Building a Brand that Fuels Demand Gen

Introduction: Why brand is your greatest growth lever

You can’t just performance-market your way to predictable growth anymore. Today’s buyers are researching in the dark - on social, in communities, in zero-click environments. And if your brand isn’t showing up there, you’re invisible.

When I first started in B2B marketing, brand felt like a luxury - something reserved for big-budget players or splashy campaigns. What mattered most was performance. Measurable clicks. Immediate conversions. Results you could see in a dashboard.

But over the past few years, everything’s changed. The way buyers discover, trust, and choose brands has fundamentally shifted. And if you’re still relying solely on performance marketing to grow, you’re playing an expensive, losing game.

Here’s what we’re seeing:

• Up to 75% of the B2B buying journey happens before someone hits your website.
• Zero-click content is on the rise - buyers are consuming, sharing, and researching without ever entering a funnel. This isn’t just about blog snippets in search results. It’s LinkedIn posts that explain a concept in the comments. It’s videos that deliver full narratives on TikTok or YouTube. It’s carousels, memes, and quotes that travel without a destination link. Your buyers are consuming content where they already are - and expecting value without friction.
• AI search is making traditional SEO less reliable. You might not get the traffic, but your brand still needs to show up in the answers and the snippets, summaries, and platforms that surface those answers.

In this new world, brand recall is everything. It’s not about who shouts the loudest - it’s about who’s remembered when it matters.

At Cognism, we realised early that we couldn’t just performance our way to growth. So we built a media-led demand engine that was rooted in brand. We created content people actually wanted. We invested in distinctive assets, a recognisable voice, and a brand story that stuck. And it changed everything.

This module is all about that shift. I’m going to walk you through:

• Why brand is now the foundation of demand gen - not just a layer on top.
• How to build a brand story that connects on an emotional level.
• What it takes to create a visual identity that people remember.
• How to show up where your buyers are, even when tracking is difficult.
• And how to measure brand in a way that proves its value to your board.

If you want to be the brand buyers think of first - before they’re even in-market - this is where it starts.

Lesson 1: Building a brand story that sticks

Why this lesson matters

When most B2B marketers think about brand, they think about fonts, logos, and maybe a mission statement that gets dusted off once a year.

But in today’s buying environment - where trust is low, noise is high, and most research happens in the dark - your brand story is everything. It’s the anchor that guides your creative, unifies your campaigns, and builds emotional relevance with the 95% of buyers who aren’t in-market yet.

And it’s not just a fluffy narrative exercise. A strong, consistent brand story drives real results:

• It keeps your messaging consistent across every touchpoint.
• It builds familiarity and recall long before a buyer is ready to convert.
• It aligns your internal teams around what you stand for - not just what you sell.

More importantly, it influences how buyers behave:

• 77% of B2B purchase influencers say brand awareness plays a role in deciding whether to trust a company.
• 83% are more likely to continue doing business with a company they already trust.
• And in a broader sense, 50% of buyers say they’re more likely to purchase from a brand they recognise.

In B2B, where buying cycles are long, crowded, and high-stakes, trust is the deciding factor - especially when products are hard to differentiate on features alone. A strong brand makes you feel familiar before a buyer ever speaks to sales. It signals credibility, stability, and values. It’s the shortcut to “this looks legit” in a sea of sameness.

This was one of the biggest mindset shifts we made at Cognism. We went from sounding like every other B2B data provider to building a brand with a clear viewpoint, emotional weight, and staying power.

And it started with getting our story straight.

Building a brand story that sticks

When I joined Cognism, we were like many B2B companies. We talked a lot about features, the product, our data, and generic benefits. We tried to jump on the AI bandwagon. 

There was excitement about the product - we had something new and a great product market fit - but who was Cognism? What did we believe and know that others didn’t? That’s what we were missing.

It became clear that if we wanted to win hearts (and deals), not just minds, we needed a story that meant something.

B2B buyers aren’t robots. But we tend to think about B2B buyers as if they were. Decisions must be rational, rather than emotional. However, I think about it like this. 

You’re a decision maker - probably within a committee of other decision makers. But you’re tasked to bring a list of vendors to the table for evaluation. Your professional reputation, to some extent, is on the line. There’s a level of pressure to find the right list of vendors to bring to the group. 

That strikes me as inherently led by the emotional need to feel confident, credible, and safe.

You want to be the person who brings forward options the team can trust. So of course you’re going to lean toward names you’ve heard before (and that your team has heard of too - it’s a tall order to convince people to go with the unknown!). Brands that feel established. Companies that speak your language and seem to understand your challenges.

That emotional need to avoid risk, to feel reassured, to not look foolish, isn’t irrational. It’s human. And it’s exactly why brand matters.

Because when a buyer is under pressure, they won’t always go for the cheapest or even the most feature-rich option. They’ll go with the one that feels right. The one that feels familiar, trusted, and safe to champion in the room.

So how do you go about building a brand story that sticks?

1. Start with the “why” before what you do

The best brand stories don’t start with what you do. They start with what you believe. They start with your ‘why’. 

What frustrates your audience? What do you stand for that your competitors don’t? What’s broken that you are here to fix? At its core, a powerful brand story begins with meaning, not features.

For our major product launch for Sales Companion, we started by digging deep. Not into what the product does, but why it exists:

We ran a mix of CHASM interviews, customer feedback analysis, and quantitative surveys, all aimed at uncovering the real day-to-day blockers our audience was facing.

Here’s what we found:

• 85% of customers said they struggle to connect with the right decision-makers. The challenge wasn’t effort; it was wasted effort. Sales teams were burning time on contacts who couldn’t move deals forward.
• 65% reported missing data in their CRM, and 61% said the data was incorrect. Reps spent more time double-checking and working around broken systems than selling.

And we didn’t stop there. Through external surveys and partner feedback, we found that:

• 72% of sales professionals cited data quality as their top challenge, not quantity, not outreach scripts, not even targeting. Just getting clean, accurate data they could trust.
• 80% said that the main benefit they look for in a sales intelligence tool is the ability to connect with the right people at the right time.

Together, this research painted a very clear picture:

Our ICP isn’t drowning in a lack of data. They’re drowning in too much unusable data. That insight became the foundation for our entire brand story around Sales Companion.

Rather than pitching another tool, we focused on what our audience wanted:

A partner who understands their pain, fixes what’s broken, and makes their job feel easier.

It’s a subtle but powerful shift - from selling software to solving emotional frustration.
From more information to more impact.

That’s the difference between a list of features and a story that sticks.

Belief-led brand story for Sales Companion

From these insights, we distilled a belief-led narrative:

“Go-to-Market teams don’t struggle with a lack of data. They struggle with poor data. Cognism gives you high-quality, context-rich data, grounded in European expertise, so you can personalise outreach at scale and reclaim confidence.”

This wasn’t just a launch line. It shaped everything:

• The product’s positioning.
• Campaign concepts like “+1 Sales Companion”.
• Sales enablement, SEO strategy, and visual design.

