The Best Demand Generation Team Structure to Nurture Leads
So you know you need a demand generation team, now what? Read on for the people you'll need, their skillsets, and what you should be paying them.
Demand generation today is paramount to getting the leads and customers your business truly deserves.
“It’s all about figuring out which breadcrumbs drive the horseâyour customerâto waterâyour productâand then make him drink.“
âPaige Arnof-Fenn, founder and CEO of Maven & Moguls
The channels you use in your strategy can make or break your whole growth plan. Not all B2B products will use the same channels in the same way, nor will they work with all products.
Choosing the right demand gen channel for your strategy is no easy taskâno fret, weâre here to breadcrumb your journey. In this article, we’ll cover:
To properly understand what B2B demand generation is, we need to look at inbound marketing. Inbound marketing acknowledges the power that customers have over their own buyer’s journey. Itâs the act of pulling customers to you, via a pathway that feels natural and familiar to them.
Customers can find all the information they need to decide whether or not to make a purchase, even before ever speaking to a sales rep or being bombarded by ads.
Today, up to 60% of buyers will buy without contacting a supplier or salesperson. It’s this empowering position that customers have that has changed the way brands advertise and make themselves stand out.
Marketing teams are now being challenged by self-taught customers, and by customer’s higher expectations on productsâthanks to the wide variety availableâand businesses’ higher-performance needsâthanks to all the metrics available.
Marketing and sales teams need to work in sync and genuinely understand their customer and market in order to create a successful inbound marketing strategy.
Demand generation and lead generation marketing are the two strategies that make up inbound marketing. Although people use these terms interchangeably at times, they’re different.
Demand generation marketing is the process that focuses on meeting possible customers at the very top of the sales funnel. Demand generation campaigns increase brand awareness, educate audiences, and generate trust.
Lead generation marketing focuses much more on the bottom of the funnel. They care about nurturing what the customer already knows and helping them arrive at the final decision of making a purchase.
Creating a winning demand generation strategy is risky business. Done well, thereâs a potentially huge ROI. Done poorly, thereâs wasted time and resources.
To develop a successful demand generation strategy, you’ll need your sales and marketing teams to follow these eight demand gen best practices, which are:
However, a fundamental part of any demand generation strategy are the channels you’ll use. Below we’ll tell you the best demand gen channels to get the high quality leads and conversion rates your business deserves.
There are many demand generation channels available, take a look at the example below, but here we’ll tell you about the top eight channels that marketers are using to guarantee results.
First letâs cover the top eight demand gen channels you need to know to get your business to a new level. After, we’ll show you how you can choose the one that best fits your business and market.
Thought leadership content is authoritative, positioned at the top of the sales funnel and it’s designed to establish your company as an expert in your industry.
Since demand generation is all about increasing brand awareness and credibility, one of the best ways to do this is by providing thought leadership content. Showing that you’re an expert on the topic and that you really understand your customer’s pain points is the first step for customers to trust you and pay more attention to what you can offer them.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a key tool to place your content where it deserves to be. By paying attention to keywords, length of content, linking structure, and other important SEO features you’ll make sure your expert knowledge is located where your potential customers are looking and clicking.
âSEO itâs all about providing information to the person whoâs looking for it, thus itâs an amazing channel to drive high-quality and high-qualified leads to any business, sinceâ âArianna Lupi, SEO Manager at Skale.
Webinars are a great way to directly engage with your target audience. They allow you to show your expertise, while putting a face behind the logo.
Webinars are not an hour-long sales pitch. A webinar is to showcase your knowledge, and interact with potential users.
Choosing the topic for the webinar is super important. One way you can find what your potential customers are interested in is by looking at your other channels. For example, if a post on social media, or on your blog, had really high engagement or even a lot of questions and comments from users, this might be a great indicator that you can build a webinar on the topic.
If youâre ever unsure on topics, just ask your audience! Use a tool like 123FormBuilder to automate your customer feedback, and build your topics for the webinars.
Keep in mind the person or people that will present the webinar. You want to choose someone who is approachable, knowledgeable, with charisma, and that represents your brandâs voice.
Emails are still great ways to engage with customers. However, it needs to be with people that already know your brand and the content of the emails needs to be genuinely valuable. People love emailsâ53% of marketers say itâs the most effective channel for demand genâbut they hate spamâkeep that in mind.
When creating your email campaigns you’ll need to keep three principles in mind:
Frequency: it doesn’t matter how valuable your content is, if you keep bombarding your clients with too many emails they will start seeing them as spam. In the same breath, if you start emailing too sparingly, customers will forget about you and your email marketing will lose its momentum.
Segmentation: helps keep your emails relevant. If you target each email to a specific type of customer, by industry, position, interaction, or any other demographic, it will help you deliver tailored, valuable content.
Implementing clear calls-to-action and next steps in your emails allows your potential customer to get the most out of the email. Make it easy for them to find out more about your brand or your products.
