Demand creation vs. brand awareness
Are they the same? Are they different? A simplified breakdown of the two
TL;DR - you can spend your way to brand awareness, but not demand creation
I know, I know, I don’t normally TL;DR the newsletter topic, but this is a topic I’ve been trying to crack for the past few months + finally had a breakthrough.
I love to write because it forces me to think, be concise, and then communicate in a way that allows others to learn from. I’m a “processor” by nature, i.e. I need time to really think + marinate on items before I can make sense of them. This is why any time I jump on a podcast with someone, I ask about the topic and any questions they want to get into beforehand so I can make sure that anything I share is worthwhile to those who are listening.
But a few weeks ago, I had a breakthrough while on Justin Norris’s podcast, RevOps FM (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Substack), when we started to rabbithole down one of the initial topics - demand creation. (Fast forward to about 26:45 in if you only want to listen to this part)
“The saturation method”
We were talking about how to create demand, got into an example of YouTube and how attribution does (and doesn’t) tell the full story, but essentially coming around to the concept of creating an ecosystem around your prospects + “the saturation method” that Monday.com used while on YouTube a few years ago.
Remember the past few years when it seemed like every time you went to watch a video on YouTube, you first saw an ad for Monday.com? I do 🙋♂️
I can tell you exactly what they do (project management software)…
...but I can't tell you how they're different from all of the other competitors in their space (Asana, Trello, Basecamp, etc.)
Their ads were very successful in that they got my attention + communicated what they do, but they never convinced me WHY they are the only option I should go with, what they provide that's different from their competitors in making their customers more successful, or added any value to me that positions them as THE experts in this space. If I got a survey from YouTube or a third-party firm asking if I had heard of Monday.com, the answer would be a resounding yes.
But, did it create demand?
If they asked if I considered buying their software in the next 12 months, the answer would be no. Why? Because they didn't *create* any demand.
They didn't give me a sense of urgency around what I'm missing out on by not using them
I didn't receive any compelling feeling that they are THE project management platform I should use
They didn't educate or provide me with any value with insights that they uniquely know as experts in the space
Long story short, they didn't break out of the commodity bucket - they're simply another option.
Ok, so what’s the difference between the two?
Let’s make it simple + break it down:
Brand Awareness
Messaging: high-level with a focus on answering what you do and/or a memorable tagline
POV/differentiation: NO strong POV/differentiation statement
Audience: total addressable market (broad + large)
Timeline: "always on"
Measuring success: brand recognition + brand recall
Demand Creation
Messaging: high-level with a focus on answering what you solve for
POV/differentiation: VERY strong POV/differentiation statement
Audience: ICP (smaller + specific)
Timeline: constrained by success measurements (next point)
Measuring success: pipeline + revenue
Brand awareness is a subset of demand creation
Put simply, you can drive brand awareness without creating demand, but creating demand requires more than driving brand awareness.
Measuring on a constrained timeline
Easy to say, but what does it actually mean?
When you’re creating demand, you want to constrain your timeline to understand if the marketing efforts you make today are driving noticeable increases to your pipeline + revenue numbers after a few quarters.
Brand awareness is always on because the goal is increasing brand recognition and recall. The longer you’re out there and the more you spend, the more those metrics go up. But those metrics don’t always mean success on the pipeline and revenue side.
And that’s why for demand creation, driving increased brand awareness isn’t a guarantee that you’ll successfully create demand. You can’t spend your way to pipeline and revenue. Creating demand is more surgical. So the timeline portion is basically saying, “We’ve been doing this for 1-2 quarters now, are we beginning to see actual pipeline + revenue numbers starting to increase?” If you’re successfully creating demand, they will be as you’ve reached the right prospects and with a message resonating in a way that makes them want to switch/buy.
To steal a lesson from last week’s post about setting expectations and measuring success, you can refer back to this timeline and the “what to watch” KPIs as time progresses. If you’re creating demand, you’ll be moving along this timeline appropriately. If you’re only driving brand awareness, you’ll stall out at the Experiment stage KPIs.
Agree? Disagree? Find yourself somewhere in the middle of all of this? Let me know! This has been a fun one to unpack + I’m sure there are other POVs on this that I’d love to learn from.
One LinkedIn post I bookmarked this week
As kids, we’re always asking “Why?”. It drives parents and siblings crazy, but it speaks to our innate curiosity early on. As time goes on, we’re told to stop asking “Why?” so much by parents, siblings, teachers, and society, and told to accept things for reasons like, “Because I said so,” or “I’m the teacher, you’re the student.”
As a result, we unfortunately stop questioning so many things and settle for things at face value. Sam Jacobs recently shared this post and it’s one that at surface level is very easy to accept, but the more context you know about the situation, realize it’s not a truth to be accepted at face value.
Simple advice was given: “Stop sleeping on Linkedin. Start posting!” + supporting datapoints around his reach last year and how much those impressions would cost if you were to pay for them would be pegged at saying he generated $2.5M worth of impressions with his organic posts.
But this is where you need to go a layer deeper.
How did he drive so many impressions?
What was he sharing?
Has anything changed between then and now?
And this last point is where I really started to question this advice. Too much has changed with LinkedIn’s algorithm in just the first 3.5 months of 2024 for that advice based on 2023 performance to be valid. Then you start to get into the “Why?” part of it so you can understand why the changes were made and what alterations would need to be made by you as a user if you wanted to get that same type of performance that he saw in 2023.
Long story short, don’t be afraid to question things. That’s where the real learnings can be found. (And yes, even question me + what I share in this newsletter)
One podcast episode I enjoyed this week
Hiring is tough. And it should be since it’s one of the most important things that dictate a company’s future success. Yet too many organizations simply go through the motions of hiring and frequently settle for “good enough” hires. Lucky for us, there are frameworks out there that can 100x your hiring effectiveness.
In this episode, Paul Stansik, Partner at ParkerGale, shares his 4-step playbook on how to hire better people. I was lucky enough to have him join me on Loxo’s podcast this week to unpack this playbook + talk about all things “How to avoid making a bad hire when you can’t afford to make a bad hire” (the episode will be live in ~3 weeks). So in preparation for this conversation, I was listening to this old episode of his and I found myself taking note after note after note. Definitely worth the listen. For those who want the CliffsNotes version of it, he wrote this short post after our recording, outlining these 4 points:
Know what you want
Find your own candidates
Be structured
Learn from who you hire
And for anyone interested, here’s a playlist I add to each week with some of my favorite podcast episodes:
See you next week,
Sam