If we had to summarize the modern relationship between marketing and sales, it would sound something like: Generate more and better leads, so we can close more deals more effectively. But how? How can marketing leverage the data it has available to drive more value and get better leads? How can they provide measurable and repeatable value to the company?

That’s the work of a demand gen team. We recently sat down with Joe Paone, Senior Director of Worldwide Marketing at Splunk, to talk about not only why a mature demand gen engine is critical to a modern marketing team, but how to understand the evolution of that program.

After all, a demand gen program doesn’t grow spontaneously out of that initial lead gen stage of grabbing whatever leads pop up and throwing them over the fence. There’s a distinct maturation process, from that initial stage to a full-funnel experience.

In his 15+ years of experience, starting in the financial service industry and shifting into sales and marketing for B2B tech, Joe understands the phases of building and evolving a modern demand gen engine to generate higher-quality leads at scale.

Here, he takes us on a deeper look at those phases, how to keep sales and marketing aligned efficiently through the whole process, and finally how to frame this process to achieve better buy-in (and thus better funding) for your demand gen program.

 

Phase 1: Generating leads

In the early stages of maturation, a marketing team might already be handing some leads to the revenue team, but there’s likely only a couple channels driving those leads at this point, and limited data on the interaction points within these leads.

So square one is all about lead generation.

“There aren’t necessarily any other KPIs tied to the marketing team,” Joe says. “And it’s probably a very small team. If there’s even one or two people focused on the demand gen-type role, they’re probably running tactics that are broad-based in nature.

This phase is more about lead volume than optimization. Sales priorities drive the strategies in these early stages. The technology is typically limited to a CRM, maybe an email service provider and not much else.

“You have to be a little bit crafty in what you’re doing to generate leads,” Joe says.

 

Phase 2: Building out your tactics

After some time in phase one, the team starts adding more people. Operations don’t change too much, and the team still focuses on generating quantities of leads more than optimizing the characteristics of those leads.

But with more people comes the ability to add more and different tactics. Tack on an ESP. Build out some marketing automation. Leverage third parties for paid lead-generation programs. All strategies that emphasize increasing lead volume—particularly when we’re in B2B and high-growth tech.

It makes sense that these first two stages of demand gen maturity emphasize volume: a marketing org can’t figure out where to learn and how to grow with just a handful of data points. Plus, the sales side is striving to add sellers, and marketing has to keep up with adding leads. There’s still not the luxury of overly concerning ourselves with quality.

“The maturity in this early-ish stage coincides oftentimes with the sales maturity,” Joe explains. “There’s no pre-sales role or function developed. Once that gets mapped out on the sales side, it pushes forward what’s happening on the marketing side, so you can shift additional programs more toward quality.”

 

Phase 3: Getting technical

But when that shift to quality over quantity happens, it happens quickly. “All of a sudden you now need to move from a marketing perspective to how you are going to nurture leads, how to move them through the funnel, how to provide the sellers with higher-quality leads,” Joe says.

This is the tipping point of demand gen maturity: now a team needs to add roles like marketing operations to tie together the technologies it’s been adopting. In many cases and to varying degrees, the org ends up being tech-driven in order to integrate tactics and better understand touch points.

By this point, a team has its marketing automation well integrated and is doing basic segmentation. It’s got lead scoring going on. It’s possibly even leveraging sales productivity tools, which could be owned by either the marketing or the sales team. And it’s using these advanced technologies to begin optimizing toward different touch points.

“From a strategy standpoint, now in demand gen, you can attribute pipelines to different tactics you’re running,” Joe says. “You’ve likely got some version of a pipeline goal, and you need to be able to build a fully integrated plan that’s driving pipeline. You’re going to be held accountable at some level with the sales org on what sort of pipeline you’re generating.”

 

Phase 4: Becoming specific and specialized

Pipeline goals drive this increasingly complex phase of demand gen maturity. It’s no longer enough to have a strong pipeline—the team is now concerned with what is in that pipeline, and how it fits what the company is looking for.

For instance, if a company has several products in its suite, each one might have its own specific pipeline, in addition to a general purpose pipeline. Then, what are the conversion rates in each pipeline—by channel and motion? A team by this point has to become increasingly sophisticated to analyze what happens after pipelines are created, as well.

“From a people standpoint, this is usually the moment when people shift from being generalists in demand gen, doing a little bit of everything, to specialists,” Joe says.

The roles get more clearly defined by necessity. The person running paid programs cannot also manage email marketing—everyone needs to fill a specific role at some stage of the funnel, and they all work together in an integrated plan. 

Thus, this stage of maturity also embraces more resources, and technology becomes increasingly sophisticated and predictive to inform the targeting. This stage is often when companies integrate services like Rev, which leverages an AI-driven model to evaluate your current best customers and identify act-alike prospects most likely to engage with your products.

“You’ll probably be leveraging third-party data along with your first-party data in the programs that you’re putting in and the segmentations that you’re building,” Joe says. “Depending on the type of company, this is where you’ll likely have an account-based approach if there’s a top list of sales accounts, or maybe you’re using a predictive model to determine what those top sales accounts are. Depending on the type of company, you might see a breakdown between enterprise and SMB focused, and customers versus prospects. The teams may align based on that, so they can build much more specific programs.”

Essentially, by this point in maturation, the team has completely shifted from lead gen to demand gen—incorporating and synthesizing the full funnel experience.

 

Align sales and marketing through the entire evolution

In a mature demand gen model, marketing is accountable to both sales and potential customers longer than in lead gen models. It’s not a case of throwing leads over the fence anymore. Instead, it’s increasingly essential to bring sales into the demand gen process—in a productive and healthy way—so that the process results in leads they can close.

But there is no easy silver-bullet answer to how to do that. But where to start is clear: at the beginning.

“It starts with the plan of record and ensuring that sales is part of that, that what marketing is signing up for is what sales leadership agrees with,” Joe says.

He sees companies often struggle with following through on that agreement. Even with agreement at the beginning of the process, changes often happen—sales priorities shift (and frequently) based on what’s working and not working in the field. Joe understands that it’s marketing’s role to remain flexible in what it’s doing, while staying in alignment with the goal posts (even as those also shift).

“If we can have a guiding post of our objective is X percent of pipeline overall will be generated by marketing, we know we might have to flex on where that pipeline is coming from or what we’re focused on,” he explains.

“We can change dollars to different types of programs, as long as we can agree that for this fiscal year we will be generating this amount of pipeline with sales. That’s the right starting point. Having them involved in the beginning helps them buy into it so they understand what marketing is signing up for.”

The idea of a shared vision allows not only sales but other areas of the company to engage in real feedback loops that help iterate how the company can reach its goals. Flexibility within marketing is necessary not only to maintain alignment with sales, but also to respond to input from other stakeholders, and to adapt to an ever-changing world.

 

Advice for starting out: Get buy-in with your demand gen vision

Building out a demand gen engine can be intimidating. Whether a company is ripe and ready for a natural maturation, or marketing is getting pushed to build a robust program, it’s a serious undertaking that can actually feel a bit scary.

So to get started, Joe recommends getting clarity and support from senior leadership within marketing.

“It definitely helps to have buy-in on what the objectives are and where you’re taking the demand gen team,” he says. And if you need to communicate that to the senior leadership to earn their buy-in? “Start by showing the benefits of moving in a more mature direction.”

For instance: if you don’t yet have a marketing automation platform, you can present a conceptual understanding of what it can achieve for the company. Joe points out that so many vendors offer sophistication in their programs, including assistance in helping you sell to your leadership team—not just the product, but the vision and the direction.

Conceptually, these growth stages make a lot of sense. “You’re already generating some volume of leads, and you’re going to hear feedback from sales—whether these are good leads, not good leads, whether you need to do something more, participate in certain types of events, be where your competitors are,” Joe says. “That’s going to help push you too. You can combine the sales pressure to be more sophisticated, and the technology that’s available.”

Once you can make your demand gen maturation goals explicit to leadership and other internal stakeholders, you can make the case for budget so you can actually implement the vision. Then, continuing to make the case for resources gets easier—the more you develop, the more easily you can point to the impact you’re having, track your results and justify better funding. It becomes a positive fulfillment cycle,

“What I’ve seen work is really showcasing the value to sales,” Joe says. “Ultimately, it’s not even about pipeline that’s being generated, it’s about the bookings that are being won. That’s the final stage of maturity: optimizing programs based on what has closed bookings. Seeing that target, where ultimately you’re going to need to go, can help you start to build the path to get there.”

How do you acquire good B2B leads?

First, let’s clear the air. “Good” is relative. To some, good leads are contacts that match their ideal customer profile (ICP). To others, it’s anyone that shows signs of purchase intent or has a higher likelihood to convert.

