part of that research. A LinkedIn study concluded that social media interactions influence 84% of C-level and VP-level buyers before they purchase a product or service.

By ignoring or playing down the importance of social media in our overall marketing plan, we’re handing our competitors the knife to carve off a great slice of pie for themselves.

Which social media networks
should your B2B be on?

Despite the prevailing cry of ‘be everywhere’, this is absolutely not true for B2B social media marketing.

B2B social media marketers can and should be far more discerning.

You don’t need to launch a TikTok account just because its popularity is rapidly rising. (Phew! Frankly, my cat’s not that interesting and who’s got time to learn how to dance this week?)

And you don’t have to use every new function of each platform you’re on. It’s OK to be on Instagram and not use Reels for your business.

Use our Customer Research Matrix to help you figure this out and create a clear picture of your ideal customer. When you have great clarity around your target audience, you’ll know where and how your brand should be on social media.

Just like any other business function, don’t bite off more than you can chew. As part of your marketing plan, consider which resources your business has that you can assign to manage your social media presence.

While LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram might be a good fit for your business, if you don’t have the resources and budget to maintain a professional social media presence, show up regularly across your chosen platforms and create fresh content, instead, focus your efforts on the top performing channels and do these well.

There needs to be a good reason for joining a social media channel that aligns to your marketing plan. A hastily set-up and soon-abandoned social profile does not reflect well on a business.

The goal of B2B social media marketing

When people visit social media, they’re there to connect with others, be entertained, informed or inspired. They don’t visit their social media channels to be sold to.

Even if sales are your end game, keep in mind that you need to build relationships with people first.

This means your social media accounts should not be self-serving where you push out nothing but promotional posts dipped in sales messages. Otherwise, it will reflect badly on your brand. Promotional posts are fine, so long as they are in moderation and make sense in context.

You should look to educate, entertain, engage or inspire your target audience via your social posts.

Use a mix of social media posts to educate, entertain, engage and inspire

Educate

Share a link to a breaking news story or share an opinion on an industry topic.

Share ‘how to’ tips for a common task in your industry.

Turn one of your blog posts into multiple social media posts to help build your authority on a certain topic.
Entertain

Share a funny meme that highlights a myth or stereotype about your industry. It doesn’t have to be one that you created.

Share a video that’s relevant to your audience that you found entertaining or even amusing.

Write a personal story that shares a funny experience that relates to your business.
Engage

Ask your audience a question about a topic relevant to your industry.

Add a poll to a post about a contentious topic in your industry and ask your audience to vote.

Ask for help. Share a problem you’re having and ask your audience to solve it.
Inspire

Share results another client has gained from working with you.

Share a testimonial that outlines how you helped a client overcome a specific problem.

Share statistics from your industry that show the positive side of an issue in your industry.

Inject personality into your social
media posts

To avoid appearing too salesy, keep in mind that you’re trying to build a relationship with prospects. B2B social media marketing is still B2-human communication. And because you’re communicating to a real human and not some faceless business brand, your social posts should feel more like a conversation than a billboard.

Your tone of voice should match your brand and position in the market. For example, if you make a utilitarian, no-frills products, then your tone of voice should come across in a similar way — no fuss, informative and functional. If you’re not selling high-end, complex software, don’t try to sound like you are.

If you’re selling data analytics or accounting services, you need to communicate to your prospects in a way that matches your brand and their expectations.

While you can (and should!) give your audience the kind of content they expect from you and in the way they expect it, it’s OK to be creative and try different approaches so long as you remain authentic to your brand. Standing out from your competitors can help your posts get noticed in your prospect’s cluttered feed.

Social media presents an opportunity for us to give our audience a peek behind the curtain and show the human side of our business. It’s where people can see the interesting things we’re working on and get to know us and the other people in our business, better. Consider passing the social media baton to your team members from time-to-time to help humanise your business. It’s a great way to show that there are real people and stories behind your brand. Plus, it keeps your content fresh.

How to plan your B2B social media
marketing strategy

Having a good marketing plan in place will set you up well to create an effective B2B social media strategy.

Know your brand pillars

If you haven’t already identified your core brand pillars (those 4 or 5 top-level categories all your products and services fit under) then take the time to decide what those brand pillars will be. These are the key things you want your business to be known for.

Plan your social media posts

Social media planning is all about working out what you’re going to say and when.

