As marketing and advertising continue to saturate the global economy, reaching target audiences becomes more challenging for businesses. This is further supported by 44% of B2B leaders who confirm that driving demand for products and services is becoming uphill task. It shows how much demand generation remains critical for businesses to increase product and service demand. As a result, businesses must adopt various strategies to show potential markets what the business is all about and its values. Here is a guide to B2B demand generation that will help businesses step up their game and approach marketing uniquely.

Defining B2B Demand Generation

B2B demand generation is a data-driven marketing strategy businesses use to increase awareness and interest in their products and services. It entails educating customers, addressing their pain points and providing solutions to these pain points. B2B marketing and sales teams use buyer behavioural and intent data to build marketing campaigns targeting the needs of a particular B2B audience. All these approaches generate demand which produces high-quality leads that convert into customers.

B2B Demand Generation vs Lead Generation

The main difference between demand and lead generation is that demand generation centres on building awareness, interest, and demand for products and services. While on the other hand, lead generation focuses on identifying potential buyers and creating a relationship with them. Since 80% of new leads do not convert into customers, demand generation helps prospects understand the business. This helps the business create a strategy for capturing the demand.

Types of B2B Demand Generation

There are many ways businesses can generate demand, but they are mainly categorized into two approaches;

Inbound Demand Generation

Inbound B2B demand generation borrows the principles of inbound marketing and combines them with a buying experience for pipeline generation. This approach takes customers from the discovery to the decision journey while remaining anonymous. The common inbound demand generation tactics are;

• Social media content
• Blogs
• Live events

Outbound Demand Generation

Outbound demand generation uses interruptive techniques to create a pipeline. It sends messages to potential customers without prior interaction. Some of the common outbound demand generation tactics used by B2B businesses include;

• Intent date
• Purchasing data
• Direct mail
• Mass email
• Cold calling

Demand Generation Funnel

The demand generation funnel visually presents the buying process of a B2B customer. Considering B2B demand generation focuses on creating demand for products and services, it slightly differs from the traditional inbound marketing funnel that pushes for contact details.

Stage 1: Create Demand

Creating awareness is the first stage of the demand generation funnel, considering 95% of the target market is not looking for solutions. Therefore, creating demand targets an entire market instead of those looking for solutions.

Stage 2: Capturing Demand

Demand capture involves channelling marketing efforts to the 5% of the target market looking for solutions. After buyers determine their problem, they search for and purchase available solutions. Exploring solutions happens in high-intent channels where they compare solutions, case studies, features, specifications, and prices.

Stage 3: Convert Demand

This is the last B2B demand generation stage, focusing on converting demand to the pipeline. The buyers have already gathered enough information about products and services at this stage. Therefore, businesses have to optimize the conversion process for seamless transactions.

A robust demand-generation strategy builds brand awareness and establishes credibility and authority. Therefore, businesses should ensure their demand generation approaches indicate to the customer how the products and services provide solutions to them. Although B2B demand generation is demanding, B2B data providers help businesses find the right strategies for their industries and markets. Join digital marketing course in Jaipur.