14 B2B Demand Generation Secrets You Must Try
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Looking for some proven B2B demand generation strategies to boost your business? We’ve got you covered!
But before diving right into the crux, let’s understand some of the basics of demand generation.
The most important goal of demand generation is to create interest in a product or service. Basically, you are trying to generate demand.
What Is B2B Demand Generation?
It’s demand gen but for B2B companies. Your goal is to drive awareness and demand for a product or service in the B2B domain.
However, the kind of techniques required to do that may vary depending on different factors like the product or service you’re offering, your target market, the latest trends, etc. Hence, if you’re a B2B company, we have highlighted 14 types of demand generation techniques that top brands follow to succeed.
So, without further ado, let’s have a look at some of the best B2B demand generation strategies that top brands use to grow!
B2B Demand Generation Strategies That Top Brands Use to Grow
1. Free Tools – Outgrow
Whether it’s a business or an individual consumer, everybody LOVES free stuff. Especially if it’s useful. Outgrow created a free tools page for marketers to explore ways they can improve their demand generation strategy.
For example, they have a free idea generator tool for marketers. If you are looking to spice up your content marketing strategy, you can simply provide some details about your business and industry, and generate great content ideas. This showcases the Outgrow tool but also helps marketers figure out how they can leverage the Outgrow tool.
Another interesting tool is Outgrow’s 404 page. Outgrow has turned their 404 error page into a tool recommendation page. So, if you’re ever stuck or can’t find what you’re looking for, the 404 page can guide you in a personalized way!
One of Outgrow’s top demand generation strategies is their free tools page, where digital marketers can explore a wide range of tools and widgets. In fact, if a user likes a tool or widget and would like to create similar ones for their website, they can simply add them to their Outgrow account.
What’s interesting is that even though Outgrow provides access to these tools for free, every user can see that the tools were built on Outgrow. This triggers users to find out that Outgrow is an interactive content platform, where you can create personalized assessments, calculators, quizzes, recommendations, and widgets that build trust and help customers.
These tools are a great way to generate demand and build trust with low friction. Also, users are able to see how Outgrow uses their own products to build demand-gen tools for their own business.
2. Podcast – HubSpot
A podcast is a great way to generate demand for your business. With the steep rise in podcast success during the Covid-19 pandemic, tons of companies have started podcasts to widen their reach.
HubSpot is one such brand. It has an entire podcast network with different podcast series. Their goal is to build a community where they can engage with entrepreneurs and possible HubSpot customers through their podcasts by providing highly relevant business content. They are willing to acquire podcasts, as well as start their own if they find the audience relevant. Their goal is to generate demand for their software and engage with their audience directly.
Some podcast series they run are My First Million, Entrepreneurs on Fire, MarTech Podcast, Marketing Against the Grain, etc.
With these podcasts, they aim to own the audience and build brand awareness. This is a top-of-the-funnel strategy to help create demand for their offering by providing relevant and engaging content for their audience.
Apart from the podcast, HubSpot also has a Website Grader which helps marketers analyze their websites, and an Inbound conference.
They have a large focus on demand generation, with the Hubspot podcast network as one of their current focus areas.
3. LinkedIn- Refine Labs
LinkedIn is the largest platform for professional networking in the world. So, when you think about B2B demand generation, LinkedIn marketing should be one of the first things that come to mind. By building connections and sharing relevant content on LinkedIn, you can top your demand generation game.
And Refine Labs did precisely that. They have an outstanding LinkedIn strategy. They basically hire talented demand gen marketers and SaaS marketers who are comfortable sharing relevant content and ideas on Linkedin. Then they have most of their marketing team post highly relevant and interesting content on LinkedIn to generate demand for their services.
Moreover, Refine Labs has also been able to drive traffic to their podcast via LinkedIn. This has contributed to the success of their podcast which generates a huge amount of their traffic to their website.
Chris Walker, the CEO, posts relevant content on his personal LinkedIn profile, as well as excerpts from his podcast. Therefore, LinkedIn and their podcast together serve as their key demand generation strategy.
Have a look at their recent post on LinkedIn. And what a coincidence! They have also written about demand gen and how marketers confuse the concept with lead gen. Do give it a read!
4. YouTube – Ahrefs
Your YouTube channel can be an indispensable asset for your content marketing efforts, but only if you post the right kind of content. Posting video content on YouTube can do much more than just boost your social engagement. You can build a community around your brand and step up your demand generation strategy. Let’s see how Ahrefs utilized YouTube marketing in the most lucrative ways.