From belief to execution

Having a strong belief is the foundation, but turning that belief into a brand experience takes precision, planning, and cross-functional alignment.

Again, looking at our Sales Companion launch as an example, we followed a structured roadmap to ensure the story wasn’t just compelling, it was consistent, memorable, and delivered impact across every touchpoint.

1. Research-informed hypothesis

We didn’t guess the message. We validated it. Our hypothesis - that sales teams were drowning in unusable data - was backed by:

• CHASM-style interviews with existing customers.
• Quantitative surveys from hundreds of GTM professionals.
• CRM usage data showing low trust and broken workflows.

2. Narrative definition

We focused not just on function (data quality) but on feeling, clarity, confidence, and control.
That gave the story emotional depth. It wasn’t about software. It was about solving a frustration that reps felt every day.

3. Multi-channel delivery

With the narrative locked, we translated it across every channel:

• Demand Generation:
  • Emotion-first ad creatives showing the human cost of bad data
  • Frustration-led copy (“14 versions of the same person. Not a phone number in sight.”)
• Product Marketing:
  • Persona-specific messaging frameworks for SDRs, RevOps, and sales leaders
  • Updated pitch decks, battlecards, and feature benefit statements that aligned with the new story
• Customer Marketing:
  • Transition campaigns to ensure existing customers felt part of the evolution
  • Advocacy programs to help our champions amplify the new product value
• SEO & Content:
  • Blog content and pillar pages focused on high-intent keywords like “sales data accuracy,” “clean CRM,” and “data trust”
  • Thought leadership articles that connected the product to bigger industry shifts, like the rise of RevOps and data unification

4. Brand identity refresh

We supported the narrative with a refreshed visual identity:

• A sharper, product-first design system (real UI, not abstract visuals).
• Consistent messaging and campaign design across assets on all channels.
• New internal alignment assets so every team - from sales to success - could speak the same language.

Why does this approach work?

By starting with why - not what - we aligned product, marketing, and sales around a belief rather than a spec sheet. 

Demand gen could lead with emotion. Product teams could focus messaging on trust and quality. Sales felt empowered to tell a consistent story.

That belief-driven launch resulted in standout campaign engagement:

• +90% higher CTRs on “+1 Sales Companion” ads.
• 50% longer dwell times on launch videos.

This proves that when you base your narrative on a truth your audience feels, everything else, not just the story, becomes more powerful.

Course homework

To apply what you’ve learned, choose one or more of the following exercises:

1. Define your why

Ask yourself:

• What do we believe about the problem we solve?
• What frustrates our audience about the status quo?
• What future do we want to help them live in?

Distil that into a one-sentence belief statement. Test it with your team: does it feel authentic, distinctive, and emotionally resonant?

2. Map your brand narrative

Use this template:

• Why we exist:
• The problem with how things are done today:
• What we believe:
• The future we’re helping to create:

Keep it tight. This should be something anyone on your team can repeat and apply.

3. Audit your current messaging

Pull together your last five content assets - ads, blog intros, video scripts, emails. Ask:

• Do they reinforce our brand story?
• Do they sound like us, or like anyone?
• Are we speaking to emotion, or just listing features?

Highlight where the gaps are - and where you can start bringing your story to life more consistently.

Lesson 2: Creating a visual brand with consistency and character

Why this lesson matters

Your visual identity is often your brand’s first impression - and first impressions stick. 

But consistency isn’t about being repetitive or rigid. It’s about becoming recognisable, trusted, and memorable.

In B2B, where buyer journeys are long and often invisible, visual consistency builds familiarity, and familiarity builds trust. Over time, this visual repetition becomes a shortcut in your audience’s mind: “I know this brand. I trust what they’re saying.”

But consistency doesn’t mean creative handcuffs. The best brand systems create clarity with enough flexibility to adapt to new ideas, campaigns, and moments without losing recognisability.

Knowing when a rebrand is necessary

Rebrands often get dismissed as superficial. But at Cognism, we realised a rebrand was essential, not just for how we showed up externally, but for how we operated internally.

Our biggest shift was realising we needed to be distinct, not just present. Our old branding was functional and forgettable, but it didn’t reflect where we were going as a company.

We were pushing into new markets. Launching a demand generation motion. Trying to build a high-performing content engine. But our brand didn’t match the ambition behind any of that. And that disconnect was starting to show up everywhere, from ad creative to how reps talked about the product.

For me, that’s when you know a rebrand is necessary:

• When your visual identity holds you back creatively.
• When your messaging no longer reflects your value.
• When your internal team doesn’t feel proud to share your site, your ads, or even your logo.

We needed a brand that could support demand gen, a brand that felt bolder, braver, and more emotionally resonant.

So we rebuilt it, top to bottom. New strategy, new identity, new tone. Not because we wanted something pretty, but because we needed something powerful. 

And when it launched, the energy inside the company changed. Teams felt proud. Creative output sped up. We stopped second-guessing everything from colour choices to copy lines. Everything felt clearer.

You may not be in our position where a full rebrand is necessary. You might just need tweaks. But if you feel you do need a rebrand, don’t be scared of that project, as it has unlocked so much progress for us. 

Define your brand rules

A strong brand identity doesn’t come from “design vibes.” It comes from clear, repeatable, and practical visual rules - rules that can be used not just by designers, but by marketers, SDRs, freelancers, and external partners alike.

At Cognism, this meant being really intentional about our brand’s building blocks. We didn’t just want assets to look nice - we wanted them to build recognition and trust every time they appeared in someone’s feed, inbox, or meeting room.

Here’s what we locked in:

Our brand voice

Cognism’s voice is built to connect with real people solving real problems. We’re here to cut through the noise with clarity, confidence, and just the right dose of personality. Here’s how we show up:

Informal but informative
We write how we speak. Clearly, simply, and without unnecessary jargon. Whether it’s a blog, a LinkedIn post, or a landing page, our goal is to explain things in a way that makes people nod, not Google.

Authoritative but accessible
We know our stuff, but we don’t lecture. We share insight in a way that’s grounded, not grandiose. Think seasoned expert meets trusted teammate.

Conversational but actionable
Our tone is friendly and human, like you’re getting advice from someone who’s been there. But we always deliver something useful - ideas, next steps, or a fresh way of looking at a challenge.

Engaging and story-driven
We lead with a story, not a sales pitch. Real-world examples, tension and resolution, and first-hand lessons are the tools we use to earn attention and build trust.

Because in B2B, people don’t connect with logos. They connect with stories. And our voice is how we make sure ours gets heard and remembered.

Typography

We use DM Sans as our primary typeface across web, social, and video. It’s clean, modern, and highly legible, helping us strike that balance between functional clarity and brand personality.

• Bold headlines create visual hierarchy and draw attention fast.
• Consistent body copy ensures readability at every touchpoint.
• Responsive scaling means our content looks just as sharp on mobile as it does on desktop.

Our rule of thumb? If it’s easy to scan, it’s easier to remember.

