Marketing your business to other businesses requires a different approach when compared to marketing to consumers. While there are many different B2B marketing methods and tools you can employ, among the most effective solutions is demand generation. When properly implemented, demand generation should help you increase your sales.
Like all types of marketing, any demand generation marketing techniques you use should be adapted as the market changes. If you have yet to add demand generation to your marketing campaigns, you could be minimizing the amount of sales you can earn. In this guide, you’ll learn all there is to know about B2B demand generation and how it can bolster sales.
What is Demand Generation?
B2B refers to business to business, which means that B2B demand generation involves generating demand between different businesses. This marketing technique focuses on boosting brand demand and awareness for a service or product that your business offers. If you use this technique effectively, your business may be able to grow at a quicker rate. Demand generation can be used alongside additional marketing methods that deliver more organic results.
Demand Generation vs. Lead Generation
Lead generation is considered to be a part of demand generation. The demand generation process is a top-of-funnel process that allows you to build interest and awareness with your main audience. Lead generation gives you the opportunity to obtain contact details from the individuals who showed interest while also encouraging these same individuals to become marketing qualified leads.
The qualified leads can then be given to the sales team to qualify them. Once the leads get to this stage, they are in the middle of the sales funnel. After the leads are accepted, they turn into sales qualified leads. If this process goes well, the sales qualified leads will become customers.
How Does B2B Demand Generation Work?
Building demand with a demand generation campaign isn’t a simple process. The sales and marketing teams should work together to foster this demand, which is done by creating the right message that your company can deliver to another company. Since you are advertising to other businesses, you should focus on making your company appealing to decision makers and other heads of companies.
Different teams will work on different aspects of this marketing technique. For instance, your field marketing team can sponsor and host B2B trade shows. They can also speak with PR agencies to build brand awareness. In many situations, field marketing teams will work alongside local partners to generate leads via content syndication.
Anyone who’s working on developing global marketing campaigns can spend their time on creating high-impact webinars and collaborating with product marketing and product management teams to develop new assets. These assets will be used for content syndication.
If you have a social media team, they will work on paid social media and organic marketing materials to bring traffic to your website and increase your follower base, which should result in additional leads. This team typically uses such tools as SEMrush to discover new advertising opportunities.
Why is Demand Generation Important?
Demand generation has proven to be important because it allows businesses to enhance growth. Without performing demand generation, it can be challenging to get ahead of the competition in a saturated marketplace. Keep in mind that demand generation can help you bring in new customers and investors, the latter of which may be needed if you’ve just started a business.
If you don’t use demand generation, you would be tasked with solely relying on organic techniques and your sales team to attract new customers, which can lead to slower business growth.
How Do B2B Marketers Stimulate Demand?
B2B marketers are able to cultivate demand by providing the right persona with the right message. In most cases, the best solution is to focus on communicating the value of your business and the offerings you provide.
When it comes to B2B marketplaces, you’ll be doing business with influencers and decision-makers. Each persona requires a unique message if you want to capture their interest and increase your sales. Let’s say that your company sells software. You should have separate messages for the people who use your software and the decision-makers.
Each persona has different goals with the software you provide. Before starting this process, you should have a thorough understanding of your target audience, after which you can find the best channels to deliver your company’s message. A quick way to generate leads in B2B marketing is with one-on-one meetings.
What are Demand Generation Campaigns?
Demand generation campaigns are performed through different channels to build awareness and interest with your primary audience. You can measure the performance of these campaigns with a metric known as campaign responses. Some examples of the campaign responses you can receive include:
- An individual downloading an asset
- An individual taking part in a live chat
- An individual attending a webinar
Even though lead generation and demand generation are two different things, most demand generation campaigns will include elements of lead generation. Demand generation campaigns are usually centered around two different audiences, which include the people who are currently in your database and the people who have yet to be part of this database.
For the people who are already your customers, your goal should be to activate these leads. When considering the individuals who aren’t part of your database, you’ll gain this audience through lead generation. There can be many different components of a demand generation campaign, which can include:
- Public relations
- Paid social and search media
- Events
- Webinars
- Community buildup
- Content syndication
Creating a Demand Generation Strategy
If you want to create a demand generation strategy, begin by developing numerous persona templates. Once you fully understand your audience, you can set goals for this campaign. Your next step involves identifying the ideal channels to use when trying to reach your primary audience. You can then build campaigns for the individual channels, each of which should have an integrated message.
An essential aspect of demand generation involves conversation rate optimization (CRO). Marketing channels and company messages should be tested and altered if you want to continue improving your results. Campaigns are rarely launched with almost perfect conversion rates. Your demand generation strategy should also be flexible since you’ll be implementing things you’ve learned from previous marketing campaigns.
7 Proven B2B Demand Generation Tactics
There are numerous tactics you can use to improve your demand generation efforts, seven of which are detailed below.
Content Creation
The content you create should promote your products to businesses that might be interested. Make sure that you show the most important details of your product and how businesses can benefit from it. Engaging content can be created with everything from videos to in-person events. Content marketing strategies and techniques can be used to enhance your content creation.
Engagement Focused Social Media Marketing
When using social media effectively, it’s possible to build demand for your products and boost overall engagement. Your social media marketing materials should be geared towards the decision-makers in the businesses you want to appeal to.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a highly common advertising method that’s used to generate leads. However, you should consider looking specifically at quality leads, which means that your emails should be read by the individuals who are tasked with making decisions for the businesses they work for.
Live Chats
You should also consider using live chats as part of your demand generation strategy. Decision makers and business managers who reach your website can click the live chat button to speak directly with someone in your company, which will likely involve an individual from your lead generation department or sales team. Being able to speak directly with this person gives you the opportunity to describe the benefits of your service or product.
Create Demand Funnels
Even though demand funnels differ somewhat depending on the type of business and target audience, you should try to generate demand at every stage of the sales funnel. At the top of the sales funnel, you can develop prospect campaigns that are directed towards your main audiences to build awareness for your service or product.
You should also use CRM data to operate an account-based marketing campaign (ABM) at the middle of the funnel. From here, you can use pixel data to effectively retarget possible customers who have visited your site but haven’t converted.
Build Search Authority
Hosting webinars and attending trade shows for your top-paying customers can help you generate new leads. An important goal in all of these demand generation events is to demonstrate why your service or product is needed. You can also go into detail about the problems you believe your company can solve.
Integrate CRM and Marketing Automation
Customer relationship management (CRM) involves a company collecting and organizing information from existing customers and new leads. This software is regularly used during the sales process to keep track of all interactions a customer has had with your business. When the sales team looks at this information, they can optimize the marketing materials they create and the follow-up meetings they have with potential customers.
Marketing automation occurs when targeted messages are sent to qualified leads based entirely on where these leads are within the sales funnel. If you use automation with the CRM data you gather, you should be able to more effectively keep interested leads engaged until they become customers. For instance, reminders can be sent to potential customers who haven’t yet made the last conversion.
Demand generation should be an integral component of any B2B marketing campaign you develop. This technique gives you the opportunity to inform possible customers about your company and everything you offer. When implemented correctly, this strategy should also help you stand out among the competition since you’ll be reaching people at all stages of the sales funnel. Use every B2B marketing tool that’s available to you to create a robust demand generation strategy.
