Why Your Business Needs a B2B Demand Generation Strategy

At times, go-to-market teams don’t realize that customers lack interest in promoted brands. If so, lead generation campaigns might bring in little to no leads.

So unless the target audiences know what your company does and what deliverables they might get, you can’t expect impressive results from lead gen campaigns. To rectify this situation, you must generate buzz and represent yourself as a unique and authoritative industry player. That’s what b2b demand generation is all about.

What Is Demand Generation?

Simply put, demand generation encompasses marketing practices that drive customer awareness and interest in your company without converting. So the entire messaging in b2b demand gen campaign aims to demonstrate your competency and expertise in the industry you represent.

Unlike the lead generation that prioritizes last-click conversions, demand generation success is measured by engagement metrics. Demand gen teams keep an eye on KPIs like increased traffic, email subscriptions, and number of likes and shares to ensure that people are interested in things you communicate online.

Key Benefits of Demand Generation for B2B Businesses

Although demand gen efforts don’t encourage the target audience to convert, they pay off with increased engagement and expanded audience reach. Most b2b companies investing in lead generation find it beneficial due to the following:

• Increased Brand Awareness. Keeping customers aware of what you do is crucial whether you’re a novice or an authoritative company. By working on brand awareness, you simultaneously strengthen customers’ trust as they engage with your content and recognize its value.
• Increased Number of Leads. Although you don’t pull leads to the funnel right now, better brand recognition and approval is an excellent investment into future conversions. It’s a fertile ground for further lead-generation campaigns and continuous revenue growth.
• Audience Expansion. If you’re just starting out the business or wish to expand to new markets, demand generation can help you reach potential customers. It helps high-intent audiences to discover your brand and keep you on their radar.
• Increased Traffic. Keyword ownership underlies every successful demand-generation strategy. Therefore, investing in SEO and paid search advertising is highly recommended as it yields tons of site visitors wanting to learn more about your niche or product type.

How to Make Most of Multi-Channel Demand Generation

Since everyone in the b2b world has gone digital, there’s no other way to stay afloat with your demand generation than work out a multi-channel strategy. That said, expanding your online presence must be purposeful and data-driven.

That’s why you must determine an ideal customer profile to supply a demand-gen campaign with essential targeting criteria.

Why ICP Matters for Growth-Oriented Demand Gen Marketing

ICP development brings a solid and universal vision of the high-value and high-intent prospects your demand generation strategy should focus on. It’s vital to align demand-gen marketing with ICP marketing goals so that its campaigns can contribute to an overall growth-oriented strategy.

ICP provides relevant targeting сriteria so lead gen specialists can set paid search and paid social campaigns that reach the most high-value prospects. It ensures a fast return on investments in the long run, as ICP-fit prospects stand out with the shortest sales cycles and generate maximum lifetime value. 

Making the Most of Paid Social Channels

Suppose you’ve solidified your ICP based on the history of best sale opportunities. Yet, you need to source the customer data that matches ICP attributes and reach those prospects via Facebook or LinkedIn.

The problem is that list-based audiences fetched from third-party data providers typically miss the person-level data points like email and phone number. Without them, the ad network would match only around 20-30% of your targeted list with the existing members.

To work around this problem, we advise leveraging b2b data enrichment through Primer. This data orchestration platform sources firmographic, demographic, and intent data from 10+ DPR and CCPA-compliant data providers. Primer merges disparate records and appends data points that ensure high network match rates. Eventually, you can increase audience matching up to 80-90%.

The Importance of Joint Marketing and Sales Efforts

Joining marketing and sales efforts is the right thing to build precise and customer-centered messaging. Demand generation is all about educating audiences and helping them with typical issues they deal with while still being far from considering which vendor to apply.

So feel free to ask salespeople about common concerns and requests they’ve heard from customers. See if you can explain some of these concerns in your lead gen content.

Best Marketing Practices to Adapt

To succeed in b2b demand generation, you must leverage diverse practices. But don’t forget to test, measure and access each undertaking. Remember that each niche has its specifics, and there’s no one size fits all solution.

We’d primarily recommend you focus on the following:

• Content marketing. Blog posts, tweets, case studies, email newsletters, and white papers – use all these pieces of content and always cross-link them to synergize their impact. Thus, you’ll manage to reach an impressive audience retention.
• Interactive content. Encourage site visitors and followers to interact with your creatives. For instance, you can launch quizzes with personalized responses that deliver an immersive experience.
• Offer Useful Free Stuff. People appreciate when you share things like calculators, small online tools, and eBooks for free. Besides, they willingly leave their contacts in exchange for such free offers, so this tactic also serves well to lead generation.