Heard my boss say "brand awareness is just a vanity metric" in a meeting yesterday

We were going over Q3 results and someone brought up our LinkedIn impressions being down. My boss just flat out said brand awareness is a vanity metric and we should only track pipeline. I get that we need to show ROI but isn't there some value in just being known? We're a B2B SaaS company in the midwest and our sales cycles are like 6 months. Has anyone else had to fight for brand budget when leadership only cares about MQLs?

3 comments

3 Comments

piper_burns1mo agoMost Upvoted

Oh come on, brand awareness is not a vanity metric unless you're measuring it wrong. If nobody knows you exist in a 6 month sales cycle, good luck getting those MQLs in the first place. That "vanity" stuff matters when prospects need to remember you months later.

holly_henderson8618d ago

Nodding so hard right now. I saw this exact thing happen at my old company. We slashed the brand budget and within 4 months our demo requests dried up almost completely. Sales team was furious because they had zero warm leads to work with. Had to scramble and buy a bunch of expensive trade show sponsorships just to get back in front of people. That "vanity" stuff is basically the top of the funnel whether anyone likes it or not.

jade_singh1mo ago

My buddy works at a similar B2B SaaS company, and his boss said the EXACT same thing. Six months later, they had cut all their brand budget and pipeline generation took a NOSEDIVE. Turns out nobody remembered who they were when their sales team finally called. They ended up spending twice as much on retargeting ads just to get back to where they started. It was a total mess.