Think of inbound marketing, and HubSpot likely comes to mind. The company has become practically synonymous with the concept, as evidenced by its flagship annual event, INBOUND. Same goes for Slack and asynchronous communication. So many companies use Slack that it's become a noun and a verb.

This phenomenon goes beyond standard brand recognition. It's Mindshare, the intangible magic that makes a brand the automatic go-to choice for decision makers when it's time to buy. In the B2B world, Mindshare is critical to sustained success.

Today, we'll walk through some ways that your brand can achieve Mindshare, including focusing on video-first content.

Read on to learn:

• What is Mindshare marketing?
• How is Mindshare different from other approaches?
• 5 key components of a Mindshare strategy
• Why Mindshare matters in 2025
• How to build lasting Mindshare
• Avoid these common Mindshare mistakes
• Don't aim for awareness. Make Mindshare your goal in 2025.

Mindshare represents the level of customer consciousness you "own" in your industry. While traditional brand awareness references whether people know that you exist, Mindshare is interested in where you rank on the leaderboard when it's time to make a purchase.

Sure, being on the list is great, but being the only one on the shortlist? Even better.

Mindshare can't be achieved through brute force — you can't just pour a ton of money into paid ads and expect your reputation to rise. You'll need to think big-picture about ways you can enter relevant conversations and engage with people. We'll get into specific tactics soon, but this might look like participating in audience communities or creating user-generated videos that your customers can share with their networks.

PS: Videos are a natural vehicle for Mindshare marketing. In a recent Wyzowl report, almost everyone surveyed had watched a video to learn more about a product or service — and the number of people who'd been convinced to buy a product or service via video clocked in at 87%, an increase from the prior survey.

In the same report, video was by far the top-requested way consumers want to learn more about a company's offering. We say, give the people what they want! Don't miss out on the opportunity to connect with people (and indirectly sell to them) organically through your videos.

Here's a quick overview of how Mindshare differs from traditional approaches like lead generation and demand generation:

Note that while much of marketing prioritizes short-term results, Mindshare is in it for the long-haul, aiming for the enviable #1 spot across an industry category. This isn't to say that the other approaches don't still matter or contribute to revenue goals, but Mindshare takes a more holistic view that's needed given today's changing buying landscape.

Speaking of the buying landscape … here are some key reasons why Mindshare will help you succeed this year:

Time for some stats!

According to Forrester's 2023 Business Trust Survey, 77% of purchase influencers consider brand awareness when deciding whether to trust your company. We also know that buyers are almost 70% of the way through their buying journey before they ever make contact with you.

Finally, companies like Databox have found that the average buying cycle is at least 3-4 months, with deals taking progressively longer as the associated dollar value of the contract goes up.

What does all of this mean, exactly?

Because the B2B buying cycle is lengthy and buyers largely do their own research before ever reaching out, you'll have to be intentional about connecting with folks long before they're making pros and cons lists about their different options. People need to see your brand, learn from you, and connect with some aspect of your storytelling in order to convert to a paid customer.

You also need to reach more people than you did in the past. B2B buying decisions are often influenced by many stakeholders, which means you'll need to have that trust and brand recognition with all (or at least most) of them.

Mindshare helps you get there, using content like thought leadership and emotionally resonant videos to make sure that people meet you, trust you, and like you. Mindshare is the way you become the default choice in your category, the top brand that buyers want to go with when it's time.

There are more than three million B2B companies in the U.S. alone. If you're in the B2B tech space specifically, you may have felt a sense of crowding as new players pop up and established companies expand into new lines of business. (Case in point: Salesforce now owns Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft, Demandware, and more.)

Standing out requires more than just a solid product; you need to own something within your category.

Look at Gong, a company that pioneered (and now owns) the concept of "revenue intelligence." Gong's founder noticed that sales numbers weren't always proportional to key metrics, and he set out to discover why and resolve the discrepancy. Now, if you want to get serious about revenue, Gong's probably the first brand you consider.

You don't have to create something totally new like Gong did. Mindshare also works if you zero in on the messages you want to own and then focus on amplifying them as much as possible. To go back to our Slack example, they didn't create team communication; they just came up with their own spin on it and talked about it enough that people started to pay attention.

Most of us are on more than one social platform. Digital channels like LinkedIn and Instagram rapidly accelerate and amplify brand messages, and individual consumers can become de facto brand advocates.

Positive brand advocacy via social media, online reviews, testimonials, and the like organically boost Mindshare, especially in niche tech communities where people trust and value their colleague's input.

