Proven B2B Growth Strategies from the 'Brand. Demand. Expand.' Framework
Things have changed over the last five years… and these are the core pillars you need to think about if you want to be successful as a company.
Amidst intense budget scrutiny, disruptive AI, and failing lead-generation tactics, B2B marketers must overhaul their strategies to survive and grow by shifting focus from capturing existing demand to strategically creating it for the future.
Speaking on a recent Attributed Podcast, Megan Bowen, CEO of Refine Labs, broke down the strategy that she believes is now essential for survival and growth.
She argues that the "growth at all costs" era is definitively over, and in its place is a more sustainable, holistic go-to-market motion she calls the 'Brand. Demand. Expand.' framework.
Keep reading to find out the specifics of each pillar, including the key metric that makes brand performance measurable, a proven formula for reallocating ad spend, and strategies for turning existing customers into your best growth lever, or listen to the entire conversation here.
The Brand. Demand. Expand. Framework
The framework was developed as a direct response to a changed market. In an environment where acquiring new customers is harder and more expensive than ever, the old model of simply funneling leads to a sales team is inefficient.
Megan explains that companies can no longer afford a "leaky bucket," where new customer growth is canceled out by existing customer churn. This model addresses the problem by creating a unified strategy across the entire customer lifecycle, from first impression to long-term advocacy.
The model is a three-pronged approach designed to create a sustainable growth engine, moving beyond a singular focus on new customer acquisition.
Let's break down each of the three core pillars:
Brand
This pillar is about building real brand awareness and memory recall with your entire target audience, not just those ready to buy today. As Megan argues, if potential customers don't associate your brand name with the specific problem you solve, your company will never even be considered for a huge percentage of their purchase decisions.
Demand
The demand pillar focuses on converting attention into pipeline.
It encompasses both creating demand with the 95% of your market that isn't currently buying and capturing demand from the 5% that is in-market. It’s the tactical engine that turns awareness into revenue opportunities.
Expand
In an economy where retaining and growing existing accounts is paramount, this pillar focuses on the current customer base.
What's the point of growing if you have a leaky bucket? Then you end up in this growth plateau that so many companies are stuck in right now.
It’s about more than just upsells; it’s about retention, expansion, and advocacy.
Making Brand Measurable
Megan insists that 'brand' doesn't have to be a fuzzy concept that’s hard to sell to a CFO. To get leadership buy-in, her team brings data to the table that makes the intangible, tangible.
The key metric is Share of Search. By tracking how often your brand name is searched on Google relative to your competitors, you get a hard data point on your brand's awareness and market penetration.
We can get real data that's going to tell you if people know that your brand exists and therefore are searching for it.
When you show a leadership team that their competitors have a higher Share of Search and are visibly investing in brand programs, the conversation shifts from a fuzzy request to a strategic discussion about losing market share. This, paired with regular brand surveys on recall and preference, provides a measurable way to track the ROI of brand initiatives.
The Secret Formula for Demand
The single biggest mistake Bowen sees is a dramatic misallocation of budget.
Most companies, she finds, spend roughly 80% of their ad budget on demand capture (like Google Search ads and lead gen forms on social media) and only 20% on demand creation (brand awareness).
Megan flips that ratio, aiming for approximately 40% on demand capture and 60% on demand creation.
This means:
Stopping all lead generation campaigns on paid social channels like LinkedIn. People aren't there to fill out a demo form for a product they've never heard of.
Using paid social for its true strength: getting scroll-stopping, valuable content in front of your ideal customer profile to build brand awareness.
Making Google Search spend more efficient, focusing only on high-intent keywords.
This change also requires an organizational shift. As lead volume drops in favor of lead quality, SDRs should be redeployed from chasing low-quality leads to executing strategic outbound plays against a well defined target account list.
Expand: Your Best Growth Lever Is Already a Customer
The final piece of the puzzle is to stop treating existing customers as an afterthought. Marketing has a huge role to play in retention and expansion.
Megan advocates for two key strategies:
Events: Small, intimate dinners or other events that bring together current customers and high-value prospects are incredibly effective.
We're having great success in both retaining our current customers and almost having our customers do the selling for us.
Paid Ads to Customers: Megan points out that in large companies with a wide portfolio of products, customers often only use one or two of them. This usage gap represents a massive, often untapped, opportunity for growth.
She advises allocating a portion of the ad budget to run targeted campaigns specifically to your existing customer base. The goal is to drive awareness for the other products they could benefit from, which in turn creates new cross-sell and upsell opportunities and boosts expansion revenue.
A Final Word
By focusing on all three pillars (Brand, Demand, and Expand) and measuring them with business-critical KPIs like Share of Search, qualified pipeline, and Net Revenue Retention, B2B marketers can finally break the cycle of stagnation and build a go-to-market engine that’s fit for the modern era.
About the Speaker
Megan Bowen is the CEO of Refine Labs, a leading B2B demand generation agency. Prior to joining Refine Labs, Megan spent 17 years in the B2B SaaS startup world, holding leadership positions across the entire go-to-market function, including sales, account management, marketing, and operations.
