I'm ending this fight once and for all.

For centuries, people have debated whether brand or marketing is more important. Books have been written about this, and conferences have been devoted to the topic.

I’ll confess: Early in my career when I was doing brand marketing for startups and major enterprises, I wrestled with this concept. I operated under the general belief that marketing didn't work unless you had a strong brand. And to some degree, that is true — but it’s not the whole truth.

Here's the truth 👇🏽

You need both.

To become a strong brand, you have to have an effective marketing strategy.

But to actually do marketing well, you HAVE to invest in your brand.

Chicken, meet your egg.

🥚 (hello.) 🐓

You simply cannot be successful in one pursuit without the other.

Show me a firm whose marketing is underperforming, and I will show you a firm that has de-prioritized its brand.

Show me a firm that is struggling to become a household name, and I will show you a marketing playbook that either doesn't exist or is as effective as a wet paper bag.

If you don't have both, you have nothing.

Sadly, many firms choose to spend their budget on immediate, short-term, lead-gen-focused activities while their brand suffers, only to continue the cycle of chasing empty leads (who have no idea who your firm is).

Others dump their full budget into their logo, identity, and brand and watch it collect dust, with no idea how to get their new identity in front of the right buyers.

This has been the norm for decades, until now.

Gone are the days when brand investments die on the alter of lead-gen marketing.

And gone are the days when lead gen suffers at the cost of brand investments.

But how?

Technology is catching up with brand and marketing strategies, and we're seeing these two worlds collide like never before, even for smaller firms with tight budgets.

Here’s why brand and marketing MUST work together if you want to build buyer trust and grow revenue:

Up until now, marketing’s main job has been to drive the pipeline. But a lead-gen-only marketing function is not only really hard and expensive, but it can also damage your firm's reputation.

When all you focus on is selling to the 5% who are ready to buy, you alienate the 95% who aren't. And if someone isn't ready to buy, chances are they don't know about your firm at all or you've already left a bad taste in their mouth by trying to pitch them something they don't need.

🤮 Trying to force someone onto a call JUST to find out if they want to buy is an effective way to make them avoid your company in the future.

Your brand is how you build trust, and when your brand isn't strong, most sales-heavy efforts are a major turnoff.

When this happens, sales and marketing immediately go back to trying to get badge scans and demos, while most of your market is looking to learn, not buy.

This is why sales teams are frustrated when they have to not only spend time qualifying whether someone is a right fit or not — now they have to do marketing's job and introduce your firm, offering, or company.

This is why the whole thing isn't working, and marketing just keeps spinning its wheels, trying tactics that don't help anyone hit their numbers.

The new way: How a brand and demand strategy grows your reputation AND your pipeline:

Lead-gen-focused marketing is not only hard, outdated, and expensive — it harms your brand.

We’ve found that when you focus on generating REAL demand, not empty leads, you also build awareness for your brand in the process.

I call this a brand and demand strategy (I'll refer to it from this point on as B+D).

Remember that 95% of your market isn't ready to talk to sales yet? They're spending their time learning.

And the 5% will only buy from a brand they know like and trust.

How to build a B+D marketing powerhouse that wins the 95% AND the 5%

Start with a strategic narrative and a strong POV that challenges the status quo in your market. When you do this, people will listen and their attention will be yours. Clarify your brand’s unique story and how you'll attract your ideal buyers.
Build an influence engine. Use that strategic narrative and POV to permeate your content. Put the content out in ways that reach buyers at every stage of their learning journey. You'll create actual fans who self-select to keep learning. They'll see your firm as the go-to for what you do — even if they aren't ready to buy yet.
Create a hyper-accurate target account list. The key word here is accurate. This is table stakes. Once you have this, you'll spend less time getting your content in front of people who will never buy from you and more time talking to EXACT right-fit prospects who are ready to buy.
Learn, measure, and optimize. Technology has evolved so fast that tracking and optimization have never been easier to navigate. A B+D led approach uses tracking and data to pour gas on the fires of what's working and snuff out what's not.

It's not brand vs marketing anymore — with a B+D approach, B2B tech firms can increase their brand reach and fill their pipeline at the same time (and faster than ever).

Results of a B+D approach:

One thing we’ve seen consistently over the past 5 years that's become part of the playbook we run: The firms who invest in a B+D approach see real results. I'm talking about more of everything:

Sourced pipeline
Brand awareness
Every impression and engagement you can think of
Demos and booked calls
Audience growth
Brand marketing ROI
Actual revenue

B+D will be the future of ALL business growth playbooks.

But that’s not all. A new wave of changes will be felt across creative industries and B2B tech firms.

👇🏽

Here's what we're going to see as brand + demand becomes the norm:

Private equity groups and VCs will invest in small, market-level B+D teams instead of marketing coordinators managing projects that lead to nothing.
Branding firms who spend 6-12 months building strategies and identities will be replaced by agile, young, expert, strategic brand marketing teams who can construct powerful research and turn it into nail-biting narratives and beautiful identities in days or weeks...not months. (And they'll deliver content to go with it!)
Agencies will partner with other agencies as competition turns into collaboration like we've never seen before.
Creative business acquisitions will skyrocket as firms realize the need for B+D and their inability to build this out in-house.
Small teams of specialists will almost instantly replace big, bloated, in-house marketing departments.
Video, podcasting, and interactive media will replace white papers and newsletters.
Creative professionals who used to be one-dimensional are going to become what I call "Hybrid Creatives” and master multiple skills that provide cross-functional value.
Brand and marketing firms worldwide (yes, even the U.S.) will start implementing four-day work weeks because they’re so efficient in getting greater results for clients in a shorter amount of time.

The future is bright.

👇🏽 Whether you're doing brand marketing for startups or major enterprises, I have great news for you...👇🏽

While everyone else is fighting over brand vs. marketing initiatives, you can

Now might be the greatest (and most profitable) moment in history to be a strategic professional who knows how to move hearts and minds with the limitless combined powers of brand and marketing.

This is what we’re positioned for and already doing at Forrest.

If you’d like to learn more about how we’re using brand and marketing together to fuel growth for B2B tech firms, reach out!

Brand vs. Marketing: A Fight to the Death