11 Demand Generation Strategies That Generate High-Quality Leads

Does your sales pipeline look drought-effected? If yes, it’s alarming. 

A dry sales pipeline can result in sales droughts throughout the year, and that’s a nightmare for any business. The solution?

Looking at your demand generation strategies. 

A solid demand gen strategy is what you need to fill your funnels or turn your dry pipeline into a well of quality leads. So, get ready to have a few B2B demand generation tactics up your sleeve. 

Here’s everything you need to start winning more sales by shining a spotlight on your brand and making it known to a wider audience. 

Let’s start!

What is Demand Generation?

Demand generation refers to activities performed to drive awareness and engage the audience in a product or service. 

Demand generation strategies typically point out the audience’s potential challenges and position the brand as a solution to their challenges. The ultimate goal of these strategies is to promote a new product or service to build buzz around it. 

Though specific demand generation tactics vary by company, they may include;

• Social media marketing
• eBook campaigns
• Content marketing
• Paid advertising
• Inbound and website marketing, etc.

Difference Between Demand Gen vs. Lead Gen

The primary difference between demand gen and lead gen is that demand generation is a top-of-funnel activity, whereas lead generation is bottom-of-funnel activity. While a demand gen strategy aims at creating product awareness, lead generation involves capturing qualified leads' contact info to nurture and convert them into customers. 

Here’s a quick summary of the differences between demand and lead generation. 

Demand Generation

📌Drives interest and brand awareness

📌Builds audience’s trust in a brand

📌Educates target market about the product and the brand

Lead Generation

📌Captures the lead’s contact info

📌Identifies qualified leads and nurtures them

📌Illustrates brand value and differentiation

📌Converts quality leads to paying customers

Not to forget that demand gen strategy and lead gen are connected. In fact, demand generation feeds into lead generation. How? 

Demand generation drives awareness and develops a lead’s interest in the brand. It helps to create the lead pipeline, and then, lead geeration comes to action with nurturing and converting leads into customers. 

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Best Demand Generation Strategies to Generate Leads

So, here’s the most awaited section of the blog – demand generation strategies that you can apply to fill your sales funnel. 

Now that you have a better idea of wat demand generation is, you must know about implementing it. It is always good to choose your demand gen strategy aligned to your business goal, plan, and them execute. 

Here are the 11 best B2B demand generation strategies to choose from. You can pick one strategy or if your marketing budget permits, choose at least three for best outcomes.

1. Get started with SEO and Content Marketing

It’s no more a secret that content rules. So, you need an SEO and content plan for demand generation. 

SEO and content marketing goes hand-in-hand and helps you attract the best leads. In collaboration with some SEO wizards, you can create your content plan and deliver your target market quality content that educates them and offers a solution to their pain points. 

Create optimized content to rank in the Google search results and give away free valuable content downloads so that your audiences return for more. Also, with the help of high-value content you can create a sense a trust in the audience for your brand. 

2. Use Lead Magnets to your Benefit

Lead magnets are anything that attracts your target market. They can be brochures, tutorials, and webinars to eBooks or guides and templates. 

Image ref: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/3843345/content-upgrades.png

What you consider as lead magnets depends on your business type. For example, for B2B companies, tutorials, eBooks, templates, or white paper works well as lead magnets. 

Using eBooks as lead magnets is one of the most popular B2B demand generation tactics. Marketers and sales teams still read them. So, if you can create an eBook with actionable insights, you’ll have a better chance at demand gen strategy success. Want an example? Take a look at HubSpot. 

I consider HubSpot as the leader of lead magnets. The B2B player offers not only several free eBooks but also other free resources like marketing courses, software, and templates. How to Run an Inbound Marketing Campaign is one of HubSpot's many free eBooks. 

3. Run PPC campaigns

PPC campaigns always spark a debate – should companies rely so heavily on ad spend or not?

But I think if your marketing budget permits, keep paid advertising on your best demand generation strategies list. However, before implementing PPC ads, check the following:

✅Can you afford PPC ad campaigns?

✅Do you have appropriate resources?

✅Do you have an internal team to create ads and a full-fledged ad campaign that drives demand?

✅Will PPC campaigns work with your target market’s demographics?