Plan topics and themes under your brand pillars. This will help you streamline your posts by staying focused on those core messages.

Think about important dates in your business—product launches, busy periods, seasonal influences, sales cycle predictions—and plan content to lead up to those events.

Prepare content in batches so you’re not having to scramble for fresh stuff each week. Batching social media posts saves a lot of time. Refer to the educate, entertain, engage, or inspire matrix to produce a good mix of content themes.

Use a social media scheduling tool to line up your posts in advance so they publish automatically across the week or month ahead. Then during the week, you’ll only need to set aside time to respond to comments to encourage more engagement and build those all-important relationships.

The easy way to create a B2B social media schedule

While B2B social media marketing might make you feel anxious about creating and executing a plan that perfectly balances a mix of post types that sound authentically like your brand while incorporating your end goal—sales— it doesn’t have to be overly complex.

We’ve prepared a DIY social media calendar to help you create a month’s worth of social media posts aligned to the topics you set under your brand pillars and to ensure you get the right mix of promotional and other post types.

Join the DIY Marketing Project for access to our calendar and plenty of other tools and resources to help you with your marketing.

Set yourself up for B2B social
media success

The key to social media success for B2Bs is to use your authentic voice and let your personality show through while showcasing your knowledge and what you do best.

Keep an eye on your metrics to see which posts get more engagement and which posts don’t. Use these metrics to continually refine your social media calendar.

Use a spelling and grammar checker like Grammarly or ProWritingAid to avoid embarrassing typos that can make you look unprofessional and reflect poorly on your brand. You can hire a graphic designer to set you up with templates that reflect your visual brand and look great, or choose stock images and resize them yourself—we have resizing templates you can use on our DIY Marketing Project platform.

But perhaps the greatest tip is to remember that good B2B social media marketing is all about connecting human to human, not business to business. By showing the human side of your business and offering that personal touch, you’ll have a greater chance of bringing in enthusiastic customers who are on board with what you do.

If you’re a DIY marketer and need inspiration and guidelines to boost your marketing efforts, visit the DIY Marketing Project. You’ll find lots of resources and templates that will help you run your B2B social media marketing campaigns in less time and for better results.

It’s official: the third-party cookie is crumbling. The change has been in the works for a while. Now these trackers, hitch-hiking on our every click and page view, are finally staring down the barrel of extinction.

Safari and Firefox have already phased them out, while Google Chrome promises to do the same by mid-2024.

Did you know?

Third-party cookies track and store your browsing data. They enable brands to serve you ads related to products you’ve previously searched for, even when you’re on an unrelated website or an entirely different platform.

It’s a welcome change for consumers, no doubt – tired of brands constantly peering over their shoulder. And if it means avoiding death by 1000 clicks from having to customise our consent on every single website, then that’s cause for celebration.

But what does it mean for marketers? Third-party data has been the go-to for so long, raising a few key questions:

Third-party cookies track and store your browsing data. They enable brands to serve you ads related to products you’ve previously searched for, even when you’re on an unrelated website or an entirely different platform.

Fun fact

The term cookie comes from ‘magic cookie’, the name programmers use for a packet of data that a program receives and sends back unchanged. This originates from the idea of a fortune cookie – a biscuit containing a brief message inside.

Third-party cookies were always flawed.

The truth is, many marketers have already lost their appetite for third-party biccies. They’re actually less effective than we’d like to admit. For every pro, there are also problems, resulting in:

You’ve probably seen this clumsiness first-hand – like being served an ad for a product you’ve already bought. We’re so accustomed to living under a panoptic digital marketing regime that this kind of glitch barely raises an eyebrow, but it still adds up to a frustrating user experience. If brands are going to stalk us, they should at least pay attention to our behaviour, right?

So if third-party data isn’t cutting it, what’s the alternative?

Google FLOC’d it.

In an attempt to wean us off third-party cookies, Google trialled FLOC — The Federated Learning of Cohorts, which worked similarly, but tracked groups of users instead of individuals for a ‘safety in numbers’ approach. However, it was red-flagged within the industry for still enabling advertisers to single out individuals through loopholes.

Enter Google’s TOPICs, an even broader data gathering service, which sorts users into topline interest categories – e.g. ‘here’s Stephanie, she likes sports and music’. While this offers users more anonymity, it doesn’t give marketers much to work with. Surely there’s a way to gain useful insights without being intrusive?

