Social Media Marketing - Is It about Lead Generation or Branding?

I hear my fair share of four-letter words. In fact, I utter many of them myself. But there’s one word in particular that has come to dominate my (professional) conversations, thoughts and planning more than any other word: lead. Web-to-lead, lead generation, lead nurturing, lead scoring, qualified lead, lead management…the list goes on.
Leads are critical because of how they interact with our business and contribute to our company’s bottom line. Leads visit our website, download our white papers, ask for a product demo and, when all goes right, they pass through that all-important sales funnel and become a client.
Marketing budgets, which have shifted and transformed so dramatically over the last few years, are being weighed ever more heavily in favor of lead generation and new client acquisition. According to CSO Insights, more than 91 percent of companies worldwide reported increasing new customer acquisition was one of their top strategic marketing objectives for 2011.
But what happens to the branding of a company? Surely something that is often intangible in its immediate ROI and too “qualitative” to really measure has to play a backseat role to the more tactical and metrics-based practice of lead generation. Should you sacrifice branding efforts in the almighty quest for leads? In a word, no. You can indeed build and maintain a strong corporate brand while driving and nurturing leads. Not only can you do these things in tandem, but you should.
Here are three reasons not to ignore your branding efforts:

1. Brand experience: When you think of your company, what is its personality? Perhaps more importantly, when others think of and interact with your company, what is their user experience? What is your brand persona? Why should someone choose your company or product over another? Think of a company with a great brand persona: Apple. There are many companies that can sell you an mp3 player, right? Not taking away from Apple’s technical fortitude, but if brand experience didn’t matter to consumers, would Apple be as successful? When companies are confident in what they are doing, selling and saying to their customers, it shows.
2. Brand recognition: In the wild, wonderful world of Google and all things “search,”what’s most familiar is often most welcome. Type “diamond engagement ring” into Google and you get millions of results from hundreds of thousands of sites. So much information can leave a searcher overwhelmed, disconnected and frustrated. But, if a brand is known, trusted and familiar, like the Tiffany & Co. brand, it might just make the difference between a lead who heads to that site over the less familiar, less recognizable site. (Important note: SEO strategy is a smart part of any online branding strategy.)
3. Brand loyalty: Think of the shopping you did over the recent holiday season, and chances are good that a lot of it was done with brands you’ve dealt with and trusted for a long time. Loyalty is based on many things, of course: great products, stellar customer service, competitive pricing, etc. But a strong brand is also a major factor in keeping current customers tied to a company.

While there is no doubt in any marketer’s mind that lead generation and metrics-based reporting is critical to organizational success, we can’t forget that branding and corporate personality still matter. After all, when you drive those leads to your doorstep, it’s important to welcome them with a recognizable, trustworthy face.