What is Demand Generation Marketing? 6-Month B2B Playbook to Drive Brand Awareness at Scale

Summary

What is demand gen marketing?

The goal of demand generation marketing is to build long-term awareness, and as a result, demand for your company’s products or services.

This is achieved by provoking discussions in an audience about their problems, promoting your brand as the solution to these problems, and priming purchases in your favor when they are ready to buy.

The utmost goal of demand generation marketing is to become a household name synonymous with high-quality service and authority in your industry, such as how Hoover has become for vacuum cleaners among B2C audiences.

Becoming a household name is harder in B2B, making brand building even more important to create awareness and interest. However, a few brands probably come to mind when you think of Client Relationship Management (CRM), which proves this feat is not impossible.

Demand Generation Marketing
VS Lead Generation Marketing

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    Social media

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    Guest blogging

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    Paid syndication

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    Telemarketing

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    Cold emails

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    Members answer questions for other members

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    Members post content and the brand is not the only “active voice”

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    Leads can be attributed to the community

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    Brand evangelists are active in the community and assist new clients with FAQs

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    SSP: Responsible for displaying the ad and also collecting data on users to select the best ad according to their preferences.

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    DSP: Selects ad space from the SSP and bids automatically according to the advertiser’s criteria and budget.

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    Social media presence: The content they publish, engagement rates, topics covered, hashtags used.

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    Job history: Where they worked, which industries, comments from peers.

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    Red flags: Does the influencer’s behavior align with brand values? Any signs of troublesome behavior in the past?

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    Publications: Check the media that the influencer has published online and offline.

B2B Demand Generation Playbook:

1. Define your end-goal and KPIs

THE EXAMPLE FOR THIS SIX-MONTH PLAYBOOK IS:

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    End-goal: Generate awareness among small business owners of the
    brand and its RevOps solution.

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    KPIs:

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    Cost per acquisition (CPA): This KPI measures the cost of conversion, which can be attributed to a sign-up, purchase, click, or download.

    In this example, since the goal is to generate awareness, acquisition will be defined as clicks to the product landing page. The cost will be the total ad spend to promote the thought leadership content across social media and content syndication networks.

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    Conversion rate for the top of the B2B marketing funnel: Since this campaign is essentially thought leadership, the goal is to measure how many top of funnel leads (TOFU) are generated.

    Although not all TOFU leads can be attributed to the campaign, tracking URLs in thought leadership content can help evaluate the percentage tied to this new demand generation strategy.

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    Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs): This evaluates the number of leads that meet the brand’s “marketing qualified” criteria. In this example, the goal will be to check if the demand generation campaign is converting leads into MQLs through the planned promotion.

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    Content engagement metrics: To evaluate the performance of content, several statistics can be combined for an overview of audience engagement. Since this is a thought leadership campaign, the following metrics will be tracked:

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    Click through rate (CTR): Clicks on links to the landing page of the RevOps product.

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    Time on page: How much time visitors spend reading the brand’s thought leadership content.

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    Bounce rate: The amount of visitors leaving the content early. A high bounce rate means the content is not capturing the interest of the target audience.

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    Number of pages visited: If visitors access other pages after reading the thought leadership content. This will indicate whether content has inspired them to learn more about the brand.

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    Social media engagement: Likes, comments, and shares from promoting the content on proprietary social media channels. If syndicated or co-marketed, this data can also be supplied from partners.

2. Plan a campaign

CONSIDERING THIS FRAMEWORK, THE REVOPS THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CAMPAIGN WOULD BE BROKEN DOWN AS SO:

3. Launch campaign and measure results

4. Adjust campaign based on results

BELOW ARE SOME IDEAS TO IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR
DEMAND GENERATION CAMPAIGN:

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    A/B test: Run A/B tests of ads, syndicated content, and email marketing to assess which channel has the highest performance. Make each version have a clear difference from one another, such as a business vs. casual brand voice.

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    Improve personalization: Your content may require further personalization to strike a chord. In the case of the thought leadership example, this could be achieved by personalizing articles for each publisher (for content syndication and guest posts), as well as copy for emails and LinkedIn messages.

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    Improve marketing segmentation: If performance is down across the board, this may be indicative of a need to fine-tune your audience to better reach your Ideal Client Profile (ICP). By carefully selecting your firmographic, demographic, and behavioral criteria, you can better assess who is your ideal client and refocus your outreach to engage them.

5. Evaluate campaign performance again

6. Build follow-up demand generation campaigns

BELOW ARE SOME IDEAS OF FOLLOW-UP DEMAND GENERATION CAMPAIGNS
TO IMPLEMENT IN THIS LAST STEP:

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    Start an email cadence: Build a lead nurturing cadence with six to twelve touchpoints to continue the conversation and present in-depth details on the topic. This is the time to promote eBooks, on-demand webinars, case studies, as well as other content that serves to further educate leads on your brand and its unique solutions.

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    Create an Account Based Marketing (ABM) list and strategy: Filter prospects and leads from your demand generation campaign to see if any are aligned with your ICP and are appropriate for an ABM strategy.

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    Launch an event: Organize an event and invite the prospects and leads from the demand generation campaign. Center the event around an exclusive announcement or product demo that educates leads and still makes them feel valued at this stage. If invites are sent out “personally” by the CEO, then this strategy becomes even more effective as it shows credibility and approachability.

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    Plan a follow-up social media content calendar: Revisit the topics of the past six months and add in comments and unique insights from the brand’s leadership to add value to your content. The idea is to empower your audience to further their knowledge on a topic of their interest, rather than consume repetitive content. Plan a calendar, add in previous topics with new insights, and make sure to include assets that prime leads to buy—this can be commentary by the CEO on a case study, for example. A good way to start is to use a template social media calendar.

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    Launch a deep media nurture campaign: Deep media nurture is an omnichannel method to engage leads at precise moments with messaging toward a sale. It employs a mix of LinkedIn inMails, phone outreach, and exclusive partnership programs to engage leads in personalized, memorable ways.
    Learn more about the INFUSE Deep Media Nurturing solution.

Conclusion

TOGETHER, LET’S BUILD A CAMPAIGN THAT EXCEEDS YOUR MARKETING GOALS

Our INFUSE Demand Strategists are available on your schedule to plan a unique strategy informed by your challenges. Build a campaign that generates demand performance, creates a steady pipeline of incoming qualified leads, and makes your ROI scalable and predictable.

Achieve growth with true demand for your brand by talking with our seasoned experts in planning, executing, and tracking campaigns for Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

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