Introducing the first-party cookie.

We’re back in the cookie jar, but with a different recipe this time. The first-party cookie only tracks user behaviour on a brand’s own website. Whatever users do elsewhere is their business, but on your site, it can inform personalised, bespoke navigation. It’s a direct conversation between brand and buyer, with no hidden agenda or invasive data gathering, which means:

One of the big advantages of first-party cookies is personalisation that streamlines a user’s journey. You’re not tagging along and pestering someone while they look at other websites. But when a customer comes through the door of your site, you can provide a warm welcome like they’re a regular in your store—’Hey, we remember you. These items you looked at last time are still available if you’re interested.’

It’s more targeted and a lot less creepy. It’s the difference between assisting a shopper who’s browsing your shelves versus chasing them down the street with a brochure.

CDPs are gold.

If you really want to unearth rich data, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is the gold standard in data aggregation. It’s a software system that gathers first-party data from online and offline sources, whether it’s through ad clicks or a phone conversation – all above-board and sourced through direct brand interactions. Advantages of a CDP include:

One of the standout elements of a CDP is real-time data, which gives brands the ability to seize the moment with each customer. With dynamic personalisation, instant recommendations and triggered messaging, it can be a smoother path to conversion.

First-party data wins out.

All in all, the abolition of third-party cookies is an opportunity for brands to rethink the way they connect with customers and activate their first-party data strategy. 2024 will be less about reliance on third-party data sources and more about authentic interactions that are timely, meaningful, and give customers a sense of being seen without being stalked.


So, what does it all mean for your strategic approach?

The bottom line is that the best customer journey is the one that aligns user intent with relevant, targeted cues in the right setting. Not a sustained bombardment until no one can stand the sight of your products, whether or not they need them.

When considering a piece of graphic design work, especially when it comes to your brand’s look and feel, you may tend to use your ‘critical brain’ to analyse.

It’s easy to overthink this, and end up with a result that kind of pleases everybody but doesn’t really say all that much.

In reality, a lot of the communication of graphic design happens subconsciously – without us even knowing. The human brain recognises colours, shapes and textures and adds meaning to them before we even have a chance to make a rational decision on what colour to use for the logo, or what shape to make a specific icon.

If you can understand and harness this subconscious communication, you’re well on the way to creating graphic elements that are irresistible to the brain – those big-brand logos that we all know and could draw with our eyes closed.

Here are three common graphic elements, how they work on our brains, and how you can use that force for good.

Colour

Colour is a messaging shortcut to the brain.

It’s always among the first things to be considered when designing for a brand – it forms the backbone of all designs and will usually appear in some form in everything you produce. Colours contain emotional meaning, signifying a tone and energy about the brand that is perceived immediately by viewers.

Colour is powerful as a categorising tool. It helps customers to gain an understanding of your brand instantly. Everyone’s brain already contains a lifetime of associations built up through exposure to thousands of brands. Green might convey an environmental consciousness, or suggest energy and efficiency. Red conveys heat, speed, and famously hunger.

Breaking with these standard associations can work, but it comes with risk – and it helps to understand the rule you’re breaking BEFORE you break it.

Choosing a wild colour, for example, might come at the expense of clarity – but it can make your brand stand out in a crowded space. Think of ONE’s bright pink shipping containers. They’re definitely a standout in the logistics sector, but what do you think of when you consider ONE as a brand?

Shape

The foundational elements of a design are colour, images, and type, but these all need to be contained within shapes.

The shapes that holds your design together says just as much as the design itself. Think of the strong ‘shield-type’ shapes that sit behind sports team emblems, or the varying shapes that back car brand logos.

It’s important to be deliberate about how these forms are used. Things to consider when choosing a shape:

Maybe a combination of these ideas is best suited to your purpose. Often these choices will align with your font selection, and should remain consistent across your materials. By combining these elements you’re building up an association between visual tone and your brand for your audience.

Texture and pattern

Our world is full of rich textures and patterns, both natural and designed by people.

Historians can trace human history through the patterns of different cultures in textiles, stone or architecture – just as biologists can track the vast history of the natural world through textures and patterns in trees, fossils or even on a frog’s back.

Historic or futuristic, natural or manmade – all textures and patterns are both decorative and purposeful in conveying meaning.

