6 Essential Tips to Boost B2B Demand Generation

At Leadium, we specialize in top quality B2B lead generation - this means we're experts at getting your business qualified leads and stratospheric conversion rates. But businesses often confuse lead generation with something altogether different: demand generation. Though both lead generation and demand generation - often called 'demand gen' - bookend the sales funnel and play equally important roles in your sales and marketing strategy, the two are not the same.

So we're here to help you make sense of the B2B demand generation world. We're going to outline exactly what demand generation is, explain why it's so important for your strategy, and lay out seven essential demand generation tips that'll have your business creating demand and hooking potential customers left, right, and centre.

First, we'd better get to grips with some definitions.

What is demand generation?

In simple terms, demand generation is the process of, well, generating demand for your business. This means getting the attention of potential customers right at the start of their buying journey and maintaining their interest with high quality thought leadership content across different channels. It's about creating strong brand recognition and establishing a reliable, long-term customer base for the future.

As demand generation is an inbound marketing strategy - see our blog post 'Inbound Marketing vs Outbound Marketing: What's Best for Your Business?' for more information on inbound marketing - it tends to rely heavily on intent data, search engine marketing, and content marketing. Marketing and sales teams will come up with a demand generation strategy that leans into these avenues to drive demand.

What's the difference between demand generation and lead generation?

Demand generation differs from lead generation in that it's not about starting sales conversations per se. With lead generation, the goal is to gather the contact information of new prospects and potential buyers and to initiate a sales cycle. Lead generation marketing therefore involves several outreach methods, such as email campaigns, cold calling, and LinkedIn Social Selling to get high quality leads and sits 'lower down' on the sales funnel.

Demand generation, on the other hand, is at the very top of the sales funnel; the purpose of a demand generation strategy is to address a target audience, analyse intent data, and produce killer brand awareness content across as many channels as possible to attract people to your business and get them interested in buying.

Demand generation is generally considered a long term strategy - don't necessarily expect immediate results! - whereas lead generation focusses on getting those details and getting those sales.

Why is creating demand so important for my business?

If lead generation is the wheels, demand generation is the engine; they need each other, sure, but your wheels can't take you anywhere without an engine. When you find those qualified leads, you want to make sure your product or service offers something of value to them and that those potential buyers can trust you - otherwise, your lead generation efforts have all been for nothing.

• Brand awareness
  ‍77% of consumers prefer to buy from brands with a strong online presence, and over 80% say they need to trust a brand before they make a purchase. These stats alone should tell you everything you need to know about brand awareness; making your business a go-to authority within its field, with top quality content marketing and a strong social media presence, ensures that you will generate demand into the future.

• Competitive advantage
  With so much competition in today's digital landscape, it's more important than ever for your sales and marketing teams to invest in demand generation strategies. You want your business to stand out as a leader in its space. By effectively building brand awareness with thought leadership content, you'll grab existing demand and make your company the go-to authority in its field.

• Customer loyalty
  Demand generation marketing isn't just targeted towards new prospects. With demand generation tactics and a strong content focus, businesses are also able to increase the customer lifetime value and decrease the customer acquisition cost. That's because you'll create brand loyalty by demonstrating your expertise and superiority within your field.

• Business insights
  Aside from driving demand and building awareness, demand gen will also help your business gather valuable insights with behavioral data, intent data trends, and customer preferences. This will enable you to streamline your marketing efforts and convert leads, as well as remain at the top of your game into the future.

6 tips for a killer demand generation strategy

Forming a great demand generation strategy that initiates a sale cycle and leads to high conversion rates relies on several important factors. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it's a good place to start when delving into demand generation.

1. Know your audience
   As with all marketing efforts, demand gen relies heavily on a strong understanding of your target audience. You'll need to pinpoint the right audience with buyer persona research, but also use free tools to establish their pain points, buying behavior, and preferences. Don't make the mistake of casting too wide a net; it's better to stand out in your field - to become an authority - than to spread yourself too wide for little ROI.
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2. Create great content
   This may sound obvious, but original, high-value content creation is perhaps the biggest challenge you'll face with your demand generation strategy. A lot of market research is required to establish what your target audience is consuming and the solutions they're looking for. Find out what your customer pain points are and address them with informative and engaging educational content that stands out from the crowd.
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3. Use multiple channels
   Blogs and google ads go a long way, but don't neglect other channels, too. Demand gen campaigns - like marketing campaigns - work best when given a wide reach, so utilizing social media, email marketing, SEO landing pages, and even other avenues to express your thought leadership, like a podcast, is essential.
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4. Sales and marketing alignment
   To establish effective demand gen, it's important to align sales and marketing and ensure a steady stream of qualified leads. By streamlining communication channels, ironing out pain points and defining a shared vision, you'll be able to create better content and consistent demand generation.
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5. Consider marketing automation
   Automation is one of the best ways to distribute and market your content with ease. There are literally thousands of tools available that can help you slim down your workload by automating repetitive tasks and delivering quality content at a large scale. Marketing automation is a key component of modern B2B demand generation strategies.
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6. Keep an eye on your metrics
   Content creation and distribution are at the heart of demand generation marketing, but in order to continue growing and stay in the customer's mind metric analysis is equally important. By monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as ROI, website traffic, sales cycle data, conversion rates, and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), you'll be able to keep your demand generation on top form and secure future sales.

Key takeaways for effective demand gen

Demand generation is pivotal for retaining existing customers, gaining new ones, and establishing clear thought leadership within your industry. Although robust demand generation marketing takes time and consistent effort, without it, you may see your all important KPIs begin to dwindle over time.

First, understand the key differences between demand gen and lead generation (as well as how they work together) and the important factors of both. Get a comprehensive view of your target audience and answer their queries with pitch-perfect, professional content. Cultivate a culture of shared vision and collaboration between sales and marketing and incorporate metric analysis into your long-term demand generation strategies. By mastering these basics, you'll be able to fill your sales funnel with quality leads well into the future.

Professional lead generation and sales enablement companies like Leadium can help your business reach its potential. By booking a consultation with us, you'll be gaining access not only to our incredible team and their expertise, but also to a healthier business future. Get in touch today to see how you can boost your sales.

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