If you are sure about these factors, you can easily implement PPC ads; if you aren’t, you can experiment. The truth is, you’ll not know how PPC works for you unless you try. So, get ready to spend a little in the beginning and track the outcomes of these campaigns.

One thing you can be sure about PPC ads is that they can offer you insights to be successful with the overall demand generation plan. PPC can help you streamline your SEO, from keywords to content topics. Note these insights from PPC campaigns and use them in your other B2B demand generation tactics. 

4. Organize Webinars

Numbers indicate that hosting webinars is one of the most powerful B2B demand generation strategies. 73% of B2B marketers say webinars are the best tools to generate high-quality leads. Want to add real value to your demand generation efforts? Make this demand gen strategy a part of your plans.

Webinars are a great way to interact with your audience and reach out to new ones. I even think that social media lives are a great way to drive brand awareness among the audience.

However, remember - ❗Webinars are not product demos❗ 

They are interactive sessions where you may refrain from promoting your product directly. The best webinars and social media lives are the ones that talk about the audience’s pain points and recommend solutions to address them. 

So, if you are building demand generation strategies, webinars, and social media lives must be on your hit list. 

5. Deploy AI chatbots

Today’s demand generation strategies are incomplete without AI chatbots. 

Honestly, getting a chatbot to work is a brilliant demand gen strategy. They can save your sales team a humongous amount of time and energy. They enable marketing automation through instant response to queries, offering recommendations to website visitors, email automation, capturing lead details, tracking high-potential leads, and whatnot. 

Not only your sales and marketing teams, but AI chatbots are also of great help even to your customer success teams. So, once you adopt this B2B demand gen strategy, your teams will be thankful down the line. 

Elaborating further, here are a few quick dead-cert best practices to make the most of chatbots. 

• Use chatbots for lead scoring. They will bring you the best quality leads.
• Keep your bots chatty, enabling them to capture lead info in the most conversational way. 
• Map potential leads on your website using bots and have them share relevant content based on the visitor’s likes and interests.

6. Try SaaS Influencer Marketing

Few will like this demand gen strategy, but I find it useful. 

Granted, SaaS influencers are a hard find. They aren’t as common as fashion influencers or food vloggers, but they are out there. All you need to do is keep an eye out for them👀. Even if the SaaS influencers unintentionally influence people, they can provide you with quality leads. 

Data on influencer marketing shows that 74% of customers are ready to spend around $629 on a service or product suggested by an influencer. Yes! That’s the power of word-of-mouth.

So, start your search on LinkedIn – the ideal platform to get your SaaS influencer (94% B2B marketers explore LinkedIn). As a part of your demand generation efforts, you can also look for influencers on Instagram and Twitter.

7. Run co-marketing campaigns

Partnering with other companies and running co-marketing campaigns is old-school, but it is still a go-to demand gen strategy for B2B businesses. This demand generation tactic has been around for long, and it still shows no sign of slowing down. After all, old is gold! 

However, co-marketing campaigns are evolving. Brands find unique ways to collaborate with other companies and offer customers quality experiences. 

To start with, you may think of co-hosting a webinar with another company where you provide exposure to both products. However, the best demand generation strategies concerning co-marketing include a guest blog or backlink exchange, newsletter feature, special mention in content, and in-app product shoutout. 

The goal of co-marketing campaigns is to exchange exposure mutually. So, work out something that’s deeper and works for both companies. Build campaigns enriched with the unique perspectives of both companies to bring out the best experience. 

8. Conduct Promotional Giveaway Campaigns

Free samples or gifts have always worked well as a demand gen strategy. Whether you’re a new brand launch or an existing brand trying to capture a market position, giveaways, and free stuff always attract attention. So, why not use the same as B2B demand generation tactics?!

Giveaway stuff to your audience for free- content downloads, free trials, free templates, guides, and other things. However, be sure to give away the best stuff, the highly valuable ones. This may seem counterintuitive, but giveaways with real value have several benefits in the long run. Like?

• They create a trustworthy bond between the audience and the brand
• They drive prospects’ interest, reflect well on your brand, and motivate prospects to advocate for your brand.
• Lastly, giveaways of real value make your leads more likely to share the info you need to qualify them as viable leads. 