Whatever your definition of “good” is, there are some fundamental best practices for generating leads that are more likely to turn into customers—which, at the end of the day, is what we all want.

Lead generation is essential to any business, but it’s more complex than just sending an email. It requires a thorough understanding of your target audience’s behavior, which can be challenging to find when you’re not in their shoes. 

This post will cover almost everything you need to know about good leads and how to generate them. With these 13 lead generations best practices, you’ll have what you need to up your lead gen game.

Let’s start with the basics.

 

What is B2B lead generation? 

Simply put, lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers into prospects and prospects into customers. It includes a variety of inbound marketing tactics that target specific personas, or groups of people, to turn them into leads.

The lead generation process usually starts with creating awareness, interest, and desire for a product or service. Then, you nurture those leads until they’re converted into customers. 

The main difference between B2B and B2C lead generation is that the B2B sales process is often longer and the buying journey is more complex. Most organizations follow a formal decision-making process, and it can stretch out the sales cycle.

 

What are the four steps of the lead generation process? 

There are four main steps in the lead generation process. They include:

 

1. Define your ideal customer

Your lead generation process should start with identifying your target market. You need to know who you’re targeting before you can start generating leads.

And, you need to know more than just your ICP’s industry, geographical region and company size. Get crystal clear on who you’re targeting by including more meaningful details about your ideal customer—like their growth rate, their level of investment in customer care, whether or not they’re an early adopter.

Going beyond firmographics and surfacing the exegraphics behind your best customers is the best way to reveal the deeper signals that make your best customers “fit and ready” to purchase from you.

You can also use surveys, interviews and data analysis to gather attitudinal insights about your ideal customers.

Once you have a good understanding of who your ICP, you’ll be ready to kick off the next phases of the lead gen process.

 

2. Determine which channels to invest in

As you lock down the details of your ICP, you’ll also want to get a sense of where your target market hangs out. You need to know how to reach them with your marketing messages.

Getting clear on your channel strategy may take time and a bit of testing. Even if one channel gains a lot of preliminary traction, you’ll want to make sure the leads from that channel are actually closing. (Because, that’s the whole point, right?) And be sure to diversify your channel strategy. Having all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea.

So, whether you decide to tap into SEO, social, content syndication, email, affiliate programs, influencers or some blend of them, make sure you’re tracking the right metrics to optimize your impact.

 

3. Create a content strategy and launch attractive offers

The next step is to create an attractive offer to your brand in front of your ICP. This is how you’ll create awareness for your brand and the solution you offer. It’s also how you’ll start to build the necessary trust that will ultimately move them through to closed-won.

An “offer” can be a free ebook, a webinar or anything else that, agnostic to your product, gives them insights to help them solve a problem they’re facing.

Your offer needs to be relevant, engaging and valuable enough that your ICP will exchange their contact information for it—and that’s where your content strategy comes into play. 

Your content should be designed for each stage of the buyer’s journey. That means creating different content for each step, such as blog posts, quizzes, podcasts and case studies—all with the goal to move them to the next stage in the process and closer to a sale.

 

4. Promote your content

Content without promotion ends up on the shelf collecting dust. You don’t want that.

To get your content in front of your target market, you need to promote it. You’ve already determined which channels you’ll be using and the content you’ll be creating. Now it’s time to decide how you’ll promote the content across your channels.

The key is to get your content in front of as many people in your target market as possible, content that matches their stage in the funnel.

 

13 lead generation best practices

Now, on to the actionable tips you’ve been waiting for. We analyzed top B2B companies’ data to see the best lead generation practices. Here’s what stands out:

 

1. Have a state-of-the-flow website

The average B2B company has a website that’s about six years old. If your website is starting to feel a little dated, it might be time for an update.

A state-of-the-flow website is critical to lead generation. It should be fast, mobile-friendly and easy to navigate. It should also be designed with your buyer persona in mind. Every element on your website should be there for a reason, helping to move your buyer through their journey.

The first thing you need to do is have a clear, easy-to-navigate website. Make sure your site is optimized for mobile and search engine optimization (SEO). This will ensure that people can easily find what they’re looking for, which helps with lead generation.

For example, a blog optimized for SEO can help buyers find you. The valuable tips and insights they got from the post might encourage them to share the post with their colleagues—which then fuels word-of-mouth marketing. (That’s another great way to get leads, BTW.)

Regardless of how your buyer found your site or which page they land on first, you need to be ready to move them to the next phase. That’s why call-to-actions are so important. Your CTAs should be very prominent on your homepages, and all subsequent pages too.

 

2. Use data to drive your decisions

Data should be at the heart of everything you do in lead generation. It should be used to track the impact of your strategy—at the deepest level. Like we mentioned before, seeing how many leads come in through one channel and at what price point is good to know. But if those leads don’t convert, you need to know why.

Does the lead really match your ICP?

Is the content misaligned with the stage of the funnel?

Are leads getting too cold before an SDR reaches out?

Having detailed data at your fingertips will help you refine the process, and make bold bets on new approaches to test.

 

3. Personalize your approach

Personalization is critical in lead generation. It’s one thing you can do to stand out from all the other companies who are trying to reach your target market.

One way to do this is by personalizing your communications. Now, we’re not talking about “form fill” customization. That’s not personalized enough for today’s buyer. But, curating content specific to the challenges they’re facing—that’s what we’re talking about.

Personalization shows that you care about your lead and are willing to take the time to get to know them. This can go a long way in getting their attention, building trust and moving them through the buyer’s journey.

 

4. Be human

In a world of automation, it’s important to remember that your leads are people too. (Louder for the people in the back.)

You need to show that you and your team are approachable, friendly and relatable. Be a real person who cares about your customers and prospects—don’t just be another salesperson or marketer trying to make a buck off of them.

Make sure your communications are human and personable. This means avoiding generic messages and taking the time to understand each lead’s needs.

Don’t promise anything unless it’s possible for you (or has been approved by management). If certain things require approval from higher up, let them know in advance, so they don’t waste time waiting on something that isn’t going anywhere!

Your goal should be to build a relationship with your leads. The more you connect with them, the more likely they will do business with you.

 

5. Keep it short and sweet

Clarity and brevity matter—especially in lead gen. You want to ensure that your message is clear, so use a conversational tone when speaking with (or writing a message to) your potential customer.

If your message is long, your lead is likely going to skip over it. No one wants to read a long, drawn-out message from a company they’re unfamiliar with. However, this doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice quality for brevity. You can still pack a lot of helpful information into a short message. Just make sure it’s easy to digest and doesn’t require much effort to read. (Tip: Use bullets. They’re very skimmable.)

 

6. Use numbers

People are more likely to pay attention to something if it’s quantifiable. Whenever possible, use numbers in your lead generation efforts.

For example, instead of saying, “We’re the best at what we do,” say, “We have a 98% success rate.” This lead generation best practice will help your leads understand your offering and why they should care.

 

7. Promote your content 

The best content in the world won’t do you any good if no one sees it. Make sure you’re promoting your content to the right people.

You can promote your content on social media by

• Sharing your blog posts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
• Promoting your new video series on YouTube or Vimeo.
• Posting an infographic about the topic you’re writing about in a blog post and reposting it on other platforms where people are more likely to see it if they follow you back (and if not, then at least make sure that it’s hyperlinked).

Also, practice email marketing to get your content in front of as many people in your target market as possible.

 

8. Make it easy to contact you

If someone wants to get in touch with you, make it easy for them. Include multiple ways to contact you on your website and in your communications. Make sure your phone number is prominent and your email address is easy to find. You should also have a “contact us” form on your website that’s easy to use.

The easier you make it for someone to get in touch, the more likely they will reach out.

 

9. Be responsive

When someone does reach out to you, make sure you’re responsive. The faster you respond, the better.

Try to respond to all inquiries within 24 hours. This shows that you’re serious about your business and that you care about your lead—and their time. Also prioritize a prompt response for someone who emails to ask for more information about your product or service. You don’t want to give the impression that they’re ignored! If they know that their concerns will be addressed promptly, then they’ll be more likely to become full-blown customers (and refer others).

 

10. Stay in touch

Leads are the most important part of any marketing strategy. Still, keeping them engaged and active over time can be difficult. 

You need to ensure that you have a system for nurturing them from the beginning of their relationship until they become a paying customer or convert into an advocate for your business. (And even beyond too.)

Just because someone may not be ready to buy right now doesn’t mean they never will be. Stay in touch with your leads and keep them updated on what’s new with your business. You can do this by sending periodic emails, calling them from time to time or even sending them a postcard. The more you stay in touch, the more likely they will do business with you when they’re finally ready to buy.

