BrandGen in B2B Marketing: The CMO’s Framework for Sustainable Growth
Authors
David Hayes
A results-driven marketing professional specializing in integrated multi-channel strategies. Expertise in leveraging AI-driven insights to optimize marketing and drive measurable business outcomes. Focused on delivering innovative solutions across diverse industries.
In this article
Introduction
Marketers are the toughest audience. We know the tricks and spot the fluff. How then do I introduce you to BrandGen in B2B marketing? How do I present it to you credibly and honestly? First, let’s keep it real in a simple definition with no smoke or mirrors:
BrandGen is UnboundB2B’s integrated GTM framework to unify B2B brand positioning, campaign execution, and demand generation around a single, revenue-focused strategy. It helps brands engage earlier, convert faster, and scale more efficiently — with commercial outcomes (not awareness) as the primary goal.
There it is. If that’s what you came for, you have it. Of course, there’s more to evaluate than the definition and I’ll take you through that here.
BrandGen Beyond Buzzwords and Silos
B2B marketing has more than its fair share of new terms, trends, and marketing misconceptions. Witness account-based marketing (ABM), demand gen 2.0, and growth hacking. Each of these has a kernel of goodness and solves a real problem.
But most of the trending concepts don’t fix core B2B marketing challenges such as rising customer acquisition costs (CAC), declining lead quality, and unorganized marketing and sales alignment. As it happens, those are exactly where BrandGen aims. It’s a model that builds truly integrated marketing by joining brand building and demand generation into a single, cohesive – and effective – strategy.
The fundamental issue is that brand-building and demand generation in B2B operate in their own organizational and data silos within most B2B organizations. Brand-building is a long-term play to create awareness, trust, mental availability, and being top-of-mind for future buyers. On the other hand, demand generation focuses on the short-term, like converting in-market buyers, generating leads (MQLs, SQLs), and driving immediate pipeline and revenue.
As result, these common pain points often arise:
- B2B marketing budgets tend to favor short-term gains, not sustainable growth over time.
- Customer acquisition costs are rising in most sectors because many B2B performance marketing tactics target a small number of active buyers.
- Competitors that have strong brands enjoy a clear point of entry when buyers recognize them more readily.
- If prospects don’t know or trust the brand, then demand generation programs may struggle.
BrandGen. What a Concept!
The BrandGen concept in B2B marketing is the response and solution to the long-standing disconnect between brand and demand gen. It’s a cohesive marketing framework, not a product. Its broad goal is to build your market leadership.
You already know the 95/5 rule in B2B marketing: Only about 5% of all buyers are in-market at any one time. Whereas 95% of buyers who are currently out-of-market are where your future sales will come from. We need to market to all these current and potential buyers.
BrandGen is a necessary response to the changing B2B landscape. Buyers now spend a significant portion (70%) of their journey researching anonymously in the “dark funnel” before engaging with sales. They form their opinions about brands very early on. What’s more, typical B2B buying groups have expanded to 9+ individuals and require building collective confidence at the brand level.
Full disclosure – and no surprise, I’m sure – we at UnboundB2B have a BrandGen approach for our B2B clients. It’s an AI-powered, market-building framework that unifies brand-building, demand generation and activation into a single system.
BrandGen FAQ
Now, you wouldn’t be a good marketer if you didn’t hold a bit of skepticism. Let’s talk about that.
Q: “This isn’t new. Isn’t it really just integrated marketing?”
A: But here’s the key distinction: BrandGen isn’t about doing brand and demand. It’s about making them work as one GTM system — built for revenue, not departments. BrandGen solves the operational gap between the different teams within marketing. Instead of “coordinating” brand and demand, BrandGen engineers them to drive shared business outcomes across the full funnel, aligned to pipeline, CAC, conversion, and share of voice.
Q: “We don’t have time for brand; we need pipeline now.”
A: Pressure for short-term, quarterly results is significant and important. However, relying only on demand capture leads to higher CAC over time as channels saturate. Investment in brands ensures buyers know and trust you when they enter the market, leading to higher conversion rates and lower CAC in the long run. Research suggests B2B brands should allocate a significant portion of their budget (e.g., 46% in one study) to brand marketing.
Q: “If we just target in-market buyers, why bother with brand?”
A: Many strategies focus heavily on the 5% of buyers actively searching. This ignores the 95% who are not currently in-market but will be in the future. Only targeting the 5% puts companies in an expensive cycle. BrandGen focuses on demand creation among the 95% so the brand is known and trusted when they are ready to buy. This is crucial as 80% of buyers buy from a brand they already know. Ignoring demand creation means missing the bigger picture and leaving invaluable future demand on the table.