HubSpot offers the best giveaway stuff – downloadable content like guides and eBooks, infographic templates on PowerPoint, and so much more. 

9. SaaS product pre-launch

One of the best B2B demand generation strategies I have come across is the pre-launch of SaaS products to your prospects. However, it is also the trickiest of all demand generation strategies. Why? Because you need an audience for the pre-launch, which is tough to get if you don’t have a product. 

To get the most out of this demand generation tactic, you must create hype about your product on sites like ProductHunt. 

Let people know about it, and then start building an all-important mailing list. This mailing list should include all the early adopters and innovators because these are the ones that have the most potential to become your most loyal customers and brand ambassadors. 

So, the primary goal of this excellent demand gen strategy is to build this list of high-potential prospects, build their trust, and then launch your product to them first, in VIP-style. 

10. Leverage Lookalike Audience on Facebook

Okay, for this demand gen strategy, I will assume that you’re already advertising on Facebook (and if you aren’t, it’s never too late to start). 

This powerful demand gen strategy on the Facebook platform – lookalike audiences – recommends people who resemble users who have already shown their interest in a product, content, or service. 

The lookalike audiences feature suggests names of potential leads based on demographic and behavioral similarities. Facebook allows you to upload custom audiences built using data from actual users. This custom audience is then used to create lookalike audiences with the same characteristics. 

The Lookalike audience feature doubles the reach of your Facebook ads using the massive collection of Facebook users’ data.

So, considering the time people spend on Facebook (on average 35 minutes daily), lookalike audiences can be the most effective feature to create the best demand generation strategies.

11. List your brand on Capterra, G2, or similar platforms

Want an easy demand gen strategy? This one’s a real easy win. 

You can easily use G2, Capterra, and other SaaS product marketing platforms to capitalize. So, ensure your SaaS product is listed, no matter the niche. Also, start putting efforts into building a 5-star reputation on these platforms. 

This demand gen strategy will build goodwill for your brand and help you feature alongside your competitors in comparison pages. Thus, you’ll get a prime place beside those competitors your target audience has their eyes on. 

Further, these comparison pages are high-intent browsers. They are visited by people who want to make a purchase. So, if you aren’t featuring, you may miss out on a lot. 

How to measure your efforts?

Were your demand generation efforts fruitful? Did the demand generation strategies work well? Answering these questions is essential to progress further. However, measuring your demand generation efforts can be tricky, especially if you do not know what to look for. Here are two ways to accurately set expectations and analyze how well your demand generation strategies are performing. 

Define KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

Before measuring your demand gen strategy, set out what to look for. Track your efforts’ success by first defining the target KPIs. Remember that your chosen KPIs must align with your overall marketing and business goals. 

A few super important KPIs to track your success can be:

• Cost per lead
• Funnel conversion rates
• Website Traffic
• Customer acquisition cost
• Lead magnet or content downloads

With the help of these metrics, you can connect the dots between your demand generation efforts and the actual business growth. Thus, with the right and relevant KPIs, you can also map your customer's journey, identifying the areas yielding high ROI.

Track data

Tracking data over time will help you understand what your leads respond to the most. Hence, based on that, you can shift your demand gen strategy. Tweaking your demand generation strategies based on lead data and actions will help you attract more quality leads from reliable sources. 

Follow social media or analytical platforms to get insights into lead data. Leverage your website analytics to understand how demand changes over time and identify data patterns. You can learn much from lead interaction with your brand and use these lessons to create favorable demand generation strategies. 

Ready to Create Winning Demand Generation Strategies?

It’s hard to define what your demand generation campaign should look like or what demand generation strategies would work for you. That’s because many strategies, channels, business goals, needs, customer segments, and tools exist. 

In the end, all you must think about is whether or not your demand gen strategy brings more qualified leads into the sales funnel. If yes, you’re on the right track. 

Meanwhile, don’t forget to get the right tools to convert high-potential leads into customers down the line. Platforms like RevenueHero are always there to make your job easier. It captures and qualifies quality leads and routes them to the right sales reps to guarantee conversions. Ultimately, you can see your sales numbers grow dramatically. 

Want to know more? Start exploring! 

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