 

11. Get creative

There are a lot of lead generation ideas out there. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try something new. Remember, not all lead generation tactics will work for all businesses. You need to find what works best for you and run with it. But, you’ll never know if you don’t create an environment that’s willing to get out of the comfort zone.

 

12. Be patient

Good things come to those who wait. Lead generation takes time, so don’t expect overnight results. Also, remember that leads are not sales. They require patience to convert, so keep going even if they aren’t converting quickly. 

The more successful B2B companies we analyzed all had some form of a lead generation program in place. Still, they also had systems for nurturing their leads until they were ready for a sale or close.

Building up a sizable leads list can take months or even years. But if you’re patient and keep at it, you’ll eventually see the fruits of your labor pay off.

 

13. Get help

There’s no shame in admitting that you need help. If lead generation is proving to be more difficult than you thought, reach out to a professional for assistance.

Whether you need help to determine who to target, how to create the most impactful content, how to promote content in different channels—there’s expertise out there waiting to guide and help you. Speed up your learning curve by partnering with a freelancer or agency that has a proven track record. 

 

Final thoughts

That was a long list of best practices, and it goes to show that lead generation isn’t a set and forget effort. In fact, doing so will only create space for your competitors to take the lead. (Pun intended.) 

If we can hit home any one point, it’s that getting your ICP right—that first step—matters more than most people give it credit. After all, if you engage with the wrong prospect, every step after is wasted. 

At Rev, we can help you better understand your ICP and surface the deeper signals that separate the great leads from the rest. Contact us, and we’ll conduct a free ICP audit so you can see the exegraphic data behind your best customers.

Not all outbound lead generation strategies are built equally. While some are effective within a short time, others require a compound investment.

This post distills the best outbound lead generation strategies and how to execute them to get lasting results fast. We’ll cover:

• Outbound lead generation and how it works
• Methods you can use to generate leads
• The benefits of outbound lead generation 
• And more

Without much ado, let’s dive right in.

 

What is outbound lead generation?

Outbound lead generation is a sales and marketing strategy used to build pipeline by reaching out directly to prospects—and often to people who may not know your company or the solution you offer. It’s a way to open new opportunities and expand your customer base.

Outbound lead gen is a critical strategy for many B2B companies and can take many forms: cold calling, email and social selling. At the end of the day, it’s about reaching out and engaging with potential future customers. And, in order for it to be effective, you and your team need to be strategic about who you target in the first place and how you reach out to them.

 

Inbound vs. outbound

Simply put, inbound lead generation is about attracting people to your business through content and outbound lead generation focuses on actively searching for and reaching out to potential customers.

The benefit of inbound is that people often find you as they’re actively looking for a solution to a problem they’re facing. The content you created—with no strings attached—caught their attention, guided them in solving their problem and helped build trust with your brand. These folks found your company organically, which means you didn’t have to risk annoying or bombarding them with calls or emails. You simply served valuable content that was relevant to their interests.

Outbound, on the other hand, has a reputation for being a little more aggressive. The upside of outbound is that its active nature has the potential to bring in more qualified, people—and customers—grow your bottom line. 

With outbound, you’re often targeting net-new accounts targeting accounts, so there’s a lot of growth potential. And today, there are many aspects of outbound lead generation that can be automated, making it a less time-consuming process.

So, which method is best for you? That depends on your business and your goals. Many B2B organizations use both. But in general, outbound lead generation can be more effective—especially if you’re looking to reach a specific target market.

 

What are the benefits of outbound lead generation?

There are several benefits to outbound lead generation. They include:

1. Increase brand awareness

By reaching out to potential customers, you’re putting your company in front of people who may not have heard of you. And that can be a great way to increase mind share,  market share and grow your business.

 

2. Hyper-target lead

If you take a very thoughtful approach with your outbound efforts, you can tailor your communications to reach and resonate with people who are great fits for your product/service—and have a high propensity to engage. Doing this allows you to save time, money and increases the speed by which these leads move from prospect to closed-won.

 

3. Speed

And speaking of speed, outbound lead generation also allows you to reach new prospects faster. No need to passively wait for them to stumble upon your blog post or infographic. Since you are sending an email directly to someone who fits your ICP—and at the exegraphic level, you’re already increasing your chances of a response.

 

4. Automation

Many steps within your outbound lead generation strategy can be automated so you don’t have to spend time manually contacting leads one-by-one every day. It also allows for more consistent sales activity over time. 

 

5. Reach new markets

Outbound lead generation helps you reach potential customers on a larger scale. This expands your customer base and builds brand awareness for your business in a more active way than inbound marketing allows.

 

Outbound lead generation strategies

When it comes to outbound lead generation, you need to think beyond the basics. You can’t just pick up the phone and start dialing or send an email without putting any thought into it. Well, you can, but it won’t be fruitful.

Instead, create a strategy that targets the right people and engages them in the right conversation. But, how do you do that effectively? There are several things you can do.

 

Cold calling

Even though it often gets a bad wrap, cold calling is a great way to generate outbound leads and build your sales pipeline. 

Start by researching the best times to call and know how to pitch your company’s products. Make sure you have a prioritized target account list so you know exactly whom to contact…and whom to contact next. Understand what makes these accounts a good fit for your product/service, so you can guide the conversation in the most effective way possible—and even follow-up the conversation with a piece of collateral that can help your prospects solve their problem, whether or not they decide to purchase from you. This is a great way to build trust with them and demonstrate that you have their best interest in mind.

 

Outbound email

A cold, outbound email is another way for you to get in front of a prospect that hasn’t yet heard of you. With email, you can build relationships with prospects, build trust with them and educate them about your product or service.

A word of caution: Spam filters are a big barrier to success for this tactic. If you slap in a bunch of keywords and send a “buy our stuff” message to your database, your email will end up in your prospect’s spam folder and not their inbox. 

So, how do you avoid this? First, personalize your message and make it conversational. Even if you rely on automation to send your outreach sequences, make sure you add the human touch to your message to minimize the chances of your email getting filtered out.

 

Social selling

Social media. What can we say about it besides everyone is on it? So, why not get in front of new prospects there?

Social selling allows you to use social media channels to find new prospects, build connections with them and generate more leads. For the B2B world, LinkedIn is a great platform to use. But, depending on your ICP, you might also want to consider using Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. 

 

Multi-channel outreach

Teams used to rely on one or two channels to generate leads. That’s no longer the case—and that’s where multi-channel outreach becomes essential. 

Buyers today don’t just read one magazine, listen to one podcast or use one social media platform. They’re much more complex than that—which means you need to stay top of mind for them. With the right outbound strategy, you can do just that.

That may mean that your outreach plans include cold calling, a follow-up email, a message on LinkedIn and other forms of direct communication. Find the balance that works best for your ICP and lean into it.

 

Who makes up the outbound team?

When you’re putting together an outbound team, there are a few key positions you need to fill, which include; 

1. Sales development representatives

Sales development reps (SDRs) are the frontline of many outbound lead gen strategies. They’re the ones cold calling prospects and sending emails—day after day after day. They’re the ones tasked with initially pitching your product/service to the prospects, and getting a commitment from the prospect to learn more.

 

2. Account executives

Account executives take the warm lead from the SDRs and move them (if all goes well) through to closed-won. An effective account executive will always act in the best interest of the lead—and the company—by clearly communicating the value of the product/service they’re selling. Just like SDRs, they’re intimately familiar with your company’s ICP so they know exactly how to speak to the value the prospect can expect and will receive.

 

3. Content marketers

Content marketers are often associated with inbound marketing, but don’t take that to mean they don’t play a critical role in outbound lead gen. In fact, great content marketers can arm your SDRs with content to include in their emails. These could be exciting articles about your industry or products, or they could be short videos, infographics and ebooks that help you explain how your product works in a fun way.

 

Final thoughts

Now that you’re familiar with outbound lead generation—the process of reaching out to potential customers who don’t know you exist yet—you can decide if it’s the best strategy for your organization. While outbound lead gen can be a great way to get more leads and grow your business, it can also be a lot of work. So, make sure you set yourself up for success.

At Rev, we believe outbound success starts at the very beginning, by targeting the right accounts—the ones that fit the characteristics you care about most. We’re not just talking about firmographic details. We believe it’s important to understand how your ideal customers run their business. And with the help of AI, you don’t need to guess. Our Sales Development Platform can tell you exactly what your ideal customer profile is—and it can build you a prioritized list of other accounts that look just like them.

Want a free list of customers that match your ideal customer profile? Contact us.

Do you think your company’s CEO cares about web traffic, impressions or leads as much as your marketing team? Probably not! Because what she really cares about is revenue. 