Colour palette

We designed Cognism’s colour system to stand out in the B2B space. It’s bold, clean, and built for clarity, supporting brand recognition and emotional resonance.

Colour isn’t just decoration, it’s direction. Use it to guide attention, signal meaning, and build consistent emotional cues across every touchpoint.

Imagery

We moved away from overused stock and abstract shapes in favour of visuals that reflect our audience’s world. That means:

• Real people, not faceless avatars.
• Product screenshots that clearly show value.
• Emotionally resonant moments, like the relief of cleaning up your CRM, or the celebration after booking that meeting.

If our content doesn’t feel relatable, it doesn’t belong.

Layouts and templates

We created a full suite of standardised layouts for LinkedIn carousels, landing pages, one-pagers, and video elements. These templates aren’t constraints; they’re accelerators.
They:

• Speed up production.
• Ensure consistency.
• Free up teams to focus on creative, not formatting.

When someone sees a Cognism asset, they should recognise it before they read it. That’s what great brand systems do: they build trust through familiarity and impact through consistency.

Stretch the brand, don’t break it

Consistency doesn’t mean every campaign has to look the same. In fact, if your brand identity is doing its job, it should be strong enough to stretch - to take on new ideas, tones, and creative directions - without breaking recognisability or trust.

Every campaign has a different energy. Some require more playfulness, while others need gravity or urgency. But instead of reinventing your brand each time, the goal is to push the edges while staying anchored in who you are.

At Cognism, we put this into practice with our Date-a-vendor campaign.

It looked nothing like our usual brand templates. It featured:

• Playful visuals inspired by reality dating shows.
• Bolder colour overlays and custom graphics.
• Motion design that leaned into entertainment, not just education.

But here’s the thing - it still felt like Cognism.

Why? Because we intentionally preserved key brand anchors:

• Core fonts and layouts stayed consistent, so the structure felt familiar.
• Tone of voice remained sharp, self-aware, and helpful, even in a more playful wrapper.
• We visually tied the whole thing back to our core product story - truth, control, transparency in B2B data.

This is what we mean when we talk about a flexible identity system. It’s not just a visual style - it’s a set of narrative, visual, and tonal signals that can travel with your brand, even into new creative territory.

If you need to “break the brand” to make a campaign work, you probably don’t have a strong enough brand foundation to begin with.

Instead, you want to build a system that’s:

• Expandable across channels, teams, and formats.
• Recognisable even in campaign-specific styles.
• Ownable no matter who’s executing the work.

A simple test: Can someone scroll past a campaign asset in-feed, glance at a webinar title slide, or skim a one-pager - and still know it’s you? If the answer is yes, your brand is doing its job.

You’re giving teams creative freedom without sacrificing identity. And that’s how you build a brand that’s not only consistent - but confidently adaptable.

Building campaign brands within your overarching company brand

When we talk about brand, we don’t necessarily mean just the one brand. Each campaign can have its own look and feel, within the overarching company brand. 

Your company brand is what builds recognition, trust, and consistency over time. But campaigns are where you get to flex, to stand out, to tell a specific story to a specific audience. Done right, they create moments of energy, without straying from who you are as a company.

Take Date-a-vendor, our campaign aimed at B2B buyers evaluating data providers. It has its own tone, visual look, and narrative arc. But the core message, Cognism is a quality data provider, especially within Europe, still runs through every piece.

Here’s how we build campaign brands that live within our master brand:

1. Start with the master brand guardrails

What’s your tone of voice? Visual identity? Messaging hierarchy? Campaign brands should push the creative boundaries, but not break them.

2. Create a distinct world

A campaign needs its own hook. At Cognism, we like to anchor the story with a strong metaphor (e.g., dating for vendor selection) or a cultural reference point.

3. Make it modular

Think in building blocks. Campaigns should scale across formats, social, video, blog, ads, without reinventing the wheel every time. 

One part of our brand is the shapes we use in our designs. This aspect of our brand is scalable and modular; you can do a lot with it.

4. Keep it cohesive

Use recognisable elements: typography, colours, voice. People should know it’s you, even when the theme feels fresh.

Course homework

Pick 3 recent brand assets - these could be landing pages, social posts, or video thumbnails.

Ask yourself:

• Do they feel like they come from the same brand?
• Are the colours, fonts, layouts, and tone consistent?
• Are you showing real people and real products where it matters?
• Are your visuals helping the audience connect emotionally, or just filling space?

Then define your brand anchors, the repeatable visual elements that make you instantly recognisable, even in new formats:

• Fonts.
• Colour pairings.
• Icon or image styles.
• Layout grid or framing devices.
• Logo lockups or CTA placement.

Your goal is simple: Create a visual identity that supports your story, scales with your campaigns, and makes your brand easy to spot wherever it appears.

Guest Lecture: Distinct brand assets: Shortcuts to the mind with Drew Spencer Leahy

Drew Spencer Leahy - Marketing Fundamentalist @ Peanut Butter Comms

The amount of people actively seeking the products or services you sell right now pales in comparison to the number who will become customers of your category in the future.

It’s not even close.

John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of Marketing Science (EBI) calls this the 95:5 Rule: at any given moment, the vast majority of people who encounter your marketing, roughly 95 per cent, are not in-market. You may remember this being the focus of Alice’s first lesson back in module 1!

The implications?

You don’t grow by squeezing harder on the five per cent already shopping. You grow by making sure the other 95 remember you when it’s their turn.

Enter: distinct brand assets.

Distinct brand assets are the unique brand identifiers that trigger your brand in memory: colors, shapes, fonts, icons, characters, and sounds.

Think Tiffany blue, Coca Cola’s glass bottle, McDonald’s golden arches, Geico’s gecko, Netflix’s “ta-dum” sound, or Salesforce’s cloud logo.

They work because people recognise them instantly, before they even read a word.

Jenni Romaniuk’s research at EBI shows that the strength of these cues depends on two qualities:

• Fame: how many people recognize a cue and link it to your brand.
• Uniqueness: how strongly people link it only to you.

When an asset scores high on both, it creates instant familiarity and trust in the moment of choice.

Why distinct brand assets matter

In B2B especially, features blur and messages sound the same. 

That sameness puts pressure on buyers, who often default to the safest option, the brand that feels familiar and “low-risk” to champion in front of colleagues or the board. 

Distinct brand assets solve this problem by cutting through faster than copy, reducing perceived risk, and building familiarity long before sales get involved.

But they do more than trigger memory. 

Distinct assets also help you stand out so your ads, social posts, or campaigns don’t get mistaken for someone else’s. Over time, that consistent recognition builds mental availability: the likelihood your brand comes to mind in a buying situation.

Research proves the impact. Ipsos analysed 2,000 ads and found that creative using strong assets consistently outperformed ads without them. Yet most brands still fail the basics: 81 per cent of slogans tested didn’t link back to the right company.

Distinctiveness isn’t decoration. It’s how you drive recall, recognition, and growth.

