For B2B companies, enticing new clients is crucial for success and growth. However, maintaining a steady stream of new businesses can be quite challenging.
This is where B2B demand generation becomes important. Demand generation strategies can help your B2B company create demand for your services and products, which in turn earn more clients and leads.
What Exactly is Demand Generation?
In its simplest form, demand generation is the process of creating awareness for your services orproducts to drive revenue.
Before a potential customer can want what you are offering, they first need to know that you exist and can offer the value that they seek. Demand generation is a multi-step process that targets a pre-defined audience in order to introduce your brand as the perfect solution for their problems.
Demand generation initiates the very first step in building customer relationships and should not be confused with lead generation.
Demand Generation VS. Lead Generation: What Makes Them Different?
Marketing teams become more complicated recently. With innovative technologies recently hitting the market, new roles also start to emerge. And the line between who does what starts to get even more blurry with a lot of us having little to no understanding what our marketing teammates do.
And if there’s a marketing role that confuses people the most, it is most likely the definition between lead generation and demand generation. Not only are they broad, but most people refer to them as the same thing.
And while these roles are usually overseen by the same individual and most of the times overlap, they are different, fundamentally speaking.
As mentioned earlier, demand generation is the “what” a brand makes to drive awareness and capture interest and attention. This is what makes a consumer engaged with a brand without even having tried a service or a product.
Primarily taking the top funnel approach, demand generation is the initial touchpointand education which positions your business for future engagements with your prospects. It tells people who you are and what you can do in order to help them.
In addition, demand generation usually gives away content freely to drive brand awareness.
Lead generation, on the other hand, is the “how” a brand turns the awareness created by the demand generation process into conversions and sales. This process focuses more on driving inquiry and interest in particular services or products. It takes the lower to mid-funnel nurturing strategies and prioritizes collecting customer data as well as building trust and loyalty over time.
Picking up where demand generation leaves off, lead generation delivers a consistent relevant message to identified prospects. The aim here is to cultivate a customer relationship and continuing to qualify leads for a sale all through the later stages of the customer’s journey.
10 B2B Demand Generation Strategies That Drive Results
- Partnering With Industry Superstars on Webinars
Specific brands, such as startups and tech companies, phone it in when it comes to doing B2B conferences and webinars. And while they are relatively easy to produce and do not need much of a production overhead, but if you don’t give it your all, why would people pay attention to them?
If webinars are honing to be a part of your strategy, then you need to do it your best and only partner with the “celebrities” of your industry. Doing so can increase your standing in your line of business, boost brand awareness and create valuable connections with key influencers.
- Develop Free Tools, Resources or App
Everybody loves free resources that add value to their daily tasks. And developing free tools can help your customers solve a problem, complimenting your core products and increasing the demand for your services. Although it requires a lot of resources and investment, it should bring you higher ROI in the long term.
- Social Media Marketing
Social platforms are not just a B2C marketing tool. A survey revealed that 75% of B2B executives get more their content via peer connection or social networks now than they in the past few years. In addition, 100 percent of business decision-makers also use social media platforms for work purposes.
The most important part of your social strategy is that you need to build a relationship with your audience so that they see you as a problem solver and a thought leader in order to really build trust and increase demand.
- Giveaways
Whether it is a free offer, a content download or other promotional campaign, make sure to give only the very best stuff Even though this might seem counterintuitive, offering giveaways of real values consistently has several benefits.
First, it creates a sense of trust, so your audience is more likely to come back to your website or content. Second, it reflects well on your brand that enthusiastic prospects can take things further and advocate for your brand, becoming your own “brand ambassadors”. Finally, by giving them something of value, your audience is more willing to give you whatever info you need to start qualifying them as a potential lead.
- Invest in Content Creation
Quality content plays a crucial role in the success of your demand generation strategy. This is because it helps potential customers to learn more about your business as well as positioning you as an authority in your line of business.
Your content can include anything from press releases, blog posts, eBooks, case studies, infographics, and so much more.
If you are already publishing content on a regular basis, then you need to make think of how you can make it more valuable to your audience. To set your business apart, you can try adding original research and data while providing timely insights on the latest industry trends and news can help attract traffic to your site.
The most important piece of content marketing strategy is matching the content with your prospect’s pain points, content preferences, readiness to buy and where they are at in their buying journey.
You will have to ask yourself or your sales team questions like:
- What are some of the common objections of my prospects?
- What are their pain points and questions?
- How do they make buying decisions?
- Who are my ideal customers and prospects?
Use the answers to such questions to guide the contents you create, making it more relevant and attracting more suitable and higher quality leads.
- Share Informative Videos
Video is considered to be one of the most effective ways to engage and attract internet users. As a result, developing and sharing videos that demonstrate your services and products can help you reach potential clients and increasing the demand for your business.
In addition, videos do not require expensive equipment or actors. With some basic video editing skills and a camera, you can start including video marketing to your demand generation strategy now!
- Align Marketing and Sales
Marketing and sales are teams that work better together, especially with demand generation.
Marketing kick starts the demand generation process with top of the funnel campaigns with Sales following up with sales-ready prospects in order to close the deal.
So, when launching demand generation campaigns, make sure that your efforts are communicated and well-coordinated across marketing and sales.
- Optimize Your Email Marketing
Still a powerful medium, email marketing is an incredible component of your demand generation campaigns.
In terms of email marketing, understand that A/B testing is essentials and that the saying “less is more” applies. Instead of blasting your email lists all the time, you need to work smarter and not harder.
Everything in your email campaigns needs to be A/B tested to make sure that your emails are performing as strongly as they can. Also, from the headline length and subject line copy to the linking strategies and offering placements need to be tested in order to make informed decisions about your email marketing campaigns based on hard data instead of assumptions.
- Influencer Marketing
Related Post: How to Grow Your Brand With Influencer Marketing in 2020
What famous people use instantly becomes desirable.
In fact, a recent survey revealed that 94 percent of marketers found influencer marketing to be effective, especially in creating authentic content around your business. By partnering with an influencer, you gain exposure and increase the demand for your serviceor products.
For the best results, you can also join and partner influencers who share your attitude, similar values, and complimentary market.
- Launch Online Ads
Online advertising has grown by at least $1B every year since 2017 in the B2B space.
In an ideal world, you can focus all your demand generation strategies on organic channels, however with the industry trends of today, online advertising is definitely an effective way for you to quickly meet your marketing KPIs.
Consider launching ads on the topmost preferred online ad platforms for B2B customers— Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
Final Thoughts
If you build it, people will likely not come. However, if you generate demand utilizing the above strategies and place your products or services as the best possible solution to a particular problem, then you will keep your sales team busy, very busy.
