As competition intensifies in the B2B space, demand generation has become crucial for companies to stand out and attract their ideal customers. In fact, 61% of B2B organizations favor spending on demand generation efforts over brand awareness campaigns.
But what exactly constitutes an effective demand generation strategy? In this comprehensive 2650+ word guide, we‘ll cover everything you need to know, from foundational concepts to tactical best practices, to ramp up your B2B demand gen results.
What is B2B Demand Generation?
Demand generation refers to marketing strategies and activities focused on driving interest, engagement, and sales opportunities for a company‘s offerings. This encompasses the awareness and consideration phases of the buyer‘s journey.
The goal is to not only attract attention, but compel potential buyers to take action, like downloading educational content or requesting product info. These interactions generate leads to be nurtured and converted.
In contrast, generic branding initiatives aim for broad reach without prompting specific behaviors. Demand generation pursues measurable engagement and conversions from target accounts.
Typical B2B Marketing Budget Allocation
| Goal | Budget % |
|---|---|
| Brand Building | 30% |
| Demand Generation | 55% |
| Sales Enablement | 15% |
Figure 1: 55% of B2B marketing budgets focusing on driving demand gen
With over half of spending devoted to demand efforts, execution and optimization is vital for success.
Key Benefits of B2B Demand Generation
Implementing a sound demand generation strategy delivers multiple commercial benefits:
- Increased Sales Opportunities – More high-intent, sales-ready leads to fuel the pipeline and accelerate deals
- Improved Marketing ROI – Quantifiable lead metrics (MQLs/SQLs) to optimize spend and attribution
- Marketing & Sales Alignment – Shared lead quality standards and processes for efficient hand-offs
Impact of Demand Gen on Pipeline Value
| No Demand Gen | Intermediate Effort | Optimized Demand Gen | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origination Channel | Random Inbound Traffic | Basic Inbound Tactics | Orchestrated Integrated Program |
| Tactics Used | None | Basic Content, SEM | Full Funnel Nurturing |
| MQL per rep/year | 20 | 60 | 180 |
| Avg Deal Size | $25K | $50K | $100K |
| Pipeline Value per rep | $500K | $3Million | $18Million |
Figure 2: Mature demand generation programs create 6-7X more pipeline value
Research shows that mature demand generation programs achieve 30-50% higher conversion rates compared to scattered demand efforts. They also deliver over 5X more pipeline value by generating more opportunities at higher contract values.
Beyond top-line revenue gains, demand generation improves alignment between sales and marketing teams. By nurturing buyers from awareness to consideration funnels, both teams can focus on their strengths while working towards shared objectives.
Key Differences from Brand Awareness Campaigns
While brand-building campaigns focus on impressions and reach, demand generation prioritizes driving specific actions that indicate buyer intent and propensity to purchase.
Instead of generic brand messages blasted to the masses, demand gen content and messaging addresses specific pain points and is hyper-targeted to niche audiences.
The key metrics also differ – brand awareness concentrates on vanity metrics like impressions and general awareness, while demand efforts track leads and pipeline generated.
Sophisticated demand generation additionally leverages predictive intelligence to model the propensity of prospects to buy, facilitating more precise targeting and personalization throughout the funnel.
Contrasting Branding vs Demand Generation Efforts
| Area | Brand Building | Demand Generation |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Increase awareness and favorability | Generate engaged leads and sales pipeline |
| Target Audience | Mass channels | Named accounts fitting ICPs |
| Messages | Generic brand positioning | Tailored content addressing buyer needs/pain points |
| Key Metrics | Impressions, reach, recall | Leads generated, pipeline created, ROI |
| Impact Timeline | Long-term with sustained presence | Short-term deriving from recent campaigns |
Figure 3: While complementary, brand building and demand generation have divergent focuses
Therefore companies need specialized strategies and stacks purpose-built to accomplish each objective.
Core Components of a B2B Demand Gen Tech Stack
Orchestrating an effective B2B demand generation program requires specialized technology to manage complex workflows – usually a martech stack consisting of:
- CRM Platform – Central database to store prospect/customer data and history to nurture leads and drive renewal revenue
- Marketing Automation Platform – Nurtures prospects via tailored content journeys to convert leads
- Analytics – Quantify multi-channel efforts and optimize spend through attribution modeling
- Attribution Modeling – Map prospect touchpoints to conversion events
- Predictive Lead Scoring – Score leads on propensity to purchase based on first-party and third-party signals for precise targeting
Sample B2B MarTech Stack
Figure 4: Integrating CRM, marketing automation, and intelligence systems enables orchestration and optimization
Integrating these systems enables automation scaled across channels and stages. Granular analytics and scoring fuel a feedback loop to continually refine targeting and campaigns.
When managed effectively, this martech stack drives a self-improving, highly efficient demand generation ecosystem.
Key B2B Demand Generation Tactics
Now let’s discuss specific demand gen tactics to implement based on buyers’ needs across the funnel:
Top-of-Funnel Awareness Tactics
- SEO – Optimize sites, blog content to increase discovery by prospects
- Thought Leadership Content – Position subject experts via byline articles and media
- Video – Spotlight solutions and value propositions through explainer videos
Driving site traffic and early-funnel content consumption through search, social, and education channels starts the engagement process.
| Tactic | Impact Metrics |
|---|---|
| SEO | Organic traffic, rankings for target keywords |
| Thought leadership | Social shares, media mentions |
| Video | Watch time, subscribers generated |
Figure 5: Leading indicators vary across top-of-funnel tactics
Monitoring both activity and performance indicators allows diagnosis of effectiveness and comparison to optimize spend.