How to make distinct assets work for your brand

It’s not enough to say you have distinct brand assets. The real question is: do they actually do their job? Here are three simple experiments that reveal whether your assets drive recognition, signal meaning, and hold up across contexts.

1. From recognition to recall 

Take a look at distinct brand assets below.

No logos. No names. Just shapes, colours, and icons.

Can you identify the brands?

Most people can, and fast.

That’s the power of fame and uniqueness. The strongest assets earn their place in memory because they’ve been used consistently, repeated across campaigns, and protected over time. The weaker ones fade into the blur of the category.

Jenni Romaniuk at the EBI formalised this with the Distinctive Asset Grid, which scores assets on both fame (how many people recognise them) and uniqueness (how exclusively they link them to one brand). Assets that score high on both are rare, but when they do, they create instant recognition, even without the logo.

One catch: Assets only become famous and unique through repeated, consistent use. Without frequency and patience, they never stick.

Takeaway:

• Pick a handful of identifiers, colour, shape, character, sound, and commit to them.
• Test them for fame (do people recognise them?) and uniqueness (do they link them only to you?) using aided and unaided recall surveys.
• Repeat them until you’re tired of them (and then keep going). As Ehrenberg-Bass research shows, that’s when they’re only just starting to stick in the buyer’s mind.

2. Consistency shapes meaning 

Now let’s test something subtler. 

Take a fictional company called Quorix. 

Same name. Same logo. But four different design systems: one corporate and trustworthy, one bold and innovative, one minimalist, one playful.

What happens from one look to the next? The meaning shifts every time. 

The exact same brand feels safe in one version, disruptive in another, cold in a third, and friendly in the last. That’s the hidden job of brand assets: they don’t just identify you, they tell people what kind of brand you are. 

Fonts, colours, and imagery aren’t arbitrary; they carry deep associations. Serif fonts feel established and authoritative. Bright palettes feel modern and playful. Minimalist layouts feel efficient and rational. These signals load your brand with meaning before anyone reads a line of copy.

And meaning matters. Buyers don’t want just any vendor; they want one that feels aligned with their values, credible in their category, and safe to champion inside their company. Distinct brand assets are how you consistently deliver that signal.

As Jenni Romaniuk puts it: “Distinctiveness is looking like you and not like others so other people can easily identify that something is from your brand… whenever they encounter something that you’ve put out, it attaches to your brand in their brain.”

That “attaches in their brain” bit matters. When your visual and sensory signals consistently align with the meanings you want (trust, innovation, friendliness, expertise, etc.), buyers start to associate those meanings with you even without seeing your name.

Takeaway: 

• Decide the associations you want to own (trustworthy, innovative, disruptive, approachable) and make them explicit in your assets.
• Choose assets that reinforce those associations, from typography to imagery to motion, so the meaning is baked in, not bolted on.
• Codify your system so every campaign, designer, or agency partner applies the same signals, building a coherent picture of who you are.

3. Strength from flexibility 

Last, watch how a single brand asset travels across contexts: a tiny favicon in a browser tab, a social post in someone’s feed, an icon on your desktop, a hoodie at a conference, a billboard on the highway.

Does it still feel unmistakably like the same brand in every case? Strong assets pass this test. Weak ones don’t.

This matters because buyers encounter your brand in fragments, not in carefully staged campaigns. They see you in passing, scrolling LinkedIn, skimming an email, catching a glimpse at an event. If your assets fall apart outside of perfect conditions, you lose recognition in the exact moments you need it most.

And the cost of failure is real. In 2009, Tropicana overhauled its packaging, removing its distinctive orange-with-a-straw image. Within two months, sales dropped 20%. Shoppers couldn’t find the brand they knew, and recognition collapsed. A year later, Gap tried a new logo that didn’t survive at scale or context, and they pulled it within a week after backlash. Both brands paid the price for assets that didn’t hold up.

Takeaway: 

• Stress-test your assets across formats, favicon, social, swag, and billboards, before you launch them.
• Keep your core identifiers simple to hold up when small, stretched, or in motion.
• Build flexible templates that allow campaigns to stretch creatively without losing recognisability.

Final thoughts

Distinct brand assets aren’t decoration. They’re shortcuts to the mind. They help you stand out in a crowded category, lower perceived risk, and make buyers remember you when it’s finally their turn to buy.

And in a world where 95 per cent of your audience isn’t in-market right now, that’s a shortcut you can’t ignore. 

Lesson 3: Emotive content in B2B

Why this lesson matters

As we discussed in previous lessons, B2B marketing has lived under a myth: Buyers are purely rational. That emotion is for B2C. That what works in a Coca-Cola or John Lewis ad doesn’t apply when selling enterprise software.

But the truth is: B2B buyers are just people. And people buy with their hearts before their heads.

According to behavioural science (specifically Daniel Kahneman’s work on System 1 and System 2 thinking), emotion and intuition drive most decisions, even in high-stakes, professional contexts. We use logic to rationalise decisions later - but the first impression, the memory, the gut feeling? That’s emotional.

When 95% of your audience isn’t in-market yet, your content’s job isn’t just to inform. It’s to connect.

To make them feel seen, understood, and emotionally aligned with your brand - so that when they enter a buying cycle, they think of you first.

The science behind this allows us to understand why emotion is so important for memory. 

The amygdala, which is the emotional processing part of your brain, is stimulated when you’re faced with emotional triggers. 

At the same time, the hippocampus is triggered, which is the episodic memory part of your brain. Because of this, the amygdala enhances the perception of the hippocampus. This helps the hippocampus store memories more effectively.

That’s why emotion is so closely tied to memory - because those two parts of the brain work together.

System 1 thinking

In behavioural psychology, Nobel Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman introduced the concept of System 1 and System 2 thinking.

• System 1 is fast, automatic, emotional, and intuitive.
• System 2 is slow, deliberate, rational, and analytical.

Most marketers assume B2B buyers operate in System 2, meticulously weighing options, comparing feature sets, and running ROI calculations.

But in reality? The first impression, the gut feeling, the moment of recognition - those all happen in System 1.

That’s what your content is competing for.

Whether someone scrolls past your ad, sees your headline in a Slack group, or watches a 10-second snippet on LinkedIn, they react emotionally first, not rationally. Your content’s job is to earn attention and create a connection before they even start thinking.

This is why emotive, memorable content outperforms safe, polished messaging - especially in a market saturated with generic whitepapers and “thought leadership” posts no one asked for.

Six core human emotions that assist in memory building

When I studied psychology at university, I was fascinated by how emotions shape how we think, remember, and act. Years later, working in brand and demand generation, I realised how underused those emotional triggers are in B2B marketing.

We spend so much time getting the message right, the positioning, the value prop, the ICP. But the real magic happens when that message makes someone feel something. Because if you want your campaign to be remembered, shared, or acted on, emotion is what makes it stick.

And right now, emotion isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a competitive advantage. With the rise of social media, AI-driven search, and zero-click journeys, more buyer journeys are happening outside your owned channels. Brand visibility depends on being memorable, which means building campaigns that connect on a human level.

