How to do B2B Brand Marketing in 2025?

B2B Brand Marketing for 2025: Measuring the Intangible for Tangible Growth

As 2025 approaches, B2B marketers are entering their annual planning with one major concern: how to strategically allocate resources between performance-based efforts and brand marketing. Brand marketing investments are notoriously hard to quantify, often leaving many executives skeptical and hesitant. In part, this hesitation stems from misconceptions circulating online, especially among tech and venture capital influencers, who question the impact and measurability of brand marketing for B2B. Yet, those with a strategic outlook realize the truth: a strong brand underpins the entire revenue lifecycle, strengthening every stage, from brand awareness to customer retention and expansion. For B2B businesses looking to make brand investments count, here’s a deep dive into strategies and metrics to measure brand impact effectively.

Why Brand Marketing Matters in the B2B Lifecycle: Brand > Demand > Expand

Branding builds the foundation of any successful B2B operation, impacting three critical growth stages:

1. Brand: Creating awareness and fostering a "know, like, and trust" relationship with future buyers—accounting for a substantial 95% of potential buyers.
2. Demand: Capturing the interest of active buyers who are ready to take the next step, but only if they recognize and trust your brand (around 5% of buyers).
3. Expand: Deepening existing relationships to increase renewals, referrals, and upsell opportunities.

While the concept of brand marketing is often considered too "fluffy" for direct measurement, it indeed has measurable impacts on pipeline growth, revenue, and profitability, allowing B2B marketers to leverage brand tracking strategies and set metrics that showcase brand marketing’s genuine value.

Understanding Brand Measurement: Learning from B2C's Playbook

B2C marketers have long leveraged brand tracking to monitor their brand’s performance and perception. B2B marketers can adopt similar brand tracking techniques to make brand investments more measurable and meaningful. A brand tracking system allows companies to gauge awareness, sentiment, and competitive standing, offering insights that reveal how effectively a brand attracts, engages, and retains audiences. Below are metrics and techniques to apply brand tracking methods in B2B.

Key Brand Measurement Tactics for B2B Marketers

1. Building Relationships with Learners (Future Buyers)

The initial phase in brand building is to establish a rapport with future buyers, many of whom may not yet be ready to purchase but are critical to long-term growth. It’s about nurturing a “know/like/trust” factor with your target audience by ensuring that brand awareness, messaging, and positioning resonate.

Metrics to Track:

• Share of Voice: Measure your brand’s prevalence in conversations across social media, forums, and communities. A higher share of voice indicates stronger brand presence and influence within the industry.
• Share of Search: Evaluate how often your brand name appears in search results compared to competitors, reflecting brand recall and interest.
• Brand Sentiment: Track the tone of customer mentions (positive, neutral, negative) across digital platforms. This offers insight into how your brand is perceived and its reputation within your industry.

These metrics help quantify the resonance of your brand with future buyers, providing early-stage indicators of long-term brand equity.

2. Generating Leads (Active Buyers)

Once your brand is recognized and trusted, it’s crucial to assess its influence on active buyers—those in-market looking for solutions. At this stage, brand marketing must be linked to lead generation activities, with metrics showing causation between brand initiatives and lead pipeline growth.

Attribution Metrics to Capture and Analyze:

• Branded Search Traffic: Use UTM parameters and web analytics to monitor branded search queries, revealing how many visitors are actively seeking out your brand by name.
• “How Did You Hear About Us?”: Incorporate self-reported attribution data to determine if brand marketing efforts are driving traffic and interest.

Brand Influence Data (via Sales Discovery Calls):

• Brand Awareness: Ask leads what they know about your brand during initial discovery calls, offering insight into awareness levels.
• CEP (Customer Experience Perception) Association: Understand the problems prospects aim to solve, existing solutions they use, and why their companies are investing in specific product categories.
• Day One Shortlist: When customers begin their search, find out which vendors they initially considered. Being on this shortlist reflects strong brand recognition and trust.

This data provides a direct link between brand investments and active buyer interest, enabling marketers to refine their strategies based on observed brand influence on lead generation.

3. Cultivating Relationships with Opportunities (Active Pipeline)

For opportunities already in the sales pipeline, brand influence can have a profound impact on their progression through the funnel. Prospective buyers who enter the sales process with a positive perception of the brand often show higher engagement levels and conversion rates. Comparing financial performance metrics between brand-aware and brand-unaware opportunities allows marketers to identify tangible benefits of brand investments.

Metrics to Compare:

• Sales Cycle Length: Track if opportunities familiar with your brand have shorter sales cycles than those without brand awareness, indicating a higher level of pre-existing trust and readiness to purchase.
• Close Rate: Analyze close rates to see if brand-aware buyers are more likely to convert.
• Deal Revenue & Profitability: Compare the revenue and profitability of deals from brand-aware buyers to those who didn’t initially know your brand. Higher values suggest that brand trust is a driver of larger, more profitable deals.

These metrics allow marketers to demonstrate brand impact within the pipeline, where trust translates into shorter cycles and higher deal values, contributing to the bottom line.

Moving from Fear to Confidence: CRM Custom Fields and Cumulative Brand Impact

One of the biggest fears surrounding brand marketing in B2B is the notion that it’s unmeasurable, but modern CRM tools allow brands to capture cumulative impact. By adding custom fields in CRM to document brand perception at various stages of the buyer’s journey, you can directly link brand marketing investments to revenue outcomes. Sales conversations, surveys, and custom CRM fields offer data on how prospects perceive your brand, enabling a more comprehensive view of brand impact.

For example, tracking mentions of brand awareness in CRM at the lead, opportunity, and customer stages reveals if early brand engagement correlates with deal progression and higher customer lifetime value.

Brand and Demand: Two Sides of the Growth Coin

While brand marketing may seem hard to quantify, it is critical to long-term B2B growth. Demand generation alone can’t sustain growth if buyers don’t recognize or trust the brand behind the product. Smart growth marketers know that brand marketing and demand generation are two sides of the same coin—working together to drive both short-term conversions and long-term loyalty.

As you enter 2025, approach brand marketing with confidence. Use the methods and metrics above to ensure that your brand not only builds awareness but drives measurable business results across the entire revenue lifecycle. Your brand will be better positioned to capture and nurture leads, shorten sales cycles, and cultivate a loyal customer base that grows with your business. By investing in brand and tracking it effectively, B2B marketers can convert brand skeptics into brand advocates, and, ultimately, drive measurable, impactful growth.