Hey y'all, happy Friday and welcome to Stacking Growth, a check in where I take the tips we drop in the Refine Labs weekly newsletter and apply them for our own brand marketing team, stacking them up for our continued evolution and growth. This week we are back with more brand demand expand. So Evan Hughes, our VP of marketing did a great article in our newsletter today and well I guess yesterday, recording it on Thursday when our newsletter comes out, you may be watching it on Friday. So Evan Hughes wrote a really great article, breaking down some really like tactical ways to start implementing this brand demand expand strategy.
So if you missed our initial breakdown of what these three pillars are, you can either go back a couple videos or you can listen to this short little summary. So basically, not all marketing is meant to drive pipeline right away. Some of it is meant to build trust, some of it is meant to capture interest, some of it is meant to strengthen customer relationships. Each one is super important, but they need different expectations and different measurements.
So if you're trying to measure all three of those facets of marketing just with pipeline, you're gonna be really disappointed, your numbers are gonna be bad, you're gonna feel bad, you're gonna go into your annual annual review, scared and nervous and knowing that you didn't hit these targets, but what if there was another way? This is the other way, so pay attention. How do you actually measure each pillar of brand demand and expand? You don't need a ton of new tech to do any of this, most of it can be tracked in a spreadsheet or by looking at what you're already looking at just in a different way.
So we're gonna start by focusing on brand. Is your company being remembered and talked about the right people? This is the one that people either over complicate or completely ignore. You don't find a lot of folks who are doing brand with just the right amount of focus.
It's not gonna show up in your CRM, but you can track momentum in different ways. So self-reported attribution. Look at what people type when you ask how did you hear about us. Also, if you're not asking how did you hear about us in an open text field, that's something to start right away.
If you see your brand, your podcast, your founder's name, LinkedIn, a specific episode or event, that's a signal that you're building brand in the right way. So if people are finding you through different channels just in Google Ads or Google Search, then you're doing it. You're doing it. Also, you can track direct traffic to high-intent pages.
So tracking visits to your demo page or pricing page will show that this is coming from direct branded search or dark social. This traffic is more nebulous than what your CRM can usually show, but if you are really hyper-focusing on the right pages, then it can tell you a lot about where your customers are coming from or where your potential customers are coming from. You want to track social reach and engagement from the right people. It's not just impressions, but it's the quality of interactions.
Who is engaging? Are they in your ICP? Are they real people or are they bots? This is where y'all watching this video, help a girl out, comment, share it, show it to the people that you think it could be useful for.
Tell us how this information on Brand push the right eyes in front of your content. Let's move on to demand. Are you converting attention into pipeline efficiently? This is where most teams default, but it's more than just pipeline created.
Yes, we want to look at pipeline, but we also want to look at high-intent form fields, not necessarily e-book downloads, but actual demo requests, pricing requests, trials, or contacting sales. You also want to look at conversion rates by channel. Is paid actually converting or is organic doing more heavy lifting than you realized? Look at win rate by source.
Where are your most efficient deals coming from? And then also you want to look at sales cycle length by source. Faster sales cycles usually point to better aligned intent. So this is where we're still looking at pipeline, but it's more detailed than just how much?
Where's it coming from for different sizes of deals, different sources for deals, different conversion rates? How is your pipeline breaking down to show the demand in your market? A little team tip from Evan, look at your last 20 closed one deals. Where did they come from?
Match that against your current budget and see if your money lines up with your outcomes. And finally, expand. Are you keeping and growing the customers that you work so hard to get? Most marketers don't really think about this, but especially now, now more than ever, retention is survival.
So try these couple tips. Expansion revenue from current customers. How many are growing with you? Also, customer marketing source opportunities.
Are there any upsell or cross sell campaigns leading to pipeline that you've generated? Turned by acquisition source. The marketing bringing customers that are sticking around, or are some of the things that you've been creating in brand and demand, resulting in higher churn customers. You also want to look at advocacy signals, customer stories, referrals, testimonials or peer mentions.
If you can look at that, that's going to cycle right back into brand. And people are going to hear more about you. They're going to start to trust you more. And your expand pillar is going to expand for lack of a better word because you're keeping customers around and you are making them feel like they are important and not just, you're not just chasing new customers.
We all know that we are, but you can't ignore the ones that you have already. A team tip here is to set a calendar reminder to check in with customer support or web ops once a month. Ask who's growing, who's at risk and how marketing can help. So in the next couple of weeks, I was going to be sharing more about brand demand and expand.
And I will be here to expand on all of those amazing details that he's sharing out in our newsletter. So if you are liking what you're hearing, make sure to sign up for our newsletter to get it in your inbox on Thursdays and then also to stay on top of our upcoming events because we have a lot happening this summer that you're going to be really excited about. First of all, on Tuesday, June 3rd at 1 PM Eastern, Megan Bowen and Refine Labs match. Now, our teaming up with Pep Laja from Winter to talk to the importance of brand marketing and B2B.
If you're listening to this and you're like, yes, I got to do brand. I got to start with brand of the brand demand expands. This is your chance. They're going to go in depth and they're going to, I mean, between Refine Labs and Winter, we've got so much to talk about for brand marketing.
So don't miss that one. Registration link is on our website on our very new events page. Also, our next B2B Roundtable is looking at Facebook ads, paid social. So Wednesday, June 18th at 12 PM Eastern, you can catch that.
And again, it's a do not miss event, especially if you're struggling with paid ads right now. That's all for me. I will see you next Friday.