I come back to six core emotions time and again in campaign strategy. They’re not just creative devices; they’re psychological levers that help your message land harder, faster, and with more impact.

These six emotional levers are particularly powerful because they tap into the core biological emotions, the ones recognised across every culture, from Amazonian tribes to urban Londoners. They’re hardwired into us. 

You can see them in facial expressions and body language, even across species. That’s what makes them foundational. They’re not trends or creative tricks. They’re universal psychological responses that trigger faster processing, deeper encoding, and stronger recall.

These emotions aren’t just feel-good moments. They create mental availability. They build brand salience. And they give your demand strategy stopping power, which is precisely what you need when attention is fragmented, channels are saturated, and buyers are in research mode long before they’re in-market.

Here’s a breakdown of each emotion and how demand gen teams can use them to build content that connects:

1. Surprise

The quickest way to get attention. Surprise disrupts expectations and pulls people in.

Use it when: You want to break a pattern or reframe an assumption.

Examples: Unexpected stats, bold headlines, or campaigns that start with “what not to do.”

2. Fear

Not in a doom-and-gloom way, but fear of missing out, falling behind, or failing are strong motivators.

Use it when: Highlighting the cost of inaction or the risk of ignoring a key insight.

Examples: “You’re missing 30% of your TAM and don’t even know it.”

3. Anger

Anger fuels change. It’s what makes people think, “That’s not right. I want to fix it.”

Use it when: Calling out bad practices, vendor letdowns, or industry-wide issues.

Examples: A story about sales teams wasting hours chasing bad leads due to poor data.

4. Joy

Joy helps your content get shared. It humanises your brand and fosters community.

Use it when: Showcasing wins, milestones, or relatable team stories.

Examples: Celebrating customer success or behind-the-scenes campaign moments.

5. Sadness

Sadness creates empathy. It can be powerful when you want to reflect your audience’s pain or frustration.

Use it when: Highlighting a problem that your product helps solve.

Examples: An SDR losing faith in their CRM, only to find hope with a better data provider.

6. Disgust

Disgust is a visceral, instinctive reaction, and in B2B, it’s surprisingly effective when aimed at the status quo. Disgust doesn’t have to mean something literally gross; you can evoke it by showing how broken, bloated, or outdated a process or solution has become.

Use it when: You want to trigger rejection of an old way of working and build urgency for a better alternative.

Examples: Campaigns that dramatise the annoyance of credit-based systems.

How to apply emotion in marketing

When we talk about emotion in marketing, it’s easy to jump straight to extremes. 

But in B2B, emotion often manifests in more grounded, contextual ways. The key is to tap into your audience’s feelings and reflect them with honesty, clarity, and relevance.

Emotion isn’t about being soppy, it’s about being real. What’s the day-to-day truth of being in that job? How can we hold up a mirror to that experience?

Here are some core emotional lanes you can focus on:

Frustration: “Finally, someone gets it”

Frustration is one of the most powerful entry points. It builds instant empathy, because when you name someone’s pain better than they can, they trust you to solve it.

For example, Slack’s early ads leaned into frustration: “Email chains that never end? There’s a better way.” 

This works because frustration also helps create urgency. It primes your audience to listen and look for a solution.

At Cognism, frustration is often a hook we use in content around data quality or CRM pain points. When we say things like “14 versions of the same contact, and not a phone number in sight”, we’re speaking to a real pain our audience knows too well.

Joy and Comedy: “Finally, something fun”

Laughter is a shortcut to connection. In a noisy space full of jargon and pressure, joy is a differentiator. Not to mention, it offers a welcome relief from the (arguably) sea of boring content that tends to exist in B2B.

Comedy is one of our most used tactics for provoking emotions, not just because it captures attention, but also because it makes creating content more enjoyable. And it works: humorous ads and social posts often outperform straight-laced ones, especially in engagement and shareability.

Example from Cognism: 

Our Love Island parody videos for the Date-a-vendor campaign brought increased engagement because they were different and funny, and still made a clear point about evaluating data providers.

Joy lowers defences. It makes people feel good and brings your content closer to what people engage with in their downtime.

Surprise and recognition: “Wait, that’s true”

When you challenge a common belief or share a bold point of view, you break the scroll. Surprise is a pattern interrupt, especially when it leads to a moment of insight or recognition.

We tested this thoroughly when we implemented the Easy Mode content framework. The idea was to lead with a strong POV, like “B2B buying behaviour has changed” and then break it down into persona-specific messaging that challenged the status quo.

These pieces consistently drove higher time on page versus our other blogs. Why? 

Because we weren’t just stating facts but reframing the reader’s assumptions and giving them a new lens to see the problem through.

Reassurance and empowerment: “I can do this now”

If you want to be remembered, teach something valuable. People remember who helped them solve a problem or made them look smart in the next meeting.

This tactic is widely used in B2B. So, if you’re going down the “how-to” route, make sure you’re sharing something genuinely valuable.

One way we’ve done this at Cognism is by building in public. Whether it’s sharing our go-to-market planning frameworks or our internal course on demand generation, we’ve been open about what’s working and what’s not.

One standout example is Alice’s Diary of a First-Time CMO series. It’s a raw, human account of her journey to CMO, from team-building to strategy shifts. It’s packed with lessons that resonate far beyond our audience.

We’ve used this emotional charge behind some of our more product-focused content. For example, this GTA-style video (yes, product content can still be creative!).

Delivering emotive content alongside your brand

Making people feel something - building resonance, using narrative, provoking emotion - doesn’t mean abandoning your brand guidelines or tone of voice. Quite the opposite.

Great emotive content doesn’t sit outside your brand. It deepens it. Your brand gives emotional storytelling structure, recognisability, and longevity. Emotion grabs attention. Brand makes sure they remember who said it.

At Cognism, we aim to create content that is:

• Emotionally resonant: Using humour, tension, vulnerability, or challenge to break the scroll.
  Rooted in our brand voice: Whether it’s playful, confident, sharp, or bold.
  Strategically aligned: Always reinforcing the problems we solve and the position we want to own.

Emotive content isn’t a separate play. It’s how you bring your brand to life in a way that lands with people. When done well, it doesn’t just attract attention; it builds trust, connection, and long-term brand affinity.

B2B ≠ Boring to boring

Just because the product is complex doesn’t mean the content should be. Just because your buyers are professionals doesn’t mean they’re not people.

B2B decisions are often high-stakes, high-effort buying decisions - usually involving multiple stakeholders, long sales cycles, and lots of internal consensus-building.

That makes emotional connection even more critical. Why?

Because brand affinity reduces perceived risk. Because familiarity breeds trust. Because stories are easier to remember than specs.

That’s why some of the most effective B2B brands today, like Lavender, Gong, Chili Piper, Metadata, and more, are leaning into:

• Humour that reflects the real pains of their audience.
• Storytelling that mirrors the emotional reality of buying and selling.
• Vulnerability and personal POVs that build trust and credibility.