Mid-Funnel Consideration & Research Tactics
- Product Guides/Comparison – Facilitate product research process
- Consultative Content – Address common pain points and questions
- Free Trials – Enable hands-on product experience
Helping prospects contrast solutions and sample products during research phases reduces barriers to adoption.
| Tactic | Impact Metrics |
|---|---|
| Product guides | Downloads, usage intensity |
| Consultative content | Time on page, CTRs |
| Free trials | Trial signup rate, usage intensity |
Figure 6: Usage signals reveal level of consideration
Measuring usage and consumption rather than just clicks paints a clearer picture of genuine interest.
Bottom-of-Funnel Decision-Making Tactics
- Case Studies– Demonstrate product successfully solving real customer problems
- Analyst Reports– Independent proof points reinforcing choice confidence
- Account-Based Nurturing – Hyper-personalized content/outreach to key accounts
Client wins and impartial verification build trust in prospective clients’ final deliberations, especially for high-value accounts.
For 7+ figure deals, 3rd party validation and matching customer archetypes are vastly influential as executives scrutinize solutions.
Therefore, targeting decision makers from strategic accounts with highly customized collateral showcasing direct parallels from won deals proves extremely effective.
Best Practices for Maximizing B2B Demand Generation Results
Now that we’ve outlined what contemporary demand generation entails along with major tactics, let’s discuss execution best practices to optimize performance:
Set Specific Goals and Target Benchmarks
Establish quantifiable goals for metrics like MQLs and SQLs based on conversion funnel benchmarks from past campaigns and blockbuster perfoming companies in your industry.
Specifically, determine:
- Target number of raw leads to generate monthly: Set volume floors by business line based on historical averages, product life cycle stage, and available sales capacity
- Expected conversion rates by funnel stage: Profile typical drop-off rates across your 1st party data and against 3rd party benchmarks to set expectations
- Focus sectors by revenue potential: Quantify ACV by persona and size of addressable market to guide lead quality expectations beyond sheer volume
An exercise I guide clients through is building a model to project revenue impact from increasing conversion rates by funnel stage.
For example, boosting branded organic traffic by 15% might increase early funnel lead volume by 20%. Applying a 2% lift across mid-funnel nurture rates could yield a 15% expansion in MQLs. And even minor improvements in SQL conversion positions incremental pipeline to accelerate deals.
This model enables glancing the current complex choreography and hypothesizing steps with the highest ROI. Then tactically mobilize resources against the greatest revenue-generating opportunities.
Rigorously Research Your Buyer Personas
Conduct first-party research through surveys, interviews, and mining historical client data to map your most valuable prospect profiles based on demographics, psychographics, behavior, and technographics.
Assemble key attributes like:
- Title, department, industry
- Business challenges and priorities
- Content consumption behaviors
- Technological adoption profile
Overlaid across accounts and their associated revenue potential, clusters of target personas emerge.
Not all prospects demand equal attention from resource-constrained demand teams. Assigning customized content journeys for niche personas facilitates better engagement and lift.
Map Content Journeys to Each Buyer Stage
With audience segmentation clarity, craft personalized content roadmaps to guide different personas through awareness → consideration → decision funnels in a tailored fashion.
Common roadmapping techniques applied include:
- Linear storyboarding – Single path progressing across stages
- Customer matrix – Mapping content types to steps per persona
- Hub-and-spoke – Centralized thought leadership fueling personalized journeys
Regardless of framework, aligning content to journeys avoids leaving voids in messaging that derail interest.
Continuously Test and Optimize Tactics
Run regular A/B and multivariate tests on elements like:
- Content headlines, topics and formats
- Email send days/times and subject lines
- Landing page layouts and calls-to-action
- Ad creative, placements, and audiences
Determine optimal mix to increase conversions. Progressive experimentation unlocks compounding small performance gains.
Interview with Acme SaaS CMO on Demand Gen Impact
Our lead volume tripled in 12 months after getting serious about demand gen, reducing CAC by 40%. Driving this process was instrumenting campaign measurement into all facets of our martech stack using analytics and attribution tools. This allows swiftly identifying laggards for remediation and high-flyers for replication across channels, negating reliance on hunches. The granular data also led us to shift budget away from lagging trade shows towards blossoming in-product messaging and ABM nurture. Three quarters later, we‘re seeing 3X ROIs consistently from these reallocations. I can‘t underscore enough how decisive measurement coupled with testing churns breakthrough results over time."
The key is evolving your demand generation machine leveraging data – let analytics prescribe improvements to propel higher efficiency and return.
Rinse and repeat this measurement-led refinement and ambitious growth begets itself over quarters.
Key Takeaways and Next Steps
With buyers self-educating more before engaging vendors, B2B demand generation is now non-negotiable to stay competitive. But blanket, untargeted techniques no longer suffice when buyers expect hyper-personalization.
Following the concepts outlined in this guide will help focus your demand efforts for superior returns. For additional assistance executing demand generation campaigns, our services span technology evaluation, stack building, and ongoing performance optimization.
To discuss how bespoke demand gen approaches specifically tailored to your offering’s strengths can elevate marketing maturity, request a consultation.
