For marketers, the choice between brand awareness and lead generation can feel like a boxing match. ‘Awareness’ fights to increase the size of your audience, while ‘lead gen’ limits your audience to a group of people who are willing to trade their contact information for your services.
There’s a simple formula for choosing brand awareness or lead generation. To determine the best strategy for your social media campaign, consider the benefits and drawbacks of each. When used effectively, the two methods can complement each other, and there are times when you might need to focus on one more than the other.
For instance, if you have a brand that has just started its social media strategy and has little to no posted content and little to no followers on its page, it may be wise to start with a brand awareness or a reach ad. This will entice potential customers with awareness of your brand without asking them for their personal information or coming across as too salesy. This type of ad is simply meant to spread awareness without asking for anything from the viewer.
Look! We’re here. We exist. Did you know that?
Brand awareness creates visibility for your brand and what you offer.
There’s a good reason that brand awareness is the first pick for most marketers. Brands need to focus on attracting attention before lead generation ads can succeed. If no one knows about your brand and what they offer, they are much less likely to fill out a form with personal information such as their phone number or zip code. That said, it’s not always the need for personal information that turns potential customers away, but the time it takes to fill out a simple form, especially if they know nothing about you or have never heard of you before.
Brand Comprehension
So let’s say you’ve been running a brand awareness ad for a few months. Your ad recall lift is high. Your page has a decent amount of likes and follows in this short amount of time. People know you, and it’s starting to show. You have a base now. You now have brand comprehension because you’ve been running brand awareness ads for a few months. People see your ad and know who you are and what services you offer. Now is the time to transition to a lead generation ad.
This same audience has been seeing your brand awareness ads on their feed for a few months now, and all of a sudden, they desperately need the service that your brand offers. What are the chances they fill out your new lead form? Pretty high! BAM! Quality lead.
Brand awareness is what makes lead generation ads work. With brand awareness comes brand comprehension and knowing what your brand offers.
Starting Cold
Alright. Now let’s go in the other direction, where you don’t have much of an audience or following on social, but you want to get going and start getting leads as quickly as possible. You know you don’t have much of a following, yet you decide to run lead generation ads instead of brand awareness ads, hoping to get leads immediately.
You do this for months. Your page slowly grows, but your lead form is nearly vacant. You’ve had three leads in 60 days, and at this point, you’re wondering where you went wrong.
The problem is quite simple. Nobody knows your brand or who you are. Your brand is not trusted, and your audience is freezing cold.
The Process
It may be difficult to see a brand awareness ad as an investment, but that’s really what it is. You need to put money in, knowing that you probably aren’t getting an immediate return. Your brand needs a following. It needs to be easily recognizable and quickly comprehended, and brand awareness ads are the way to do that.
Once your audience knows you, they know they can trust you.
About Us
The entire process of putting together, running, and adjusting a quality Facebook ad is in-depth and time-consuming. Allow the experts at The AD Leaf to assist you in your lead procurement journey! Reach out via phone at (321) 255-0900, or complete our contact form.