They’re not just selling a solution. They’re saying: “We understand what it’s like to be you.”

Course homework

Choose one content asset, anything you’ve recently published.

Then:

• Rewrite the opening with a storytelling hook
  • Can you start with a moment of pain, surprise, or humour?
  • Can you frame the topic through a specific character’s experience?
• Add a clear POV and emotional tone
  • What do you believe?
  • How do you want your audience to feel?
• Reflect:
  • If someone in the 95% (not actively buying) came across this, would it be memorable? Would it make them feel seen? Would it earn a save, a share, a smile?

Lesson 4: Building a community, not just a following

Why this lesson matters

When people think about community in B2B, they often picture a Slack group or an events series. And while those are valid examples, community is much broader than that. 

For me, community isn’t a single tactic. It’s an ecosystem of touchpoints that create connection, conversation, and shared identity around a brand.

At Cognism, we don’t see community as one destination. It shows up everywhere. In LinkedIn comments, live sessions, DMs, email replies, customer calls, and yes, even the occasional ABM dinner. All of those interactions, when done right, make someone feel like they’re part of something bigger.

Community is the multiplier.

It’s what takes content from being a broadcast to a conversation. It’s what makes someone tag a friend under your post or bring you up unprompted in a Slack channel or WhatsApp group. It’s the reason people come back, even when they’re not ready to buy. 

That stickiness is what every demand gen team should be aiming for.

And if you want real advocacy - word-of-mouth, brand champions, internal supporters - you have to build a sense of community. 

In fact, some of the strongest signals that your brand is working come not from lead form conversions but from the stuff attribution software doesn’t catch: the shares, the shout-outs, the follow-up messages, the “saw this and thought of you” moments.

What defines a community?

To me, community is simply a group of people connected by a shared identity, interest, or challenge. 

And in B2B, that’s gold. It means you’re speaking to people who are already aligned with what you care about. 

The job then becomes: how do you keep them close? How do you create things that serve them, spotlight them, and give them reasons to stay in orbit?

It’s also not just external. Internal community matters just as much. Sales, marketing, product, CS, we all need to be part of the same narrative. 

If we’re not connected internally, it shows up externally. So part of community building for me is ensuring our brand story and media engine are designed to unify the message and keep people aligned.

Why should you focus on community building?

When done right, community turns passive followers into engaged participants, and engaged participants into loyal advocates. 

It keeps your brand top of mind during the 95% of the buying journey when your audience isn’t actively in-market - and makes it much easier for them to choose you when they are.

Here are five reasons why community deserves a front-row seat in your demand strategy:

1. Revenue growth and retention

Community doesn’t just nurture relationships; it drives business outcomes.

• 49% of businesses with online communities report that those communities have helped increase revenue. (Source: CMX 2023 Community Industry Report)
• Brands with strong communities see up to 80% higher customer retention rates compared to industry averages. (Source: Higher Logic)

Why? Because community builds connection - and connection keeps people close between buying cycles.

2. Brand advocacy and word of mouth

In today’s buying landscape, peer validation beats polished messaging.

• 66% of community members say they are more loyal to the brand. (Source: Vanilla Forums)
• They’re also 2x more likely to recommend the brand to others. (Source: HubSpot)

That means community isn’t just about building a pipeline; it’s about building a brand people want to talk about. That’s what creates momentum. And momentum is what drives compounding growth.

3. Cost savings through peer support

A strong community doesn’t just generate demand, it absorbs support costs too.

• Companies with online communities report a 10–25% decrease in support costs, as customers help each other troubleshoot and share best practices. (Source: Salesforce)

Think of your community as a decentralised support team: trusted, scalable, and available 24/7. The bonus? It’s powered by your happiest customers.

4. Content and insight generation

The best content doesn’t come from brainstorming meetings but from your community’s real conversations.

• 70% of marketers say community provides valuable insight for content, product development, and campaign strategy. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
• Branded communities generate 4x more content than marketing teams alone. (Source: Orbit Media)

Whether it’s UGC, testimonials, polls, or product feedback, your community gives you a direct line to your ICP’s brain.

5. Psychological drivers that build loyalty

We buy from brands we feel emotionally connected to. Community creates those emotional anchors.

• People are 4x more likely to purchase from a brand they feel emotionally connected to. (Source: Harvard Business Review)
• Community gives customers a sense of identity and belonging, which increases loyalty and brand stickiness.

At its core, community is about belonging. 

The Cognism community playbook

Our approach wasn’t to “build a community” in the traditional sense. It was to create what we call value loops, a content rhythm, conversation, and connection that keeps our ICP coming back, sharing, and engaging across channels.

Here’s how we put that into practice:

Value loops

‘Value loops’ are places where our community can come and get consistent value by following, subscribing or registering. For example, podcast channels, newsletters, live event series and more. 

We construct value loops that keep ideas alive, deepen engagement over time, and flow naturally across every channel our audience already uses.

As the name suggests, however, this all hinges on our audience finding value in the content and wanting to return for more. This means deeply knowing what your ICP wants to engage with and serving them with that.

Whether they prefer listening on the school run, skimming LinkedIn between meetings, or reading a newsletter over coffee, they still get the same value, the same story, the same brand.

This is how you build recognition and relevance in the 95% - not with volume, but with intentional repetition and strategic remixing.

It’s the foundation of our community strategy. Not gated forums or branded spaces, but consistent value, shared experiences, and trusted voices that meet our audience where they already are.

And that keeps us close to the 95%, until they’re ready to buy.

Live events by persona

We built distinct event series tailored to the unique pains, language, and energy of our core audiences:

• Marketing Dilemmas Live - for B2B marketers navigating tough choices and shifting strategies.
• Cold Calling Live - for sales teams who want real talk, real tactics, and a moment to feel proud of their work.

We designed Marketing Dilemmas to be a place where marketers could come and workshop ideas and solutions to problems together. 

It’s not just a slide deck and one-way conversation. We encourage the attendees to contribute in the chat or even come on stage to discuss their dilemma!

Settings like this allow for back and forth that conversation which can facilitate richer learnings for both parties. And the more human side of Cognism can shine, which in turn can assist in feeling more connected to our ICP. 

Cold Calling Live is another unique learning forum that offers reps the chance to put their skills to the test with industry experts and get live feedback. The online chat is filled with encouragement from viewers as they bravely step forward to do mock cold calls and share their experience and advice.Each one acts like a gathering point, not a pitch fest. They’re not about talking at people, they’re about being with them in the trenches.

That’s why it’s critical to build community around consistent “watering holes” - places where your audience can return, interact, and feel part of something bigger. 

These aren’t just events or content hubs; they’re hosted by people. For it to work, those people need to be within touching distance. At Cognism, we make sure Alice, Fran, and I are present, visible, and accessible across every touchpoint. 

Whether replying to a LinkedIn comment thread, joining the event chat live, or appearing in the next newsletter, the power of community lies in consistently demonstrating that you are the real human behind the brand.

