B2B Demand Generation: Best Practices for Lead Engagement

HubSpot has numerous uses for demand generation, the platform covers CRM, websites, marketing, sales and service. Knowing the value of your solution enables you to understand who needs it. Be sure that you have complete clarity on your data so that you can have confidence in what you're tracking. This is where someone is expressing explicit interest in your product or service.

• By ranking prospects based on factors like engagement, fit, and buying signals, teams can focus their attention on the people most likely to convert instead of treating every lead the same.
• Sales provides demos, case studies, product comparisons, and conversations that help buyers feel confident moving forward.
• Usually that means offering something valuable (whitepapers, eBooks, webinars, or free tools) in exchange for contact information.

Typically, buyers will do lots of research before they make a decision on a technology or service. Buyers today have a wide array of content formats to look at that can help to guide the buyer’s journey and influence purchasing decisions. This dual-layer approach ensures that marketing efforts are not only directed at the right companies b2b demand generation but also reach the right people within those companies, significantly increasing the chances of conversion.

Demand capture is the method for attracting and converting the 5% of your market that is actively looking for a solution. This includes creating and distributing content to a wider audience on mediums such as social media, podcasts, and communities. Demand creation is the method for generating awareness of a problem and solution.

The goal is to nurture their intent and provide the necessary support and information to help them make a confident buying decision. Content should address a customer’s specific pain points and showcases the unique benefits of their products or services to help them make an informed decision. At this stage, buyers look for more in-depth information, like reviews, case studies and product demonstrations to make informed comparisons and narrowing down their choices.

A split-funnel analysis separates leads that have converted on lead generation campaigns and leads that have converted on high-intent forms. Everybody from the top down must understand that lead generation is not the optimal strategy for generating revenue and the go-to-market method. In Episode 13 of Demand Decoded, we covered practical insights about how to move from lead generation to demand generation. Firstly, a good b2b demand generation agency could have you with the transition, but if you're tackling this in-house then here's what you need to know. Lead generation uses marketing techniques to convert visitors into ‘leads’. This includes ‘capturing’ buyers in channels that they use when they’re ready to buy e.g., Google search, review sites, and your own website.

B2B Demand Generation Mistakes That Kill Pipeline

Regularly refining the ICP based on the latest customer data helps keep the demand generation strategy aligned with the evolving market conditions. This analysis should include demographic information, purchasing behaviors, and customer feedback, which collectively contribute to a more accurate and actionable ICP. The ICP is a representation of the perfect customer based on factors such as industry, company size, revenue, geographic location and specific pain points or needs that the product or service can address. The total addressable market (TAM) represents the total revenue opportunity available if a product or service were to achieve 100% market share. Loyal customers become great advocates for a brand and often lead to more people being referred into the top of the demand-generation funnel.

This website is owned and operated by Informa TechTarget, part of a global network that informs, influences and connects the world’s technology buyers and sellers. The content ecosystem must be strategic and diverse, incorporating webinars, virtual events, videos, research, e-books and infographics to meet varied B2B buyer preferences. This data-driven approach allows for more informed decision-making and ensures that ABM resources are focused on the accounts with the highest potential for success. Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategic approach that focuses on targeting specific high-value accounts rather than trying to appeal to the entire TAM. Creating a variety of high-quality content types is essential, but it’s equally important to develop a sustainable content ecosystem that can consistently deliver value to the target audience.

Types of B2B Demand Generation

These unbiased perspectives can lend credibility to your offerings and provide valuable context for potential buyers. Virtual events provide opportunities for more extensive knowledge sharing and networking which is similar to the benefits of an in-person event while reaching a potentially broader audience. Instead of just a single session an event can have multiple sessions and provide a more immersive experience that can drive audience engagement, at scale.

Advanced analytics also facilitate the identification of bottlenecks in the buyer’s journey, enabling more precise interventions to improve conversion rates. Teams should perform A/B testing on different elements of their campaigns and channels – including copy, calls to action, visuals and offers – to find out what resonates with their target audience. These insights can be used to optimize campaigns and find out what is working and what isn’t. Provide valuable content and use personalized messaging to nurture and build relationships with leads to keep your company top of mind with prospects. Segmenting the audience enables teams to deliver more personalized, relevant content and experiences at each stage. Use a mix of formats, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, e-books, webinars and podcasts, to engage and educate prospects throughout their buyer’s journey.

B2B demand generation vs. lead generation

Revenue is the end goal for most B2Bs, but for a long time, marketers have believed that they shouldn’t report on revenue because it’s the sales job to close opportunities to customers. Measuring how many marketing-qualified leads became opportunities shows you if you’re attracting the right buyer. The actual definition of an opportunity varies between businesses, but for us, it’s when a deal is created in the pipeline. A demand generation marketing qualified lead tracks high-intent conversion. These are all relevant indicative metrics that identify early-stage success. Your customers are your best assets to generate more demand for your business and one way to get more referrals is to provide exceptional customer service.

It’s your job to ensure that your business is visible within these channels to drive as much high-intent demand as possible to your website. This exploration happens in high-intent channels where they will be analysing pricing breakdowns, solution comparisons, case studies, specifications, and features. Once your buyer has figured out that they have a problem and that there are solutions available, the next step is for them to explore and purchase a solution. It’s important to note that all buyers consume content differently, so be sure to understand the content that resonates best with them. Since demand generation aims to create demand for a product or service rather than pushing for contact details, it looks slightly different to the traditional inbound marketing funnel. Whilst this can be true, the purpose of measuring marketing generated revenue is to identify if your demand generation efforts are attracting buyers that are going to buy from your business.

By leveraging this data, businesses can better align their demand generation efforts with the actual behaviors and needs of both accounts and the individuals that comprise the buying team. This data is crucial for identifying key decision-makers and influencers within the buying team. This type of data is useful for identifying when an entire organization might be in the market for a particular solution, allowing marketers to prioritize these accounts for outreach. Intent data can be gathered at both the account level and the individual level, offering a more nuanced view of the buying journey.

As such, it’s crucial that your website is reliable, secure, easy to update, and provides an excellent user experience. For most B2Bs, your website is the main source of opportunities – serving to generate, validate, and convert the interest in your company's offering. It's vital that you have a clear, single view of your contacts so that your entire commercial functions can align on a single source of truth.

Create high-quality and relevant content that resonates with the target audience at each stage of the customer journey. To effectively tailor their demand generation efforts, marketing teams should create detailed buyer personas to help them define the needs, pain points, motivations and behaviors of their ideal buyers. Infographics, on the other hand, present data and insights in a visually appealing, easily digestible format.

What we’re able to track and attribute is limited to just a handful of channels, the dark iceberg model demonstrates this. This means that most of their buying journey is totally hidden from attribution software. The dark funnel refers to the hidden activity that a buyer undertakes when researching and purchasing a new product or service. The convert demand stage is often forgotten in demand generation but is arguably the most important – this is the stage that converts demand into pipeline. Read the complete guide to the factors that affect website performance. Effectively capturing demand requires you to have a high-performance website with an effective design.