Coronavirus pandemic made 2020 a rough year for everyone, including B2B marketers. However, there are bright prospects. Demand generation was among the marketing strategies that did well in 2020. For marketers who could pivot quickly, many best practices for B2B demand generation helped reduce the effects in that year. Access to traditional channels like in-person meetings and live events was lost. Therefore, some marketers focused their efforts on-demand generation campaigns. It allowed them to replace the compromised or lost channels of live events or in-person meetings. By boosting their demand generation efforts, B2B marketers could counter the weak performance that many other marketing efforts suffered. At the pandemic’s start, there has been a 55% increase in demand generation by various marketers. In this post, we will consider the different strategies that are proven to improve your results.

B2B Demand Generation: 10 Proven Strategies to Improve your Results

1. Search Engine Optimization

Demand generation is mostly about brand visibility. One of the best, if not the best, channels of ensuring visibility is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To have your website ranked at the top of the search engine results page takes time and planning. Spend some time conducting your demand generation content’s keyword research and ensure that the content is of top quality. Since SaaS SEO is proven effective in lead generation, it can also work very well in ensuring visibility for the demand generation content.

2. Using more storytelling

Storytelling is an aspect of increasing engagement. According to Content Marketing, there was a significant increase in storytelling and invoking emotions from 39% in 2019 to 49% in 2020. It shows that demand generation marketers are increasingly appealing to emotions and develop more empathetic content pieces. Thus, use more storytelling in your content. Use an active voice, action words, visuals, and brief paragraphs to keep the clients engaged. You additionally need to know that “less is more” as a marketer. As a demand generation marketer, your communication should be on point. A B2B marketer should pay attention to quality over quantity and maintain a sharp focus on a content’s role in the big picture.

DemandGen’s report of 2021 revealed that the ability to deliver content that is memorably telling a story that resonates with buyers’ pain points and needs is a standard part of component preferences.

3. More focus on the ROI

Do your best to get a return on investment. To know if there is an ROI, have a way of measuring the results of B2B marketing. The problem with this is getting more quantifiable measurements for marketing results. Compared to lead generation, understanding the return on investment for the demand generation may be harder. It is in part because we use brand visibility to measure demand generation. There are tools and metrics for helping marketers track their visibility. However, these metrics are squishier than lead generation, where leads can be counted and accurately quantify your work.

4. Being customer-centric

Demand generation deals with ensuring that customers are happy about your services and products. Therefore, it is essential to know your customers and offer them an optimal experience. A customer’s experience is a critical part of any B2B marketing strategy, especially in demand generation. Messing up the customer experience in demand generation may cause all the other good things to happen after happening. But how do you optimize the customer experience? You can use analytics like bounce rates and CTR to measure how good your customer experience is. The other metric used to track demand generation content is the audience engagement rates. The other way to improve customer experience is through the proper organization of content on your website.

5. Perform more virtual events

The impact of virtual events in B2B demand generation is enormous. Before the pandemic, virtual events were significant; they were huge and expected to have a massive influence in marketing for days to come. According to a demand generation report, Online events are among the top-ranked tactics to drive demand generation, with 48% of the customers expecting an increase in their use in the next 12 months. Therefore, ensure that you use webcasts, email marketing, video marketing, account-based marketing, and content syndication.

6. Early and often collaboration with sales

Unlike in lead generation, B2B demand generation techniques appear earlier in a buyer’s journey. However, the initial actions in a buyer’s journey shape everything that happens in the future. It means that if you attract the right audience’s attention, you will get better leads in the future. The sales team also understands where their prospects are. It may be anything from a group on Facebook, a B2B insiders’ slack channel, to a LinkedIn account. Sales are the end consumers of the results generated by the demand marketers. Thus, collaboration on the CRM is critical.

Therefore, as you develop your B2B demand generation Ideas, consult with your sales team.

7. Posting shareable content

The primary goal for demand generation is getting the word out. It differs from lead generation, where the goal is converting the traffic. What does demand generation have to do with making the content shareable? It means that more of your content is ungated. Gated content is any content that needs the user to act to access it. Primarily, one has to give an email address to get access to the content. While this may help with lead generation, it may negatively affect your demand generation efforts. The goal in demand generation is brand visibility.

Therefore, for more people to share and see your content, remove the lead generation forms for shareable and demand generation content at the top of the funnel. It will make your content more visible and shareable. Hence, B2B buyers will share your content with members of their purchasing committees.

8. Using different content formats

In marketing, video and audio formats are taking the central stage. Therefore, converting the best-performing content into these formats can help improve the results from your demand generation efforts. Rethink the content channels you use for sponsorships and content partnerships.

Instead of your CEO writing a guest post, they should appear as a guest on a podcast or a television show. Your marketing teams should also have a few co-sponsored webinars. Get one of the subject experts to an online summit and promote the brand. Through speaking, it is easier to appeal to the buyers or prospective clients. Ultimately, the results for your demand generation will have improved with a milestone.

9. Invest in paid and earned media

Besides the owned media, a B2B demand generation campaign should not forget the paid and earned media. Earned media comprises things like public relations, among others. A good demand generation marketer should have a load of public relations contacts on their phone. Paid media revolves around boosting your content through display advertising and pay-per-click. Maybe as a marketer, you already do that. However, are you investing in virtual events, sponsorships, and other media that raise the visibility of your demand generation content? The importance of influencers is another critical aspect in B2B marketing. Understanding the essence of influencers in marketing, spend more on-demand generation by sponsoring some influencers in your industry. You can sponsor a podcast or a newsletter for some months.

10. Social Media marketing

Social media platforms are good B2C marketing tools. However, 75% of the B2B executives get their content through social networks or peer connections today than in the past few years. Business decision-makers are using social media for various work purposes. The most vital part of your social media strategy is building a relationship with the audience. Therefore, they see you as a thought leader and a problem solver. They build trust and increase the demand.

Conclusion

Building it is not enough. However, demand generation using the strategies above may be the way to improve sales and make profits. It puts your product in an ideal position to solve a problem. Demand motivates production since you offer supply to your clients.