All strong communities are built around shared interests, but they thrive because of the connection between the people driving them and the people they’re built for. If you’re leading it, you need to be present.

The role of influencers in community building

One of the most powerful ways to accelerate community is through influencers, but not in the B2C sense of the word. In B2B, we’re not talking about follower count. We’re talking about trust capital.

That’s why Cognism works with trusted operators: RevOps leaders, marketers, and advisors who already have the ear of our audience. We’re not trying to buy reach. We’re plugging into established trust networks to add value and build our credibility within them.

We don’t ask them to parrot our messaging. We invite them to share their expertise in their own voice, because that’s what builds long-term affinity. We’re not trying to own the conversation; we’re contributing to it in a genuine, helpful, and human way.

The key is fit. Influencers need to:

Share your audience’s worldview

They understand your buyers’ challenges, values, and language because they are your buyers (or have been).

They have industry experience and ideally are still working in that world, so they have up-to-dat​​e knowledge that fuels content with authenticity. 

Are seen as peers, not pundits

Thought leadership is valuable, but relatability is what drives real engagement. 

Practitioners with relevant experience often outperform polished speakers because they feel more “in the room.”

Create genuine content that sparks connection, not just clicks

That means showing up consistently, responding to comments, and creating moments that invite the community in, rather than broadcasting.

Community spotlights

Want to deepen trust and advocacy? Spotlight your community. Give them the mic.

Some ideas:

• “Customer of the Month” spotlights on LinkedIn.
• Guest slots in your newsletter or podcast.
• Panels where customers and prospects share their POVs.
• “What’s working for you?” community threads.

This builds a connection not just between brand and buyer, but peer-to-peer. And that’s where the real magic happens.

The community lever most teams overlook

One of the most underrated levers in community building? Customer advocacy.

Not the kind that lives in a gated portal or gets rolled out once a quarter for a case study, but the kind that happens naturally when you empower your customers to be seen, heard, and celebrated.

Prospects are looking to be reassured that they’re making the right decisions, and so they’re looking to connect with people who have been in similar situations to them, to get their insights. People who’ve been in their shoes, navigated the same challenges, and achieved results they want to replicate.

When a customer shares their experience on a webinar, drops a comment on your post, or refers you in a WhatsApp group, you’ve entered the most powerful kind of marketing: unprompted recommendation.

What drives customer advocacy?

True advocacy is built on:

Value delivered

Advocacy starts with a product or service that consistently does what you said it would.Emotional connection

People advocate for brands they feel connected to. That’s why your tone, story, and community presence matter just as much as your results.

Opportunities to participate

If you only call on customers for formal case studies, you miss the magic. 

Give them roles in your content engine. Feature them on a podcast, invite them to co-host an event, or spotlight their work on social.

Advocacy in action: How we build it at Cognism

We’ve embedded advocacy into our community strategy by:

• Spotlighting power users in our customer webinars.
• Building content with, not just about, customers.

These micro-moments build reciprocity. When someone feels valued by your brand, they’re far more likely to advocate for it organically, online or behind closed doors.

Start small: Advocacy plays that don’t require a program

You don’t need a formal customer marketing team to start building advocacy through community. Try:

• Featuring a customer quote in your next LinkedIn post or newsletter.
• Shouting out great work from users in your ICP on social.
• Asking a customer to weigh in on a hot topic during your next live event.
• Sharing their successes as a story, not just a stat.

Remember: people want to be part of something that celebrates them. Give your customers the mic, and your community will amplify their message for you.

Exercise: Map your community touchpoints

To build a real community, not just an audience, you need to go where your ICP already is, not where it’s convenient for you to be.

Step 1: Identify their hangouts

Start by identifying where your audience spends time online and offline.

Ask a mix of prospects and customers:

• Where do they scroll when they’re not in meetings? (LinkedIn? Reddit? YouTube?)
• What niche Slack groups, Discord servers, or WhatsApp chats do they trust?
• What events (virtual or IRL) do they show up for?
• What newsletters or creators do they follow for inspiration?

Step 2: Tap into real conversations

Next, identify what your ICP cares about, not just what you want to promote.

Ask:

• What’s keeping them up at night? What are their biggest frustrations?
• What gets them excited? What wins do they love sharing?
• What tools, processes, or tactics are they curious about?
• What language do they use when they talk about those things?

Step 3: Define your “minimum viable community”

You don’t need to launch a massive program overnight. Most great communities start small.

Here are some low-lift starting points:

• Host a monthly AMA (Ask Me Anything) with someone credible from your team.
• Start a Slack or WhatsApp group for power users, customers, or practitioners in your ICP.
• Launch a simple 10-minute podcast focused on one pain point per episode.
• Create a bi-weekly round-up newsletter that curates industry insight, no sell, just value.
• Run comment-first posts on LinkedIn that encourage your audience to share their POV.

Step 4: Stay close between buying cycles

Remember: 95% of your audience isn’t buying right now. So your job is to stay relevant without being pushy.

Think about:

• Weekly POV posts from your team (short, sharp, human).
• Recurring live sessions (10–15 mins of insight + real chat).
• Monthly community spotlights (featuring voices other than your brand).
• Educational content loops (turn every event into clips, recaps, and conversations).

The goal is simple: 

Keep showing up with value, so when your audience is ready to buy, your brand is already top of mind.

Lesson 5: Measuring brand the smart way

Why this lesson matters

Brand has always had a perception problem. It’s seen as the soft stuff. The storytelling. The visuals. The thing you invest in if you’ve got leftover budget after paid. 

And more often than not, it’s the first line item to be slashed when times get tough.

Why? Because it’s harder to measure. It doesn’t give you neat, last-click attribution. And most exec teams are still more comfortable investing in something they can directly tie to pipeline.

But that thinking is outdated. And it’s holding a lot of companies back.

At Cognism, we’ve proven that brand isn’t fluff, it’s fuel. It’s not adjacent to revenue; it sits upstream of it. It’s what fills the pipeline tomorrow, next quarter, and next year.

And here’s the shift I want to drive home in this lesson: 

You’re not here to justify brand by pretending it behaves like paid. You’re here to build a measurement model that reflects how brand works.

Because no, you won’t get the same clean attribution you get from a LinkedIn lead gen form. And that’s okay. Brand builds demand in places you can’t always track, but you can influence.

That’s what this lesson is about: how to measure brand the smart way.

It starts by moving away from a last-touch obsession and embracing total brand influence. And it requires you to look for different signals: not just “who filled in a form,” but “who’s been engaging, sharing, showing up week after week?”

And once you start treating it like a strategic growth lever, not a creative side hustle, you’ll stop chasing short-term spikes and start building long-term momentum.

Understanding the metrics

Lagging indicators show what’s already happened:

• Demo requests.
• Contact form submissions.
• Closed-won deals.

These are useful, but they’re the result of brand working earlier in the journey. By the time someone fills in a form, they’ve already decided to talk to you. 