So, as a B2B marketer, you need to be able to show the impact your demand generation efforts are having on the bottom line. Otherwise, you’re just working in a silo and your marketing efforts will eventually get cut.

But how do you show the impact of demand generation on revenue? The answer is simple: by tracking and reporting the right metrics.

That’s why, in this blog post, we’ll show you 10 of the most important demand generation metrics so you know how to communicate the value of your demand gen campaigns. We’ll also show you how you can use exegraphic data to get even better results with your demand generation metrics by knowing which companies to target.

Let’s get started!

 

10 demand generation metrics for B2B marketing 

#1 Number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs)

The first important metric to track is the number of MQLs as it can show you how effective your demand generation process is at generating qualified leads and if there are any problems you need to fix ASAP.

If you’re generating demand from a lot of leads but they’re not qualified, it may be a sign that your demand generation campaign is targeting an outdated ideal customer profile (ICP) that relies too heavily on superficial information, like employee job titles and company size.

What can you do instead? Dig deeper to understand the characteristics that actually affect buying decisions at your target companies, such as how your ideal customers operate and execute their company mission. These characteristics are what we call exegraphics. 

For example, let’s imagine you’re a software company that sells a product that helps small businesses with inventory management. If you read through a target company’s job ads and website (or use Rev’s AI-powered platform to collect that information at scale) you might find that company is currently expanding its eCommerce operations but is struggling to keep track of what’s selling where.

You could use this insight to produce demand generation marketing content that’s tailored to their specific needs and pain points. And it’s that type of content that will help you move potential customers through your demand generation funnel and generate better MQLs!

 

#2 MQL to SQL conversion rate 

You need to monitor the number of marketing qualified leads that convert into sales qualified leads (SQLs). This metric is important because it tells you how efficient your demand generation funnel is at converting leads into customers.

If you’re not converting a high percentage of your MQLs into SQLs, it could be because your leads are getting stuck at the top of the funnel. And this is important for your marketing team to know because it can be improved with a few changes to your demand generation strategy.

Here are a few ways to improve your MQL to SQL conversion rate:

• Make sure your MQL criteria are clear and aligned with your sales process
• Work closely with your sales team to ensure a smooth handoff of MQLs
• Create targeted content for each stage of the buyer’s journey
• Use exegraphic data to score your leads and prioritize the ones most likely to convert

 

#3 MQL churn rate

How many MQLs you’re bringing in is only part of the equation. You also need to keep track of how many of these leads you’re able to retain and move through your funnel. This metric, known as MQL churn rate, can help you identify any bottlenecks in your demand generation funnel and make adjustments accordingly.

To improve your MQL churn rate: 

• Optimize your lead scoring model to better identify and prioritize top-quality leads
• Improve your lead nurturing strategy
• Invest in better targeting and audience segmentation techniques
• Analyze exegraphic data to identify characteristics associated with high-quality MQLs

 

#4 MQL and SQL to customer conversion rate 

Ultimately, the goal of demand generation is to increase the number of people interested in signing up for your product or service. 

While you won’t always be able to directly attribute this metric to your demand generation campaign, it can be helpful to understand whether your campaigns correlate with an increase in conversions.

Here are some ideas on how to use demand generation content to increase conversions:

• Create valuable demand generation content such as ebooks, white papers or blog posts that position your company as an authority in your niche 
• Use calls-to-action (CTAs) in your demand generation content that encourages people to sign up for your product or service
• Offer incentives such as discounts or coupons for people who sign up after engaging with your demand gen content

 

#5 Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value is the total value a customer will bring to your company throughout their relationship with you. And this one’s essential for your demand generation campaigns because it can help you:

• Set a target CPA (cost per acquisition) that you are willing to spend to acquire a new customer
• Determine which channels are most effective at acquiring high-value customers
• Prioritize accounts that have a higher CLV

 

#6 Cost per acquisition (CPA)

CPA is the total cost of acquiring a new customer. And if your demand generation campaigns are generating a lot of low-quality leads, then your CPA will be higher than it needs to be.

Of course, demand generation isn’t the only thing that affects CPA. Things like our sales process and product also play a role. However, there are a few demand gen activities you can do to improve your CPA:

• Improve your lead scoring system so that you’re only targeting leads that are likely to convert into customers
• Nurture your leads with targeted content so they are more likely to convert when they are contacted by sales 
• Use exegraphic data to identify and prioritize accounts that are a good fit for your product and show signs of being ready to buy

 

#7 Content performance metrics

Your demand generation campaign can only be as successful as the content that supports it. That’s why it’s important to track a few key metrics related to your content, such as:

• Views
• Downloads
• Shares
• Engagement 

You shouldn’t obsess too much over those metrics though. On their own, these metrics are vanity metrics that don’t tell you the full story of how effective your content is at generating demand or leads. 

However, when looked at in conjunction with other demand generation metrics, content performance metrics can give you a good idea of which content pieces are resonating with your audience and driving them further down the demand generation funnel. As a result, you’ll know which content pieces to double down on and which ones need improvement.

If you want to improve the performance of your demand gen content, here are a few things you can try:

• Revisit your ideal customer profile and ensure it’s still reflective of your best customers and not just static firmographic data
• Develop a better understanding of what type of content each of your buyer personas needs at each stage of the buyer’s journey
• Use exegraphic data to learn where key decision makers at your target companies are most likely to consume content (e.g. LinkedIn articles vs. Twitter posts)

 

#8 Close rate per channel

Your demand generation strategy will likely include multiple channels, such as paid advertising, organic search, social media and email marketing. It’s important to track the close rate for each channel so you can see which ones are performing well and invest more in those channels. 

For example, you might find that your paid search campaigns have a higher close rate than your organic search campaigns. Knowing this information, you may decide to invest more in paid search as opposed to social media or organic search.

 

#9 Marketing cycle length

Demand generation drives more qualified leads to the top of the sales funnel, which can help shorten the sales cycle and increase close rates.

Unfortunately, many companies get stuck in a long marketing cycle because they’re not generating enough demand. So, if you show that your demand generation campaigns contribute to shorter marketing cycles, stakeholders will take notice.

Some things that might indicate your demand generation campaigns have helped to shorten the marketing cycle include: 

• More prospects moving from one stage of the marketing funnel to the next
• Increased website traffic from targeted channels
• Higher conversion rates from marketing qualified leads to sales qualified leads

 

#10 Contribution to total revenue

This is the ultimate metric that ties everything else together. If your demand generation campaigns don’t contribute to the bottom line, you need to re-evaluate your strategy. Why? Because, at the end of the day, you’ll have a hard time justifying your demand generation spend if it’s not directly impacting revenue.

But how do you measure this one? Here are a few ways to track the contribution of demand generation to revenue:

• Calculate the percentage of new customers that came from demand generation initiatives
• Look at the total revenue generated from new customers in a certain time period and compare it to the amount you spent on demand generation during that same period
• Use customer lifetime value (CLV) to see how much revenue each new customer generated throughout their relationship with your company

 

How exegraphic data can help you run more effective demand generation campaigns

Exegraphic data is critical—yet often a missing piece—for understanding your target market well enough to generate demand that leads to sales. But what exactly are exegraphics? Exegraphics are any behavioral characteristic of a company that could be valuable in determining whether or not they’re fit or ready to buy your product or service.

For example, let’s say your company sells marketing automation software. By tapping into exegraphics, you could see which companies resemble your best customers—which ones have the characteristics you care about the most. Maybe that’s marketing orgs that are heavily investing in marketing sophistication and executing with a small team.

Using that information, you could then generate demand by running a webinar on how lean marketing teams can use marketing automation software to improve the efficiency of their campaigns and get better results.

 

Final thoughts

By understanding and tracking these key demand generation metrics, you can show your stakeholders the value of demand generation and how it contributes to achieving key performance indicators across all areas of the business. 

To get even more ROI from your demand generation campaigns, you can use exegraphic data to make sure you’re targeting the right companies with exactly the type of content that can influence them to buy. 

How can you get started with exegraphics? Contact us and get a view into the exegraphics behind your best customers—so you can immediately adjust your strategy.

Your marketing budget may be tight. But some tools are too valuable to pass up—especially when it comes to a process like demand generation marketing that depends on your brand’s ability to reach and engage potential new customers.

In this blog post, we’ll show you 13 of the best demand generation tools that are worth the investment when developing your next campaign. We’ll also show you how Rev (that’s us!) uses AI technology to find exegraphic data that enhances the value you get from any of the demand generation tools on this list.

But, first, because there’s often some confusion about demand generation vs. lead generation, let’s start with…

 

What is demand generation?

Demand generation is the process of generating interest and brand awareness for your brand, rather than waiting for customers to come to you.