Podcasts have become one of the primary ways for people to learn new things. In fact, 74% of podcast users listen to them to learn something new. Podcasts have become a popular way to look for entertainment and knowledge.
More than half of Americans do chores while listening to podcasts, and users spend an average of 6 hours and 37 minutes listening to podcasts every week.
With all of this engagement and popularity, itâs a big miss to pass on being part of the podcasting ecosystem.
However, it’s important to point out that podcasts are not easy. On one hand, users can listen to podcasts wherever and whenever, which is great because you wonât be competing with other channels that require the user to be fully present and engaged. On the other hand, youâll be competing against the thousandsâif not millionsâof other podcasts out there in the selection process.
More than half of the world uses social media, that’s about 4.62 billion people at your fingertips. Being where your customers are is a fundamental part of all demand generation strategies.
There are plenty of social media platforms for you to choose and which one will be best for you will depend on your target market. It’s not the same to advertise or communicate through LinkedIn than it is to do so on Facebook or Instagram. Age, interests of your audience, and whether you’re aiming for B2C or B2B will have a huge impact on how you use social media in your demand generation campaign.
Influencer marketing is one of the most recently used demand generation tactics. It’s a simple way to generate demand in a seemingly organic way. Although you will be in touch with influencers, your audience sees influencers as ‘extended-friends’ and, most importantly, as experts in their niche. Just like referrals are one of the best ways to reach people, influencer marketing is like a wider-reach referral.
Keep in mind that youâll need to find the channels that your influencers are onâinfluencer marketing isnât just on Instagram or TikTok.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are two of the most-used channels by B2B SaaS companies.
The main advantage they offer is that the results are seen immediately. Additionally, PPC spending is easy to track and gives straight results and ROI. However, because you have to pay for each click on your Google Ads, this means that the customer acquisition cost is typically high.
Demand generation aims to increase awareness and reach in order to increase high-quality leads that will then be turned into customers by the lead gen strategy. Account based marketing is one of the best ways to ensure demand, leads, and customer acquisition. Why? Because it focuses so much on a specific account and it personalizes all marketing efforts to perfectly match the account targeted.
There are plenty more channels to consider, but these are the main channels that we know will help you generate the demand of your dreams!
Natalia Brzezinska, Marketing & Outreach Manager at PhotoAid, points out: “there are a variety of demand generation channels that businesses can use to reach their target audiences. The most effective channels will vary depending on the type of business, product or service being offered, and the target market.“
It’s true that finding the right channel for your specific situation in terms of products, target audience, and industry is no easy task. In fact, Kevin Barry, co-founder at Right Percent, says that the first thing to note when it comes to demand generation is that “finding product-channel fit is hard!“
We’ve been warned of how hard it really is, yet we must still do it and be meticulous when trying to choose the right channel. When it comes to demand generation, it really is the crux of the matter.
Things to keep in mind when choosing your demand gen channels
The first thing you need to do is deeply understand your market. Use all the data collected, and that you can find from other companies, to really narrow down who your audience is. What do they like, where are they, what their pain points are?
“When you analyze your market, you determine whether you can go for blogging, direct mailing, social media, PR campaigns, or influencer marketing. You may also create webinars, videos or podcasts, write e-books, or organize live events. […] Just remember to balance your scale and personalization in the right way.” – Nina PÄ czka, Community Manager at Zety.
Source: Provided by Kevin Barry
Of course, your aim is to generate demand, however, think about the greater purpose. If you want to increase your sales fast, improve your brand reputation and credibility, or establish a solid community, your go-to channel will change.
Once your demand generation strategy is up and running, you’ll need to constantly check how it’s going. There are plenty of demand gen metrics available for you to use and analyze, but here are some of the most used:
Lastly, don’t forget that you aren’t constrained to using only one channel. Metric charts analyzed the B2B market shares by number of sales channels used and the results is what you would expect: the more channels that were used, the better.
However, not all companies will have unlimited time and financial resources to use as many channels as they wish, but this is a great reminder to not narrowly focus on only one channel.
Let us know how you get on with these demand gen channels and thanks for reading!
Demand generation channels are the platforms and channels that marketing teams focus on to reach the target audience. Although demand gen is located towards the top of the funnel, the different channels available will target a specific area in the funnel, which is why it is paramount to know why each channel is used.Â
Examples of demand gen channels include: PPC/SEM, social media, webinars, thought leadership, and content marketing.Â
Depending on the channel that you implement for your demand generation strategy the content will vary. Brand awareness content will be different from thought leadership content, or a PPC piece of content.Â
To create a winning demand generation plan you need to understand your target audience, your industry and market, and how each demand generation channel plays a role.Â
Once you figure this out youâll need to align your goals, with your budget, and start creating a strategy. Once the strategy is up and running youâll need to constantly check on it and analyze the data you’re obtaining to see where changes need to be made.
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