Texture often falls into the background as we’re perceiving a design or object, but it’s integral in conveying a sense of quality, tone and purpose. A smooth plastic conveys something different to a machined aluminium surface of an iPhone, for example.

In the design arena, textures and patterns can be brought in as recurring visual elements that add a richness and depth to a design, and communicate a theme in combination with colours, shapes and typography.

I developed this abstract pattern as a visual element for use in TMP materials. It symbolises a transition from chaos to structure, organisation, and routine. It’s subtle, and doesn’t interfere with other elements – but it enriches designs with a little extra depth, and becomes a recurring motif that unifies our designs.

A pattern can be colourful or monochromatic, simple or complex, it’s just important that it supports your brand, is reusable and timeless (won’t become stale when used repeatedly), and is versatile enough to be used on big and small screens alike.

Putting it all together

Your ‘brand’ is just an idea in your audience’s head. You help shape that through your actions, the words you choose and the visuals you use to present yourself.

Through these elements you convey a series of associations to your audience: what you stand for, how you do business, your brand’s attitude and outlook on the world. Strike the right tone and you’ll resonate with your target audience – whether that’s corporate professionals, tradespeople, public servants or anything in-between.

The colours you choose, the textures and patterns that carry those colours, and the shapes that contain them, all play their part in conveying to your audience what you’re all about.

Use my tips above to make sure you’re always getting their right impression across – whether your audience realises it or not!

You often hear about reach, frequency and impressions when talking about the performance of your digital marketing campaigns – and specifically, your social media ads.

Not having enough of one (or all) of these might be the reason your marketing isn’t working.

But what are they? And how can you make sure you’re hitting all of the right numbers?

Let’s go in-depth into tracking digital marketing performance. In this article we’ll take a look at each of these terms and help you understand how to track and improve them in a meaningful way.

Did you know?

These terms mostly apply to paid marketing, rather than organic (free) content – and in this post we’re specifically, talking about Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram ads. Some (but not all) of these concepts will also apply to your organic posts.

What do reach, frequency and impressions mean? 

Here’s a simplified breakdown:

For example, if your reach is 100, and your impressions are 200, you can assume everyone saw it twice (for a frequency of two).

How can I see my reach, frequency and impressions?

This depends on the platform you’re publishing on. Generally you’ll have a ‘back end’ with all of your analytics – this will be where your reach, frequency and impressions numbers will be hiding. But not all platforms will give you all three numbers – you may need to do some of your own maths.

For example: Facebook and Instagram give you reach and impressions on your organic posts, but LinkedIn only shows impressions. On the paid side, Facebook and LinkedIn both give you the frequency numbers, so you don’t have to try and figure it out for yourself.

It’s best to check each platform’s reporting capabilities and take a look at what each metric means, as it often differs.

How can I improve my reach, frequency and impressions?

To optimise reach

Create different ads to suit different ‘slices’ of your audience. For example, you can have a remarketing campaign for audiences who have already seen your products, and a general campaign for each of your customer avatars. Each campaign should have its own ad with unique copy and visuals. To see results, they need to be fair-sized audiences with a decent budget – so start with one and expand if needed.

Try to create content that speaks to each of your audiences both collectively and individually. You can boost these posts to specific audiences that match.

To optimise frequency

As a rule, we like the frequency to be between 2 and 5. Any less and your message doesn’t sink in – any more and it becomes oversaturated and repetitive.

Optimising frequency for paid ads mostly comes from budget optimisation. If you pay more money, you can get in front of your audience more often. To reduce your frequency, simply reduce the budget. If you don’t have the budget but you’d still like to increase the frequency, you can try reducing your audience size.

When adjusting budgets, the best approach is to go slow. Bring it down or up by a few dollars a day and see how it goes – don’t drastically slash or double your budget or your results may suffer!

To optimise impressions

Impressions are usually more up-to-date figures, so you can look at them everyday to get a sense of how your campaign is performing. For example, if your ad has been running for a day or two and has few to no impressions, it means there could be something wrong with your campaign – your audience might be too small, or your ad might be getting penalised because of its copy or imagery.

Brand awareness campaigns can focus on impressions – the objective is to reach a wider audience and get the name out far and wide. However, you also want to combine impressions with your frequency metrics to make sure the message sticks.

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