Unlike lead generation, which is about getting people to raise their hands and identify themselves as potential customers, demand generation marketing is about building customer relationships that last—even before they’re ready to make a purchase.

Ultimately, the goal of demand generation is to position your brand as a leader in your space. That way, when your customers are finally ready to buy, they’ll think of you first—making them high-quality leads before they even hear from your sales team.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s get into the demand generation tools that will help you execute a successful demand generation program!

 

13 of the best demand generation tools for B2B marketing teams

There are hundreds of demand generation tools, each with their own unique capabilities that can assist you with everything from content creation, lead scoring, lead nurturing and more. 

But, in this list, we’ve compiled what we believe to be some of the best to support an effective B2B demand generation program. 

Let’s get started! 

 

#1 Rev

An effective B2B demand generation strategy depends on having a thorough understanding of your ideal customer so that you can target them with relevant content and messaging. Unfortunately, many companies use shallow criteria to develop their ideal customer profile (ICP) and, as a result, create target account lists and demand generation content that miss the mark.

Rev’s AI-powered sales development platform helps you create a more comprehensive ICP by identifying companies that behave like your best customers and predicting which of those companies are most likely to buy from you.

With Rev, you can refine your segmenting strategy, backing your decision with data so you’re allocating your budget with as much precision as possible.

 

#2 Ahrefs

Demand generation depends on creating content that answers the questions your target audience is already asking. One of the best ways to find those questions is to research the most popular keywords in your industry using an SEO tool like Ahrefs.

Ahrefs also allows you to see how your competition generates demand by offering a suite of tools to research their SEO strategy, including their most popular keywords and content, link-building strategy, paid ads and more.

SEO-driven content isn’t a requirement for a successful demand generation campaign. But if you’re not optimizing your content for search engines, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity. Ahrefs is a great demand generation tool to help bridge that gap.

 

#3 Quora

Quora isn’t exactly a demand generation tool, but it is a platform that can be used to support your demand gen marketing efforts. If you’re not familiar with Quora, it’s a Q&A platform where people can ask questions and get answers from experts in the field.

Even though Quora isn’t a demand gen tool, it deserves a place in your demand generation marketing strategy. That’s because, with Quora, you can position yourself as an expert in your field and drive traffic back to your website or blog.

To do this, you’ll want to find questions that are relevant to your business and provide helpful in-depth answers. Be sure to include a link back to your website or blog in your answer, so that people can learn more about you and what you do.

Quora is also a great way to find common questions that you can use to create valuable inbound marketing content that helps guide leads down your customer journey. For example, if you see a question that’s being asked over and over again, you can create a blog post or article that addresses that question. Everything here applies to Reddit as well!

 

#4 Leadpages

Demand generation isn’t directly concerned with generating leads right away. But some of your demand gen content (e.g. whitepapers or webinars) can capture leads that you can later pass to your sales team to convert into customers. And for that, Leadpages is an excellent demand generation tool.

Leadpages makes it easy to build attractive landing pages using templates (or the drag-and-drop editor if you want something more custom). You can also A/B test your landing pages, see which one performs better and make changes accordingly.

The right landing page can make a big difference in your conversion rates. And Leadpages makes it easy to create and test landing pages until you find one that works best for your demand gen content.

 

#5 LinkedIn Sales Navigator

On its own, LinkedIn is one of the best social media platforms to generate demand for your brand’s products or services. Just by posting updates, articles and other content, you can build brand awareness and attract new leads to your business. But if you want to take things to the next level, you need LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a sales prospecting tool designed specifically to help sales teams generate leads using LinkedIn. With this tool, you have access to powerful features, such as lead recommendations and InMail messaging, that can help you connect with more prospects and close more deals.

Another great thing about LinkedIn Sales Navigator is that it integrates with your CRM, so you can track your interactions and progress with each lead in one place.

 

#6 Wishpond

Demand generation is all about creating a system by which to nurture and moved leads through the sales funnel until they’re ready to buy. And Wishpond makes it easy to do all of that in one place.

Wishpond is a demand generation tool that allows you to run social media campaigns, contests and sweepstakes that generate demand and leads. You can also use it to develop beautiful landing pages, lead capture forms, email marketing campaigns and more.

 

#7 RiteKit

If you’re going to use social media for generating demand, then you may as well use a tool that simplifies how you create and share great content that gets in front of your ideal customers. RiteKit does just that.

RiteKit offers a suite of tools to help you create better social media content, find the right hashtags and get your content in front of more people. And because it’s impossible to be everywhere at once, RiteKit helps you schedule and publish social media content across all the major networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) simultaneously.

 

#8 Outgrow

Interactive content, such as quizzes and calculators, is one of the best ways to drive demand and generate leads because it’s so effective at engaging people. Outgrow is a demand generation tool that specializes in creating these kinds of interactive content experiences.

With Outgrow, you can create quizzes, chatbots, calculators, and other interactive content experiences without any programming or design knowledge. For example, if you’re a SaaS company, you could create a quiz that helps people find the perfect software solution for their needs. Just choose a template, customize it to match your brand and publish it on your website. 

 

#9 Hotjar

Your demand generation content might be great, but if your website’s design is preventing users from taking action, then you’re not going to drive demand or generate leads. That’s why Hotjar is one of the most recommended demand generation tools on the market.

Hotjar is a heat mapping tool that shows you how users are interacting with your website. With Hotjar visual reports, you can see where users are clicking, scrolling and what they’re typing. This feedback will help you make necessary changes to your website so that users have a better experience and are more likely to take the actions you want them to.

 

#10 Zapier

A lot of the tasks involved in demand generation can be repetitive and time-consuming. Of course, that means they can also be automated. And Zapier is the tool built for exactly that. 

Zapier lets you connect your favorite software applications and create “Zaps” so that tasks can be completed automatically. For example, you can connect your CRM to your email marketing software and automatically add new leads to your email list. Or, as another example, you can connect your webinar registration form to your CRM so that new registrants are automatically added to your database.

These automations will save you time so that you can focus on more important tasks, like developing your content strategy or creating meaningful relationships with the new leads who interact with your demand generation content.

 

#11 EverWebinar

Webinars are a common demand generation tactic for B2B marketers, but they can be time-consuming to set up and monitor. EverWebinar is an automation tool that streamlines the entire webinar process, from sign-ups to follow-up emails.

EverWebinar also allows you to create on-demand webinars, which are great for driving demand if you cover evergreen topics or if you want to develop a lead generation asset to use on autopilot. With EverWebinar, you can also do split-testing on your webinars to see which topics, times or landing pages perform best.

 

#12 BuzzStream

Your demand generation strategy won’t survive without an effective outreach strategy. You need to be able to identify and contact influencers, bloggers, journalists and other key people so that you can get your message in front of the right people. BuzzStream streamlines this entire process.

BuzzStream is an outreach platform that helps you find the right people to contact, track your interactions and measure your success over time. For example, you can use BuzzStream to find contact information for influencers in your industry, track when you’ve emailed them or tweeted at them, and see how often they respond to your messages.

BuzzStream also has several features that make it easy to manage your outreach campaigns, including customized templates, follow-up reminders and reporting tools.

 

#13 ZoomInfo

You’ll have the most success with demand generation when you have the right data at your fingertips. ZoomInfo is a powerful sales intelligence platform that gives you access to millions of business contacts and company profiles.

With ZoomInfo, you can search for leads based on industry, size, location, revenue, job title or a handful of other criteria that matters to your business. You can also use the platform’s advanced search features and filters to find specific companies or individuals who are a good match for your product or service.

ZoomInfo also has a wide range of tools for other demand gen activities, including lead scoring and email outreach. Its powerful lead scoring algorithm uses advanced data science to give you leads that have recently searched for topics and keywords related to your business. And its automated outreach system uses market signals to deliver emails and alerts that move potential customers through the sales funnel more quickly.

 

Get the most out of your demand generation tools with Rev

No matter which combination of demand generation tools you choose, your demand gen strategy is only as strong as your ability to identify and target the right companies.

If you’ve been basing your ICP on superficial firmographic data, you’re probably missing out on a lot of qualified opportunities. You might also be failing to develop demand gen content that resonates with your target buyer.

Because Rev harnesses the power of exegraphic data to identify the behaviors of your best customers, it can give you confidence that you’re targeting the right companies and tailoring your content to their specific needs. That way, when you use other demand generation tools, you know that you’re using them to their full potential.

If you’re interested to see the exegraphic data behind your best customers—or get a free target account list of companies that have the characteristics you care about most—so you can see if you’re on the right track, contact us today.

Demand generation (aka demand gen) is all about creating awareness and interest for your brand and what you have to offer. Unlike lead generation, demand generation is a long-term approach that focuses on building relationships with customers rather than simply acquiring new leads.