According to ReferralRock, 84% of B2B decision-makers start their buying process with a referral — making it critical to reach the person doing the referring! Referrals are also four times as likely to make a purchase and have a 16% higher lifetime value — and a referral is a much easier deal to close than a cold lead or prospect.

This is why being involved in user communities, sharing your expertise on LinkedIn, and partnering with influencers and experts to broadcast their stories about your company is so important.

Here's an example of how customers can become brand advocates. Board of Innovation (BOI), an innovative AI consultancy, selected Goldcast Core to host a virtual summit with 10K+ attendees. BOI also relied on Goldcast Content Lab to quickly repurpose event recordings into clips for YouTube, social media, and elsewhere.

After the summit, we interviewed BOI about their experience. We then turned that interview into a case study, blog content, video snippets, social posts, and other assets we can use to promote on our own channels. We also sent all of the videos and other materials to BOI so they can post it to their network as well, dramatically increasing our reach!

Building Mindshare requires the following elements:

1. Brand consistency: Your aesthetic, logos, and messaging should be consistent across all types of content and platforms.
2. Thought leadership: Create credible, insightful content that positions you as a trusted expert. Thought leadership is often most effective when you showcase unique experiences and POVs and offer valuable solutions to relatable challenges.
3. Emotional connection: People will remember that you made them feel something; tell powerful stories that matter to your audience and help them along their journey! Video content is a great option because humans react to other humans more than they do images, text, or other types of content.
4. Engagement and community building: You can engage with existing communities and conversations, and you can also create your own. For example, we attended INBOUND to rub elbows with marketing leaders (check out our Hot Takes series on YouTube to see clips!), and we also co-founded the AI Marketing Alliance for leaders who want to learn more about AI solutions.
5. Multimedia emphasis: Multimodal content contains more than one type of asset, like this blog that contains video snippets. We recommend going big on video this year as it's becoming table stakes for top companies, but there's still room to use it to differentiate yourself with creative video content.

It's worth noting that if video intimidates you, repurposing might be your new best friend. If you've hosted webinars or other events in the last few years, you can use Goldcast Content Lab to quickly turn those full-length recordings into valuable videos you can share on social, in blogs, and across other platforms.

Oh, and did we mention it's free?

Mindshare isn't about having a huge marketing budget. It's also not about luck. What works to build Mindshare is consistency and intention. You want to double down on strategies that position you as a leading voice in your industry and get you in front of a wide audience of potential customers.

Here are some ways to successfully create Mindshare:

We're all doing content marketing at this point. Mindshare requires that you put forward your best content — the thought leadership videos, podcast interviews, in-depth whitepapers, compelling case studies, and other assets that will help position you as an industry authority.

Ideally, your content is not only valuable, but it also sparks conversation and emotion, spurring people to share it on their own pages and in communities they're in. Informative content that moves people is going to get shared more often than a boring, paint-by-numbers blog, and those shares help you raise your visibility among buyers.

Remember that thought leadership content isn't just slapping together an article and putting your CEO's name on it. Your audience wants to know what makes this particular leader's POV more interesting or different than others they've seen. They want to feel like they're being let into an industry secret, one that will transform the way they work.

Here are some ideas for Mindshare-focused content:

• Conduct original market research and summarize what you find, like we do in our annual B2B Webinar Benchmark Report
• Pay attention to the questions people are asking online, and then host a webinar aimed at addressing them
• Create on-brand, engaging playbooks people can use to try new tactics that are specific to your space — check out this playbook on how Eye Security boosts registrations as an example
• Host an all-star panel discussion and turn that video into micro-video clips each leader who participated can share to their own networks

We just talked about how powerful referrals can be. It's impossible to build Mindshare alone, so look for strategic partners that can boost your reach and credibility. A great place to start is combing through your customer database; you likely have a solid number of fans that you can ask to help!

A good rule of thumb is to avoid partnering with direct competitors, as you'll just split your audience when they're ready to buy. You want to look for industry leaders, influencers, and complementary service providers that can help you reach new markets and possibly strengthen both of your offerings.

The AI Marketing Alliance is a great example of a successful co-marketing initiative. We sponsor the event alongside 6sense and Intelligent Demand, and we're all able to get in front of new marketing leaders through the virtual events and outreach efforts. We have expert guests appear at our events, and that further amplifies the reach because they individually post video snippets and other follow-up material after each event.

Your audience encounters tons of content each day. Make it easy for them to recognize it's you by staying consistent with your branding, logos, messaging, and voice. You can change it up to an extent as you adapt to different platforms, but it should never be unclear that it's you behind the marketing.

