B2B companies must constantly innovate their marketing strategies to stay competitive and profitable. This starts with demand generation, which can be broken down into three parts: top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel strategies.
The best B2B demand generation strategies start with understanding what demand generation entails, and how it differs from other tactics, like lead nurturing or targeted advertising.
What is Demand Generation
The definition of demand generation is cultivating leads and bringing them through the sales funnel to increase sales to your business. As the name implies, it focuses on creating new demand for your products and services, rather than simply moving existing customers up the purchase funnel through discounts and promotions.
Of course, you might do this with other campaigns, like loyalty marketing or cross-selling efforts. It involves increasing your sales leads and attracting new customers through marketing tactics.
For example, you can increase your sales leads by capturing information about potential customers, creating new ways to attract these customers, or by converting these leads into actual sales opportunities. Read on to find out how to develop an effective B2B demand generation strategy to drive revenue growth in your company or business unit.
Know Your Customer
One of the best ways to tap into the inner workings of your customers is to ask them questions. For example, you can solicit feedback by posting polls on your website, asking customers what they need to succeed, or conducting surveys and participating in phone interviews.
This helps business owners understand their customers better and allows them to tailor their approach accordingly. A good way to reach out is through social media platforms, like LinkedIn or Twitter, where there are likely multiple users with similar interests.
You may also want to attend networking events, and go online to message boards, chat rooms, and forums. Remember that many businesses have changed ownership since they first started, so be sure to research any company before contacting them.
Understand Your Buyer Persona
Business owners have different ideas of what demand generation entails, but the consensus is that it generates new business opportunities by finding new potential customers. This can be done through email, inbound marketing, and more.
You must understand your customers’ buyer persona, and determine which channels are best. For example, if you’re an online business with products geared towards an older demographic, your blog might be a better channel than Instagram or Facebook.
Create Content Strategies
Your company’s demand generation strategy is essential to your marketing mix. In addition, the strategy creates the foundation for all other marketing strategies that will be implemented.
Your demand generation strategy should provide quality prospects and qualified leads with content showing them the benefits of doing business with you.
You must decide which demand generation strategies boost your target audience’s awareness, interest, desire, conviction, and commitment. You can measure these five stages of customer engagement on a scale of 1-5. Some examples of these strategies include:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Social media campaigns
- Blog posts and articles
- Email marketing
- Video production
- Event planning
The most important thing about developing a successful demand generation strategy is understanding who your target audience is and what their needs are. A great way to do this is by conducting research through surveys or interviews to identify pain points within their industry or product space.
Come up with an Overall Campaign
This campaign is designed for B2B organizations. We advise that the first step in developing an effective demand generation strategy is understanding your target market and how to reach them.
The next steps would be reaching out to prospects with personalized messages, offering trials or live demos, and scheduling in-person visits and events.
This will help you find more qualified leads by attracting key decision-makers. Also, it’s important to understand what makes prospects choose your product instead of one of your competitors.
They are much more likely to sign on if they want something that aligns with their goals, challenges, and budget.
Use Mobile-First Responsive Web Design (RWD)
In an increasingly mobile-first world, responsive web design (RWD) is the approach to creating websites that can dynamically adjust content and layout as the width of the browser window shrinks or expands.
RWD requires adjusting mobile screens, including information like contact details, navigation menus, and photographs. It’s also important to remember that most mobile users will use a small screen with limited bandwidth for their browsing needs.
In addition, mobile-first design makes it easier to scale down content and images, so they load quickly on slower connections. Many online resources explain what you need to do if you’re unsure how to make your website more accessible on different devices.
For example, W3Schools has a guide on building a website using HTML5 and CSS3 compatible with desktops, tablets, smartphones, etc. You may want to start using this design rather than switching over your entire site simultaneously.
Run Split Tests into Ads, Landing Pages, Etc.
One way to develop an effective strategy is using web analytics tools and Google Adwords. These sites provide data-driven insights into the performance of your ads, landing pages, and even social media campaigns. Identifying where you can improve in all areas will allow you to be more efficient and make adjustments as needed.
Remember, there are no magic bullets for success; it’s about doing what works best for your company’s needs. But before spending money on ads, we suggest running split tests on different offers to see which ones resonate with potential customers.
A/B testing lets you know how well each offer resonates with your target audience.
Final Thoughts
Developing a demand generation strategy starts with understanding what kind of prospects you’re going after. This means taking the time to identify who your buyer personas are, where they spend their time online, and what makes them tick.
You’ll then need to consider positioning your value proposition in their world and gaining access by reaching out through social media, email, blogs, or events.
Once these steps are taken, execute against it like any other marketing campaign by tracking and testing out different messages and offers.