However, that’s not to say that demand generation can’t be used to generate leads. In fact, an effective demand generation strategy can help you generate higher-quality leads that are more likely to convert into customers.

So, if you’re ready to add demand generation to your marketing strategy but need some inspiration, you’ve come to the right place! In this blog post, we’ll be looking at seven examples of B2B companies that excel at demand generation marketing.

At the end of this post, we’ll also share our #1 tip on how to make generating high-quality leads from these demand generation tactics a whole lot easier. 

Let’s begin!

 

7 B2B demand Generation examples

#1 HubSpot

HubSpot, the inbound marketing and sales platform, is a company that knows a thing or two about demand generation. In fact, they use nearly all of the demand gen tactics we’ll share in this post. But the one we’ll use as an example here is HubSpot’s robust collection of educational content.

 

Demand generation tactic: Educational content

HubSpot has an extensive library of free content that covers everything from inbound marketing to sales enablement. For example, HubSpot offers ebooks, templates, checklists and even certification courses—all for free, and available for anyone to access.

 

Why this demand gen tactic works

Educational content is a great way to generate demand because it helps potential customers learn about your product or service and how it can help them solve their specific problems. It also helps to build trust and credibility with your target audience. According to recent surveys, almost half of B2B decision-makers report consuming at least 3-5 pieces of content before contacting a salesperson.

 

How you can implement this tactic

If you’re not already, start creating helpful, informative content that your target audience will find valuable. This can be in the form of blog posts, ebooks, infographics, case studies, whitepapers or even just simple how-to tutorials. Once you have this content, make sure it’s easy to find on your website by creating a dedicated section for it and promoting it through your other marketing channels.

 

#2 Neil Patel Digital

If you haven’t heard of Neil Patel, are you even a digital marketer? Just kidding. But seriously, Neil Patel is a huge name in the digital marketing world, and for good reason. He and his team effectively use a wide range of demand generation strategies worth analyzing and implementing in your business. The example we’ll look at here is Neil Patel’s use of free SEO tools.

 

Demand generation tactic: Free tools

Neil Patel’s digital marketing agency, Neil Patel Digital, offers a suite of free SEO tools, including Ubersuggest and Answer The Public. These tools are designed to help businesses improve their online visibility and organic search traffic. But these free tools also help build awareness for Neil Patel Digital and position this agency as one of the top experts in digital marketing.

 

Why this demand gen tactic works

No matter your industry, free tools can be a valuable demand generation tactic. Why? Because they offer businesses a way to provide value to their target audience without any risk or investment. Free tools also serve as lead magnets, providing an easy way to capture leads and contact information.

 

How you can implement this tactic

When selecting a free tool to give away, there are a few things to keep in mind. Your free tool should be:

• Relevant to your business and industry
• Something people will actually use and find helpful
• Easy to use and understand

For example, your free tool could be a software application, an online calculator or even a set of templates. Once you’ve selected the right free tool, promote it through your website and social media channels. You can also include it in email marketing campaigns and run ads to drive traffic to a landing page.

 

#3 Monday.com

Monday.com is a project management software that helps teams collaborate on tasks and projects. If you use YouTube, you’ve probably seen at least one of their ads. That’s because one of their key demand generation tactics is video marketing.

 

Demand generation tactic: Video marketing

Monday.com uses video marketing to promote its software, build demand and drive leads. They create engaging, creative videos that show how their software can be used in businesses. They then post these videos on their YouTube channel and run ads that target people who are interested in project management software.

 

Why this demand gen tactic works

Video allows you to get creative with your marketing and tell stories that will resonate with your target audience. And this is exactly what’s needed to build awareness for your brand. According to Wyzowl’s 2022 State of Video Marketing Survey, 93% of marketers believe video marketing has helped them increase brand awareness.

 

How you can implement this tactic

If you’re looking to use video marketing to generate demand, start by creating engaging, creative videos that tell a story and showcase your product or service in action. Once you have your videos, post them on your website and social media. You can also run video ads on platforms like YouTube and Facebook.

 

#4 Adobe

You probably know Adobe is a digital media software company. But did you know they’re also one of the best B2B demand generation examples out there? One of the reasons is that Adobe has mastered the use of social media marketing to generate demand for its products.

 

Demand generation tactic: Social media marketing

Adobe uses social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram to share compelling content that’s informative and entertaining, typically showcasing their products and how their target consumers use them in their businesses. They also use social media platforms to run targeted ads that drive potential leads to their website.

 

Why this demand gen tactic works

Social media marketing is an effective way to reach a large number of potential customers with targeted content. By sharing interesting and engaging content, you can build brand awareness, trust and credibility with potential customers, which can lead to more sales.

 

How you can implement this tactic

If you want to use social media marketing to improve your demand generation, start by creating a social media profile for your business on the platforms where your target customers are most active. Then, create and share interesting and engaging content that will appeal to and educate your target customers.

 

#5 Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a software company that helps businesses improve their search engine optimization (SEO). The company offers a suite of SEO tools, including a keyword research tool, competitor analysis tool and backlink checker. But, the demand generation example we’ll look at here will be their value-packed email newsletter.

 

Demand generation tactic: Email newsletter

Within their newsletter, Ahrefs shares a weekly roundup of the newest content and insights on all things SEO. But, they don’t just share any old content. The team at Ahrefs carefully curates each week’s roundup to ensure that only the best and most actionable content is included.

 

Why this demand gen tactic works

By packing its newsletter with value, Ahrefs nurtures its email list and keeps its platform at the top of each prospect’s mind. The newsletter also includes a CTA to Ahrefs’ blog and YouTube channel, which helps generate leads and traffic for the company. 

Ahrefs doesn’t use its newsletter to directly sell to subscribers. But newsletters also provide an excellent way for businesses to introduce new services and drive demand for them without having to pay to place ads on third-party platforms.

 

How you can implement this tactic

You can implement this demand gen tactic by curating content that would be of value to your target audience. You can start by surveying your target audience to see what kinds of content they would find most valuable. Then create an editorial calendar to ensure a consistent flow of engaging content. 

 

#6 Litmus

Litmus is an email marketing tool that makes it easy for businesses to create, test and track the performance of their email campaigns. One of the ways they’ve been able to build awareness for their brand is through informative, on-demand webinars.

 

Demand generation tactic: Webinars

Litmus puts together webinars led by industry experts on topics related to email marketing. These webinars are a great way for businesses to learn more about email marketing and see how Litmus can help them reach their goals faster.

 

Why this demand gen tactic works

Webinars are a great way to generate demand and leads because they allow businesses to showcase their expertise on a particular topic. By hosting webinars on topics that are relevant to its target audience, Litmus is able to position itself as a thought leader in the email marketing space.

 

How you can implement this tactic

Here are three foundational requirements of a webinar capable of generating demand:

1. You need to make sure that the topic of your webinar is relevant to your target audience.
2. You need to promote your webinar through various channels to make sure that as many people as possible are aware of it.
3. You need to ensure that the quality of your webinar is top-notch so viewers leave feeling like they’ve been given some of your business’s most useful information for free.

If you can at least do these three things, you’ll be well on your way to generating demand and leads through webinars.

 

#7 Rev

Rev is the Sales Development Platform that helps businesses use AI to analyze their best customers and find others that exhibit those same patterns and behaviors. At Rev, we use several different strategies to generate demand for our platform. All, however, start by with exegraphics.

 

Demand generation tactic: Exegraphics

Typically, you’ll start your demand gen strategy—from content to channels to nurture programs—with your ideal customer profile (ICP) in mind. But there’s just one problem: most ICPs are shallow, incomplete representations of the businesses in your total addressable market. Why? 

Because ICPs tend to be based on firmographic data that only tells you things like industry, company size and location. Those data points only offer a limited view of your potential customers.

By incorporating exegraphics data—deep insights into how a company executes its mission—you can get very precise in your targeting and your messaging.

 

Why this demand gen tactic works

To truly create an effective demand generation campaign, you need to go beyond firmographics and get to know how your target companies operate and behave. And that’s where exegraphics comes in.

What are exegraphics? Exegraphics are the factors that influence a company’s decision-making. They include things like:

• The pain points a company is currently experiencing
• Trends affecting their industry and target markets
• The type of decision-maker your content needs to appeal to

By understanding exegraphics, you can create targeted demand generation campaigns that are much more likely to convert than generic campaigns. How? Because exegraphics give you the information you need to speak directly to your target companies’ needs. 

 

How you can implement this tactic

How do you find exegraphic data? Rev’s Sales Development Platform uses AI technology to collect information found on a business’s website, social media platforms, job postings and more. Someone on your team could manually find all of this information. But it would likely take a lot of time and be an inefficient use of your resources.  

