In 2025, businesses face a complex landscape: consumers are saturated with messages and increasingly demand brand authenticity. In this context, two key marketing goals — lead generation and brand awareness — not only coexist, but must be integrated into a single strategy to maximise results.
Leads and branding: two approaches, different goals
Lead generation is the process of attracting interest from potential customers, capturing their data (e.g. email), and nurturing them to convert into sales. In 2025, half of marketing professionals in Spain state that lead generation is their top priority.
Brand awareness, on the other hand, is about ensuring the audience recognises and trusts your brand — even before a specific need arises. According to the Spanish Forum of Renowned Brands, over 82% of consumers choose brands they already know.
Combining forces for more effective marketing
A lead-only strategy may deliver short-term results, but without a visible and memorable brand, performance drops as soon as direct investment stops. Conversely, focusing solely on brand awareness may build recognition, but without a plan to activate that interest, it won’t convert into sales.
The ideal is to combine both: brand awareness creates a context of trust, while leads deliver measurable results. This integration — sometimes referred to as a 360° strategy — synchronises media, content, experiences, social networks, email, SEO, automation, and AI.
Keys to combining visibility and conversion
1.- Define the buyer’s journey
Start with valuable, educational content to spark curiosity (blog, videos, podcasts).
Once attention is captured, offer lead magnets in exchange for data (e-book, webinar, free trial).
Finally, retain and nurture those leads with personalised email marketing. In 2025, email marketing continues to offer an excellent ROI: for every euro invested, €38 in revenue is generated, and 60% of consumers say they make monthly purchases influenced by brand emails.
2.- Balance your budget
There’s no one-size-fits-all rule, but around 46% of investment should go to branding, and 54% to activation (lead generation), particularly in B2B.
Adjust based on industry and business size: startups prioritise leads, established brands focus more on reinforcing brand equity.
3.- Make the most of digital and social channels
SEO and inbound marketing remain essential: they attract users at first contact and help convert them into leads.
User Generated Content (UGC), such as reviews or microcontent, is highly effective: 90% of purchases are influenced by UGC, which costs 50% less per click and generates four times the clicks of traditional advertising.
On social media, brands increasingly work with influencers for more credible and targeted reach — an investment that continues to perform strongly.
4.- Innovate with AI and automation
AI allows real-time data analysis and message personalisation based on the buyer’s journey stage, improving lead quality and campaign performance.
Automation tools can handle thousands of contacts individually, nurturing them in a smart and scalable way.
5.- Measure what matters
For awareness: track metrics like reach, impressions, organic traffic, mentions, and engagement (UGC).
For leads: track number of signups, quality (scoring), conversion rate, and cost per lead (CPL). It’s estimated that 12% of marketers don’t properly measure their leads, so rigorous tracking is essential.
Top 2025 marketing trends
Digital marketing trends for 2025 highlight how AI and personalisation drive efficiency — without replacing human creativity.
Interaction with user-generated and genuinely valuable content builds greater consumer trust.
Experiential marketing (events, immersive experiences) continues to grow as a way to connect emotionally and strengthen brand positioning.
To be truly effective in 2025, marketing strategy shouldn’t choose between generating leads or building awareness — both are essential.
Awareness provides the fertile ground for lead generation campaigns to flourish.
Leads offer measurable outcomes and help fine-tune investment according to the sales cycle.
Technologies like AI, user-generated content, and immersive experiences make campaigns smarter, more credible, and more connected to audiences.
With this integrated approach, at PGR Marketing & Technology we design strategies that work both short- and long-term — generating sales, trust, and customer loyalty in an increasingly demanding market.