Consistency also fosters trust, which we already know is key to winning people's business. Goldcast Content Lab is a great tool to help you streamline the language you use — within Content Lab, there's a Brand Voice feature that allows you to develop and refine your brand tone and apply different voices to different posts (making it easy to create fresh content for different thought leaders!).

Mindshare isn't built solely by broadcasting your message across platforms. You should also create spaces to share those messages, spaces where people can connect, learn, and grow together. A strong event strategy — whether that includes summits, trade shows, webinars, or something else — fosters an ongoing connection between you and attendees and creates a huge content archive for you to draw from.

Think about times it would make sense for your brand to host, sponsor, or partner with a company to put on a valuable, engaging event. Be sure to capture high-impact content from attendees and thought leaders during the event, and then use the resulting videos and other content to further promote your brand.

Mindshare isn't just mind over matter — you can't will your way there, and you also can't churn out a ton of content in the short-term and check Mindshare off your list. Avoid these two big mistakes as you begin.

With all of the AI tools available at your fingertips, it might be tempting to think that quadrupling your content production is the answer. After all, with that much content, won't you be more visible than ever?

This sort of approach usually backfires because it dilutes your brand voice, cheapening your image. You also run the risk of straight up annoying people, which you never want to do! Don't undermine yourself — start slow and steady, and focus on content that genuinely shapes how people think and adds to the conversation.

A great place to start is monitoring what people are talking about on social media. Perhaps you can collect some observations about a topic and then share data-backed insights that add value. Or maybe you host an event, giving people a space to talk about that topic together, and compile the key takeaways and a few video clips to share on your blog.

Mindshare is a marathon, not a sprint. Results take time, so don't get derailed by looking at the short-term KPIs we so often highlight. Be intentional with your initial strategy, and remind yourself that this is about overall brand-building, not immediate financial impact.

Refer back to the companies we've already highlighted if you need inspiration. HubSpot is almost 20 years old at this point — and they're currently valued at $20 billion! But they didn't get there overnight by any means.

It took time to win people over to the inbound marketing model, and HubSpot kept at it until that happened, investing in:

• Consistent brand building
• Community development efforts
• Technological innovations that made life easier for HubSpot's end users
• Thought leadership that added to industry conversations

Look to any other established B2B giant and you'll likely see a similar trajectory. Mindshare takes time, but it's worth it!

Although we can't always use traditional KPIs like deals won or revenue generated, we can look at more holistic metrics.

Some examples include:

• Content engagement. Are people commenting on your posts? Is your content being shared? Are you garnering more impressions than before?
• Event performance. How many community members attend your events? What's their feedback after an event?
• Video performance. Are the videos about your most important topics being watched? If so, for how long? How many people are watching and sharing?
• Name drops. Do people tell you they've heard about you before you're aware of them? Are you being mentioned in industry speeches or recognized in round-up lists? That's a great indication you're building Mindshare!
• Partner invitations. Are more brands asking to work or collaborate with you? That's also a wonderful sign.
• Raving fans. Raving fans are the ones who are most excited about your brand, and when you start to see these folks sharing their stories, you'll know you're moving in the right direction.

You may identify other ways to measure progress, depending on your specific strategy. We'd love to hear how you go about tracking Mindshare once you've got it set up!

As we begin our year, we urge you to focus on building strong Mindshare. Competition in the B2B space is only intensifying, and brand trust and recognition will be the only way to win buyers over.

If you haven't already started, there's no better time to lay the Mindshare foundation than now!

Start by auditing your current position. Be honest — how deeply does your brand resonate with the decision-makers you most want to reach? How effective is your content? How strong is the community you've created? How do you stack up against competitors? The answers to these questions can provide guidance in where you need to do the most work to create Mindshare momentum. 

From there, establish some goals around text, video, and multimodal content to bring your brand to the forefront. Talk to your team and your C-suite, and get everyone on board with your Mindshare goals. Look for AI tools that can support you and save you time and money — and then go all-in on consistency. Regularly publish content, connect with your audience frequently, and work to nurture key partnerships and relationships that will move you along.

The proactive steps you take right now can pay massive Mindshare dividends when it comes to market perception and brand competitiveness. So don't delay!

If you're ready to start building Mindshare, check out Goldcast Content Lab. It's totally free to use, and it helps you create consistent, high-quality content (including videos!) that will get your message out there. If you've got just an hour of video content, upload it to Content Lab and see what it can do in a few seconds!

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