With Rev, you can quickly gather exegraphic data on your best customers—and identify other accounts that resemble them too. (Did we mention that the target account list you can build in Rev is also prioritized?)

Want to see how exegraphics work yourself? Reach out to get a free ICP audit that will help you identify the characteristics of your best customers so you can create the most effective demand generation campaign possible!

Demand generation vs lead generation? Learning the difference between these two strategies is simple.

Demand generation is the process of building awareness and interest in your brand by showing potential prospects you understand their problem. Lead generation, on the other hand, is the process of converting those prospects into leads or customers by convincing them your brand has a solution to their problem.

So, if it’s that simple, where does the confusion come from? Why do so many B2B marketers still use these terms interchangeably?

Because these two marketing strategies usually work together. So, the line between the two easily gets blurred. Still, many companies neglect one of them, which can end up being a costly mistake. Why? In this blog post, we’re gonna show you why as we look at: 

• Examples of marketing tactics to generate demand and generate leads 
• How a strong demand generation strategy makes lead generation easier 
• Real examples of companies successfully infusing demand generation and lead generation to create greater marketing impact 
• How one company generated $1.5 billion in sales using an AI-powered demand generation strategy

Ready? Let’s get to it!

 

Demand generation vs lead generation: Marketing tactics

Remember: Demand generation is all about building awareness and interest in your brand by showing potential prospects you understand their problem. So, how do you do that? 

By educating them on the problem and presenting your brand as a thought leader by using marketing tactics, like: 

• Content marketing: Create informational, top-of-the-funnel blog posts, infographics, video tutorials, podcasts, webinars, etc.
• Search engine optimization (SEO): Make it easy for prospects to find your website and content on search engine platforms when searching for terms related to the problems your business helps solve.
• Social media marketing: Publish engaging, valuable content that resonates with your ICP on the social media platforms where they spend the most time. 
• Email marketing: Send updates about your product or service, thought leadership pieces on topics relevant to your industry, promotional offers and more. 
• Advertising: Promote your demand generation content through Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads and other paid channels.
• Influencer marketing: Work with people who have a strong online presence in your industry to promote your content to their audience.
• PR campaigns: Reach out to journalists, bloggers, and other members of the press to get them to write about your business or feature your demand generation content.
• Free resources: Offer something of value that people can use for free, such as a template or tool (e.g. a loan calculator from a financial service).  
• Content syndication: Get your demand generation content featured on other websites and in front of new audiences.

Now, if you’re thinking, “Those are a lot of the same tactics we use to generate leads,” you’re not wrong. There’s a lot of overlap when it comes to tactics for demand gen and lead gen–especially since lead gen technically falls under the umbrella of demand gen. Still, it’s the intention and execution of those marketing tactics that make the difference. 

Remember: Lead generation is about converting prospects who have begun to see your business as a potential solution to their problem. How exactly do you do that? 

By giving prospects in-depth information about your solution, showing them you’ve solved problems similar to their problems before and moving them down your sales funnel with marketing tactics, like:  

• Content marketing: Create informational, bottom-of-the-funnel content, such as a whitepaper, that prospects will want in exchange for their contact information. 
• Search engine optimization (SEO): Improve your website’s ranking for commercial and transactional keywords in search results so that when prospects look for a solution to their problem, they find you. 
• Search engine marketing (SEM): Place ads on search engines like Google so that when prospects perform searches related to your solution, they find links to your website and landing pages.
• Social media marketing: Use social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to reach out to prospects and build relationships.
• Email marketing: Send emails that prospects will want to read, with the goal of getting them to click through to your website or landing pages. 
• Advertising: Place ads about promotions and special offers on websites your target audience visits.
• Influencer marketing: Collaborate with industry thought leaders and have them promote your brand to their audience.
• Free trials and demos: Offer free trials or demos of your product or service so  prospects can see the value for themselves.

 

Why a strong demand generation strategy makes lead generation easier 

Marketers often fall into the trap of thinking that lead generation is the only goal. But without demand for your product, lead generation is an uphill battle. That’s why demand generation should be the focus first and foremost.

If you build demand first, lead generation becomes much easier because people are already interested in what you’re selling. How do you begin? Read our demand generation strategy guide to learn how to start generating demand from your ideal customers.

 

Examples of demand generation and lead generation 

Now let’s look at some real examples to help you further understand demand generation vs lead generation. Here are two B2B companies that strategically use demand generation and lead generation to get the most marketing impact. 

 

Example 1: Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an SEO tool that helps people improve their search engine rankings. To create demand, Ahrefs offers a variety of valuable content, like blog posts, video tutorials and free courses on digital marketing. And since that content is so valuable for their target audience, it attracts a lot of interest and awareness of the Ahrefs brand.

Even better, when using blog posts or videos to explain common issues for business owners like, “How to do YouTube keyword research,” Ahrefs shows their audience how the Ahrefs platform provides the perfect solution. As a result, their demand generation content almost effortlessly generates leads without ever needing to make a hard sale. 

Take a look for yourself.

 

Example 2: Monday.com 

Monday.com is a project management software that provides teams with a platform to plan, track and visualize work progress. To generate demand, Monday.com focuses on top-of-the-funnel content like blog content and video ads that target business owners and managers. For example, here’s one of their best video ads. 

Notice the video ad is short, sweet and to the point—which makes it easy to follow along and understand what Monday.com is all about. Without pushing, the ad also gently encourages viewers to sign up for a free 14-day trial.

Of course, if you do sign up for the trial, you then become a lead and begin receiving emails as part of a lead nurture sequence that encourages you to eventually subscribe to one of Monday.com‘s membership plans. 

Both Ahrefs and Monday.com show that demand generation and lead generation can work together to create a seamless experience from marketing to sales. But our next example company was able to do something even more spectacular. 

This company was able to go from having a list of seemingly dead leads to using a demand generation strategy that resulted in $1.5 billion in sales.

 

How one company increased pipeline by 15% using an AI-powered demand generation strategy

Splunk is a data software company that provides a platform for analyzing machine-generated big data. It’s used by organizations to gain insights into software operations, security and compliance. But, recently, they acquired a company in the DevOps space and needed a way to generate demand for a new offering in a new market segment.

Despite having an extensive ABM list, Splunk still struggled to find new prospects that would be interested in their solution. So, what did they do to generate enough demand and leads to make to increase pipeline by more than 15%?

To start, they used our Sales Development Platform to create a refined ICP. Since Rev uses AI technology to collect and analyze exegraphics—data on how companies operate and behave—Splunk’s new ICP became an aiCP (artificial intelligence customer profile) which continues to update as AI gathers more data on how Splunk’s best-fit customers operate and behave.

With the new aiCP, Rev was able to prioritize Splunk’s list and run a content syndication campaign, creating content that specifically targeted companies with the exegraphic markers for being the best fits for Splunk’s offer and the most ready to buy. In just three weeks, Splunk was able to attribute more than 15% of their pipeline to being high-quality MQLs that were prioritized using their aiCP.

 

Key takeaways 

Demand generation and lead generation are two important but distinct marketing strategies. You can and should use both strategies to ensure the success of your business. Here’s what you need to remember to make sure you get the most out of each.

 

What is demand generation? 

Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and demand for your product or service. It’s about getting your target market to see you as a trusted source of information and convincing them that you understand their problem.

 

What is lead generation? 

Lead generation is the process of converting prospects into leads. It’s about taking those who display interest in what you have to offer and nurturing them through your funnel until they’re ready to buy.

 

Demand generation vs. lead generation: Which one should come first? 

Demand generation. You can’t generate leads without first generating demand. If you do lead gen without demand gen, you’ll waste a lot of time and money on leads that go nowhere.

 

How can you ensure your demand generation strategy results in high-quality MQLs? 

By first taking the time to understand your target prospects, their needs and how their business operates. Then, you’ll create and promote demand generation content that’s specific to their interests and pain points.

To maximize your efforts, create an aiCP. This will help you prioritize which companies to target based on exegraphic data that signals fit and readiness to buy from your company. Contact us, and we’ll give you a sample list of accounts that look and act like your best customers!

You can attempt to generate cold leads all day. But if there’s no desire or demand for your offer… Well, then you might be wasting your time.

That’s why demand generation is an essential component of B2B marketing. Because if you don’t already have a demand generation strategy, you’re likely leaving A LOT of money on the table.

But, what exactly is demand generation? And how do you build a demand generation strategy that makes the process of generating qualified leads a whole lot easier?

It’s simple. And your marketing team may already be headed in the right direction. But, once you combine and structure the methods we’ll share in this blog post, you’ll have a consistent way to:

• Build brand awareness and loyalty among your ideal customers 
• Position your brand as an authority in your industry
• Send your sales team a steady stream of MQLs

And, as a BONUS, we’ll also show you how to use exegraphic data to get the most ROI from your demand generation campaigns. 