Q: My brand agency does all of that, building a central narrative that aligns all my outbound marketing. Why do I need UnboundB2B?
A: BrandGen is more than just building a brand or a narrative. BrandGen activates a brand through performance. Brand agencies don’t live inside your funnel or optimize for your pipeline. They’re not accountable to revenue performance in the same way.
- Unbound builds positioning, creative, and campaigns with commercial intent baked in from the start.
- We architect programs to work across earned, owned, and paid channels/PR, not just big-budget media plans.
- We connect brand to business impact through attribution, conversion metrics, and pipeline acceleration.
- And we operate like a GTM partner, not just a creative vendor.
How to Put Your BrandGen to Work in B2B Marketing
Strategies don’t work until there is execution. The BrandGen framework works, but it must be established fully. If the full framework seems complex, then start small and begin to build familiarity and trust among your teams with the new discipline.
For example, start with account-based marketing tactics with a few accounts to see if brand-focused messaging moves the needle against broader campaigns.
However you embark on your BrandGen journey, note these important milestones:
- Align Teams and Goals: Create a shared language, goals, objectives, and expectations so brand and demand creation teams are heading in the same direction. Brand teams should be involved in business priorities and sales objectives.
- Integrate Planning and Budgeting: Ideally, have one media budget for both brand and demand generation. Allocate funds strategically across the full funnel from top to bottom. My own experience suggests allocating 15-20% of your whole demand creation budget to brand efforts as a starting point, though this varies by organization and industry. It is irresponsible to focus on demand generation with poor market awareness.
- Align Creative Platform and Messaging: Build creative platforms and messaging that can transcend the entire light and dark funnel, ensuring consistency from top-of-funnel brand efforts to demand generation programs. Use a storytelling approach with a mix of emotional and rational content, as emotion is effective across the B2B buyer journey. Define a compelling, core narrative and map your messaging narratives to funnel stages.
- Define the Buyer Journey and Campaign Infrastructure: Clearly define the journey from awareness to conversion (top to bottom funnel). Decide how to reach the audience and what assets are effective at each stage. For example, thought leadership and case studies at the top, premium assets and webinars in the middle, product trials at the bottom. Be sure your campaign programs and tactics map to the buyer journey. It’s important to tune your content marketing funnel to the dynamics of your business and your markets.
- Rethink Measurement and KPIs: Move beyond traditional brand metrics (impressions, engagement, share of voice) and demand metrics (MQLs, SQLs). Instead, focus on showing the correlation between brand campaign impact and the conversion performance of demand activities. Measure things like the percentage of demand creation contributing to source pipeline and whether this improves post BrandGen implementation. Socialize strategy and impact consistently, focusing on metrics that leadership cares about, like sales impact and pipeline contribution.
- Continuous Optimization: BrandGen cannot be static. It requires ongoing optimization and active management to drive and sustain results. Regularly analyze engagement data to adapt your approach.
No BS. Just BrandGen.
BrandGen is not an illusion or hype but a legitimate framework for addressing structural issues in your B2B marketing. As with most things, your success depends on your commitment and execution.
Remember that indecision is a decision, too. CMOs who ignore BrandGen and continue with fragmented, short-term-focused strategies will likely continue to face rising costs, shrinking differentiation, and stagnant growth.
BrandGen addresses the realities of the modern B2B buyer – their non-linear journey, significant time in the dark funnel, and the importance of trust. Given the challenges and the changing B2B landscape, can you afford to keep doing what’s not working?
What’s Holding Your Team Back from Engaging the Right Leads?
Be a part of 1000+ successful clients that have chosen UnboundB2B for growth.
Discover more resources
Successful B2B Lead Generation requires generating Marketing Qualified Leads. In this article, we have discussed how to identify MQLs and 10 practical tips to generate more MQLs. These tips cover essential strategies from optimizing your sales funnel to leveraging engaging videos and interactive content. You'll learn about the importance of strong calls-to-action, utilizing chatbots, and implementing Account-Based Marketing. We'll explore how a Customer Data Platform can improve your targeting and lead-generation efforts. By implementing these strategies, you can significantly improve your MQL generation and boost your B2B growth.
Demand for SaaS products and services has increased significantly in recent years. By making cloud-based software solutions more accessible, SaaS companies bring technology closer to modern businesses. The increased demand has resulted in a highly competitive SaaS environment. One effective strategy companies can use to stay ahead of the competition is SaaS advertising. Read on to discover how ad platforms facilitate SaaS advertising and find out which advertising platforms your company can leverage to succeed in sales.