That decision? It was shaped upstream, through brand touch points like podcasts, LinkedIn posts, peer recommendations, newsletters, and videos.

Leading indicators help you understand where demand is starting to build:

• Surges in traffic to high-intent pages.
• Repeat engagement with high-value content.
• Brand searches in Google.
• Increased social interaction from target accounts.
• Content shares inside Slack groups or internal decks.
• Sales feedback: “They mentioned this post/podcast/blog”.

Think of it like this: 

• Lagging = what marketing captured.
• Leading = what marketing influenced.

If you only measure the lagging stuff, you’re too late to shape the journey.

How Cognism measures brand impact

At Cognism, we don’t treat brand as fluff. We treat it like any other growth lever with structure, purpose, and accountability.

But measuring brand isn’t about trying to attribute every single view or click back to ​​pipeline. Today, your buyer is researching in the dark; so much of that journey is obscured from view. 

Go granular: Region, persona, and media loop

We don’t just look at brand performance in aggregate. We segment.

• By region – Because buying behaviour, brand familiarity, and regulations vary wildly between places like London, Frankfurt, and Boston.
• By persona – So we know if our content is landing with sales, RevOps, or marketers.
• By loop – Every repeating series (like Marketing Dilemmas or RevOps Review) has its own rhythm and reporting. We look for momentum. Are we gaining traction, building memory, sparking conversation?

This helps us know where to double down.

Brand signals that matter to us

We don’t isolate brand metrics; we connect them to go-to-market outcomes. We focus on signals that show early momentum: signs that our message is landing, our reputation is growing, and our ICP is starting to seek us out.

Here are three we prioritise:

Share of search

Are more people Googling “Cognism” by name over time?

This tells us whether we’re becoming a known quantity in the minds of our buyers. It’s one of the clearest signs that our campaigns, content, and conversations are creating lasting awareness. 

We track branded search by region and persona so we can see where brand familiarity is accelerating and where it needs more work.

Share of feed

Are we consistently showing up in the right people’s LinkedIn feeds, and are we making them stop and engage?

We don’t just measure impressions. We look at reactions, comments, reposts, and profile traffic to understand whether our content is connecting.

It’s not about volume. It’s about recognition and recall: are we being seen often enough, by the right people, to be remembered?

ICP traffic growth

It’s not enough to get more eyeballs; we want the right eyeballs.

That’s why we track traffic growth from our ideal customer profiles: sales leaders, RevOps pros, and marketers. We monitor who’s landing on our site, which high-intent pages they’re visiting, and whether that qualified share of traffic is increasing over time.

This tells us whether our brand is becoming more relevant and compelling to the buyers that matter most and helps us prioritise where to double down.

How did you hear about us?

One of the simplest and most powerful ways to understand where your brand is working is to ask.

Adding a free-text “How did you hear about us?” field to your demo or contact forms gives you insight that attribution software often misses. 

It can help to capture the untrackable. This qualitative data helps you:

• Spot which channels and content formats are driving awareness.
• Attribute demand to top-of-funnel efforts like social, community, or influencer campaigns.
• Back up internal investment in brand when traditional tracking falls short.

Brand + revenue: Tying signals to pipeline

If you present brand in isolation, it often gets deprioritised. So instead, build dashboards that pair brand signals with commercial outcomes.

For example:

• Branded search has grown in Germany since the launch of DACH-specific content.
• A lift in demo requests that correlates with the release of a new podcast arc.
• More people turning up in sales calls saying, “I’ve been seeing your stuff everywhere”

We track things like:

• Direct traffic.
• Branded search.
• Newsletter signups by persona.
• Organic shares and mentions.

But we also listen for what can’t be graphed:

• People referencing our brand story unprompted in a demo.
• Prospects quoting our influencers or commenting on a recent video.
• Customers saying they’ve “been following us for months” before they finally converted.

And then try to pull together the story from engagement to a lift in pipeline.

Homework: Build your brand health check

Start measuring your brand impact in a credible and consistent way, without overcomplicating it.

Step 1: Define your early signals

Choose 3–5 leading indicators you can track monthly. For example:

• Direct traffic to product pages.
• Repeat engagement from ICP accounts.
• Branded search volume.
• Social interactions (likes, shares, saves, comments).
• Mentions in sales conversations.

Step 2: Layer in lagging signals

Choose 2–3 outcome metrics to track against your brand programs. For example:

• Inbound demo requests.
• Sales cycle time.
• Conversion rate from content → pipeline.

Step 3: Correlate, don’t attribute

Start noting when there’s a connection between your brand efforts and pipeline shifts. Did demo requests spike after a big event? Did content views increase in the weeks before a deal closed?

Make these stories part of your board reporting. The goal isn’t to prove every interaction; it’s to show that brand is moving the needle.

Module 2 wrap-up: From brand to demand engine

If demand gen is about creating future customers, brand is the thing that makes sure they remember and choose you.

Your brand-building checklist

If I were rebuilding a modern B2B brand from scratch today, here’s the order I’d follow:

1. Build a strategic brand foundation

• Define (and document) your WHY. What do you stand for? What frustration are you fixing? What future do you envision for your buyers?
• Translate your WHY into a core brand story. Make it meaningful and radically relevant, focused on emotional resonance, not just product features.
• Test your narrative. Validate it with your team and audience. Does it feel true, ownable, and worth remembering?

2. Nail your visual and verbal identity

• Audit your current brand assets and presence. Where do you look/sound off-brand, generic, or forgettable?
• Create (or update) your visual system: logo, colour palette, typography, image style, layouts.
• Lock your brand voice and tone. Make it human, consistent, and distinctive. Document it so everyone, from your SDRs to your agency, understands it.
• Build templates and guidelines. Empower every team to deliver work that feels recognisably you.

3. Make emotion your superpower

• Inject emotion into your content. Use the 6 core levers: surprise, fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, to create content people feel, not just read.
• Lead with narrative, not just numbers. Start stories with moments of pain, joy, or recognition; challenge assumptions and build connection.
• Audit your last 5 content assets. Are they memorable? Do they stand out? Do they earn a smile, a share, or a save?

4. Build community, not just an audience

• Map where your ICP already hangs out. Think LinkedIn, Slack groups, podcasts, industry events, DMs.
• Start creating ‘value loops’. Launch a podcast, a newsletter, a recurring event - spaces your buyers return to for insights and connection.
• Spotlight your community. Feature customers and users in your content, events, and channels; make them the hero.
• Involve trusted influencers/operators. Tap into their networks authentically, don’t buy reach, build it.

5. Measure what matters (and tell a better story)

• Move beyond last-touch attribution. Track leading indicators (traffic from ICPs, branded search, repeat content engagement, share of feed) alongside outcomes (demo requests, influenced pipeline).
• Ask “How did you hear about us?” Use qualitative insights to capture brand influence beyond what software can show.
• Report in context. Tie brand signals to commercial outcomes. Correlate, don’t over-attribute, show the story from awareness to pipeline.