But, before we dive into all that, let’s look at some examples of demand generation so you don’t confuse it with similar strategies, like lead generation.

 

What is demand generation?

Demand generation, also known as demand gen, is the process of creating and nurturing demand for your products or services. It’s a way of showing your ideal customer that your business is aware of their pain points and is a trusted source for solutions to that pain.

Without a strong demand generation strategy, it can be challenging to attract new customers to your business because they won’t have enough knowledge on how and why they should trust your business to help them. But how does that look in practice? 

Here are two great examples of demand generation: 

• Shopify offers Shopify Learn, a series of free tutorials, online courses and webinars that teach prospects how to start a successful online business. 
• Wise, the FinTech app for transferring money, offers a free business plan template that promises to help users learn how to connect with investors and grow their business.

Now, if even after looking at those examples, you think demand generation sounds similar to lead generation, you’re not alone. Many marketers use these terms interchangeably because they are closely related. But there is a difference!

 

How is demand generation different from lead generation? 

Unlike lead generation, demand generation is not about convincing prospects to buy what you have to offer. Rather, demand gen is about creating awareness and interest in your products or services. When done correctly, the demand you’ve generated results in prospects being more likely to purchase from you when they are ready. 

So, lead generation and demand generation are not the same thing. Because lead gen is one of the major components of demand gen.

 

The 3 major components of demand generation

Remember: when you develop a strong demand generation strategy, you’ll be able to… 

• Build brand awareness and loyalty among your ideal customers 
• Position your brand as an authority in your industry
• Send your sales team a steady stream of MQLs

And those three benefits sum up the major components of demand generation marketing. But let’s spend a minute looking at each one in more detail. 

 

Building brand awareness and loyalty 

You know that brand awareness is the extent to which consumers are familiar with your brand and what it offers. Without brand awareness, you won’t make any sales. You also know that brand loyalty is considered the “holy grail” of marketing. Without brand loyalty, you’ll struggle to retain customers and spend too much trying to acquire new ones. 

The goal of demand generation is to systematize the process of building brand awareness and loyalty using inbound marketing techniques that have the power to generate leads. 

 

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on creating valuable content that attracts and nurtures prospects at every stage of your funnel. Some examples include: 

• Writing helpful and actionable blog posts
• Developing informative eBooks or whitepapers
• Sending a valuable email newsletter
• Offering free trials or demos

Soon, you’ll see that this type of content, created with your ideal customer profile (ICP) in mind, is essential to your demand generation strategy. Why? Because inbound marketing is one of the most effective methods for generating quality leads. For example, according to a recent survey, 80% of business decision-makers prefer to learn the information needed to make buying decisions from a series of articles instead of an ad.

 

Lead generation

Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting prospects into leads. On its own, lead gen attempts to attract and convert prospects into leads. 

But, when used as a component of demand generation, lead generation becomes a method of finding prospects most likely to convert (i.e. those who’ve shown interest or signs of readiness) and then using targeted content to nurture them at every touch point of the customer journey–from initial awareness all the way until they decide to purchase your offer. 

 

How to build a successful demand generation strategy

Developing a demand generation strategy doesn’t have to be a complicated overhaul of how you currently approach B2B marketing. But it does require a thoughtful combination of goals, techniques and strategies to have the highest likelihood of success. Here’s how to get started:

 

Step 1: Determine clear goals and metrics of success

The first step in any demand generation strategy is to determine exactly what you want to achieve. Is an increase in brand awareness or website traffic enough? Or do you hope to use demand generation as a way to support more specific goals and KPIs, like: 

• Generate 2x more high-quality MQLs every month?
• Decrease customer acquisition costs by 5% before the end of the year? 
• Increase conversions by 13% for a particular product or service? 

Demand generation can support all of those goals and more. But you’ll never know for sure if you’re getting sufficient ROI if you don’t start with a clear set of goals and metrics.

 

Step 2: Understand your audience by developing your ICP and buyer persona

You’ll never create demand for your offer if you direct your strategy to the wrong audience. That’s why you need to take time to understand what type of organizations fit your ideal customer profile (ICP) and what types of people at those organizations fit your buyer persona. 

If you’re unfamiliar, your ICP is a data-driven description of the type of businesses you serve best. Typically, this description includes firmographic data on things like: 

• Industry 
• Company size
• Geographic location
• Annual sales and revenue

Using a platform like Rev, you can also harness the power of exegraphic data, which you can use to build a more comprehensive ICP. Unlike firmographic data, exegraphic data allows you to dig into how a company operates and behaves to gather insights on things like how quickly a company tends to adopt new technology or which departments within the company are currently shrinking.

With Rev, you can also generate a living model of your ICP—what we call an aICP—that uses AI technology to automatically update the profile of your ideal customer as the behaviors of your best customers change over time. We’ll get more into how that can benefit your demand gen strategy soon. But first let’s talk about the other component of understanding your audience: buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. For example, you’d establish your buyer persona on the key decision makers working at the type of companies you’ve identified with your ICP.

When developing buyer personas, consider questions like:

• What are their demographics?
• What are their interests?
• What are their pain points?
• What solutions are they looking for?
• Who do they report to? 
• What are some of their KPIs? 
• Where and how do they prefer to consume content related to their job?

Once you have a clear understanding of your ICP and buyer persona, you can move on to creating targeted content that generates demand from your target audience.

 

Step 3: Create content that moves your target audience through the customer journey

Now, it’s time to start generating demand and, ultimately, leads. You’ll do that by creating content that educates your target audience and helps them move through the customer journey.

Here are some examples of content you can develop to meet those goals:

• Awareness. At this stage of the customer journey, you’ll create top-of-funnel content that aims to increase brand awareness and educate your target audience about your product or service. For example, you could publish blog posts that discuss methods for relieving your common pain points for your buyer personas. 
• Consideration. For this stage, you’ll create middle-of-funnel content that provides more detailed information about your product or service and how it can solve your target customer’s pain points. For example, you could develop a white paper that provides an in-depth analysis of a problem your audience faces and how your product or service provides a solution. 
• Decision. Finally, for this stage, you’ll create bottom-of-funnel content that focuses on helping your target customer make a purchase decision. Here, you can offer free demos for your product or service so your audience can see if it’s a good fit for what they need. 

To get the most benefit from your content, you’ll also need to have a strategy for promotion and distribution to ensure your target audience sees and engages with your content. Some ideas for promoting your content include social media, email marketing and paid advertising. You may also consider running a content syndication campaign to have your content republished on third-party websites.

 

Step 4: Test, analyze and optimize 

Demand generation isn’t a one-and-done sort of deal. You should always test different strategies and tactics to see what works best for creating interest and demand among your target audience.

One of the best ways to test and optimize your demand generation strategy is by doing A/B testing, which allows you to compare two versions of a piece of content or campaign to see which one performs better. You can also use analytics tools to track your progress and see which demand generation tactics have worked best.

By regularly performing tests and analyses, you can ensure that your demand generation strategy is giving you as much ROI as possible.

 

Step 5: Measure success based on your goals

Lastly, you’ll need to measure the success of your demand generation efforts. You can look to do this around 90 days after you’ve begun your demand generation campaign. But how do you measure your success? Simple: by going back to the goals you set in step 1.

Has your demand generation campaign helped to achieve those goals? If yes, which strategies are working best so you can continue building on that success?

If not, what do you think is holding you back? Have you targeted the wrong ICP or buyer persona? Is your content not providing enough value to position your business as an industry leader?

By taking the time to measure your success, you can make adjustments as needed or decide that you need some help.

 

How Rev helps with demand generation

A demand generation campaign that successfully generates MQLs with high potential for conversion requires that you have two things:

1. A comprehensive list of companies that match your ICP (so you know whom to target)
2. A data-driven approach to content syndication (so you know where to target them) 

Without these two components, you run the risk of wasting your time. For example, you could end up trying to generate demand from an audience that isn’t likely to engage with your company. You might also fail to promote your demand gen content in the places your audience is most likely to see it.

Rev’s Sales Development Platform helps you avoid these common mistakes. Using exegraphic data, Rev generates a list of accounts who behave like your best customers and have the highest propensity to engage with your demand gen content—and with your sales reps. With that information, you can ensure that you’re distributing your content to the places where your ideal customers spend time online. 

Essentially, Rev helps you take the guesswork out of generating demand and leads by empowering you with the data needed to create and distribute content that resonates with your ideal customers. 

Want to get a snapshot of the behavioral and operational characteristics that define your next best customers? Contact us and schedule your free ICP audit.