We’ve been supporting demand generation needs for B2B technology companies like Salesforce, Slack, Twilio, and more for over a decade. So why do these brands work with us?
Demand gen is your brand
As Gartner puts it, “Where demand generation strives to build brand awareness and authority so potential customers reliably enter the purchase track, a lead generation strategy focuses on turning an engaged audience into leads via direct outreach.”
Sure, many of you just thought, “Duh.” But while some people know demand gen and lead gen are different things, many don’t embrace that difference nearly as much as they need to. In the scramble to drive clicks, we can all be seduced by the low hanging fruit that is the qualified target customer in a buying mindset. Sell, sell, sell and by the way, we have a brand.
But demand gen’s job is infusing every message with your value proposition and faithfully conveying the look and feel of your brand. Why? Well, in Gartner’s words, “A true and lasting brand awareness strategy leaves potential buyers with a lingering, positive impression of a company, and makes them more likely to trust that company when it offers solutions to the customer’s challenges or needs.”
“A true and lasting brand awareness strategy leaves potential buyers with a lingering, positive impression..."
~Gartner
Wait, what about all the other stuff I do?
Yes, your website represents your brand. So does your trade show booth. And your corporate videos.
But they’re not the stars of the show. If you’re playing in the enterprise space, the volume and reach of your demand generation ads will dwarf everything else. So let’s get to why we’re the choice for tackling the demand gen brand-building challenge…
Brand continuity + speed to market
If demand gen is the backbone of your brand, a demand gen partner needs to answer two questions.
First, how well will they maintain your brand continuity? Second, how quickly can they produce at scale? The answers should be, “As well as or better than your internal team,” and “Fast as hell.” Why? Well, according to Forbes, people are now exposed to as many as 10,000 marketing messages a day. So you need high volume, and you can’t afford to waste a single communication. Any one of your messages could be the one in 10,000 that gets through – so it better not be a dud.
...according to Forbes, people are now exposed to as many as 10,000 marketing messages a day.
~Forbes
The Catch
Unfortunately, for decades, the conventional agency structure has been evolving into a status quo – one in which clients must pick their poison.
It’s quality, not quantity or vice versa. Brand-minded agencies have traditionally been engaged for contained projects, working in silos against a well-defined brief. Kick off the project, come back and present a couple weeks later, go away, work some more, come back a couple weeks after that, so on and so forth. Meanwhile, more production-minded agencies have traditionally been engaged to produce a lot of assets day in and day out, but with an acceptable margin of “brand erosion.” They sell speed, not brand continuity.
It's time to have your cake and eat it too, people.
~IRON Creative
A new model for demand generation marketing
No matter which poison you pick, eventually you start to feel its effects.
We believe this is the #1 factor in the deterioration of agency/client relationships. According to The Bedford Group, the average client-agency relationship lasted 7.2 years in 1984. By 1997 it dropped to 5.3 years. And today it’s thought to be less than three years. Clients stick with agencies for 42% as long as they used to.
That’s not good for anyone, and we set out to build a model that turned back the clock. It’s time to have your cake and eat it too, people. We’ve worked with Slack and Twilio for nearly five years, Salesforce for nearly ten, and some clients have been with us for more than fifteen years. The secret is three practices:
Big brands only.
We don’t achieve target volume by stretching our team members over 5, 10, or 15 smaller clients. We work with large clients to make sure our team members are only working on two or three clients each – enabling them to act as true brand stewards, delivering on-brand assets faster.
Retention-driven brain trust.
We focus relentlessly on building a culture that retains our talent, and powers our model. Our team often has more brand knowledge than their client-side counterparts, who typically spend only a year or two in a given role.
No agency/client barrier.
Accessibility and responsiveness are job one. And our structure allows us to do that job. We don’t present and go away for two weeks. The communication channels are open at all times – most often leveraging whatever project management technologies our clients use.
So why do clients choose us for demand gen?
Clients choose us because our business is built to respond to daily needs, adapt to ever-changing guidelines, and act as a true extension of their own teams. In short, we know what it takes to produce work that's on point at high velocity. Need help supporting your solid demand generation strategy? Give us a call.
Drop us a line.
Contact us120 2nd St. Floor 3,
San Francisco, CA 94105