Ahrefs is a platform offering SEO tools and resources to grow search traffic. And to create more demand for their services, they started an entire Youtube series to educate people about SEO. This is an excellent way to boost demand for their ultimate offering.
By simply creating educational content on SEO, they are not just helping audiences gain valuable insights but also guiding them to their platform through these videos.
5. Events – Salesforce
Salesforce runs a huge software conference called Dreamforce which is attended by a wide range of possible customers and partners. They conduct thousands of sessions and workshops and provide attendees with an opportunity to connect with like-minded people from around the world.
By providing value to the audiences, these events help Salesforce increase its customer lifetime value and also encourage customers to try out some of the new features and applications. Dreamforce has been a great example for other SaaS and B2B companies of how an outstanding event can generate demand for your products, as well as the applications, integrations, and add-ons that you offer.
6. Content – Crossbeam
It is known that content marketing is one of the most important pillars of digital marketing. By creating and distributing the right content, you can do wonders in the B2B demand generation domain. Let’s see how Crossbeam took this opportunity and took its content marketing efforts to a new level.
Being a partner ecosystem platform helping companies build valuable partnerships, their primary objective is to educate people about partnerships and promote their platform. Hence, they started a blog where they create and promote educational content about partnerships and collaborations. They also have a series called Partnerships 101 where they talk about different aspects of partnerships to educate marketers about a new category of software.
7. Facebook Community – Dave Gerhardt’s Exit Five Community
Facebook is one of the widest social networks in the world. If you’re looking to level up your B2B demand generation, always remember that Facebook has endless possibilities for networking and marketing.
Dave Gerhardt, the renowned author and founder of Exit Five, a media company, has leveraged Facebook in the best possible way. He has used this platform to build a community wherein he engages with his audiences and discusses the latest and most trending marketing topics.
8. Discord Community – Samsung
A Discord community is nothing but a platform where voice and text chat options are available together. It’s still pretty new but is constantly thriving. A lot of companies are creating their own discord communities in order to pave the way for greater demand generation and engagement from their target audience.
By starting its own discord community, Samsung made an effort to expand ways of interacting with its Web3 fans. The server consists of two rooms for separate audiences- gamers and Web3 fans. It is basically a fun interactive platform for fans, users, and gamers to interact and get exclusive access to products, events, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other Web3-based wonders.
9. Stripe Buying Indie Hackers
Indie Hackers, a knowledge-sharing platform, was recently acquired by Stripe, an online payment processing platform. But what’s in it for Stripe? It’s simple!
Stripe aims to boost their demand generation efforts through Indie Hackers, which is a natural home for upcoming founders and inspires their growth. It is a platform that strictly focuses on businesses that generate substantial revenue and the people behind them. And this platform can help provide Stripe with valuable insights into the needs and demands of potential and existing clients.
Therefore, by building a community and sharing relevant content via Indie Hackers, Stripe aims to make the experience insightful for everyone, and of course, generate more demand.
10. AngelList Buying Product Hunt
AngelList can be simply referred to as LinkedIn for startups. And this company has recently acquired Product Hunt, a platform where people can vote for startup products and services.
This is a great B2B demand generation move by AngelList which aims to make the most out of this acquisition. The two companies plan to connect their operations and go hand-in-hand when it comes to building a community and facilitating interactions between creators and marketers.
By utilizing the existing and growing community of Product Hunt, AngelList founder Naval Ravikant is keen on expanding the horizons of his company and boosting his revenues.
11. Zapier Buying Makerpad
Zapier, a code automation tool has acquired Makerpad, a no-code education community and platform.
The CEO of Zapier, Wade Foster plans to let Makerpad operate largely independently just considering some internal guidelines by Zapier. Makerpad aims to impart knowledge to as many people as possible on the possibilities of building without coding. This community can help add new users to Zapier’s large pool of no-code users. Moreover, the no-code space has been growing rapidly and it was about time Zapier made a move to boost its demand generation by buying a content/media company!
12. Account-based Marketing – SalesLoft
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a demand generation technique used by B2B marketers where sales and marketing representatives combine their efforts to target the best-fit accounts and convert them into paying customers. Let’s see how Salesloft has utilized account-based marketing to take their marketing efforts up by a notch.
Salesloft has a direct mail ABM campaign where SDRs (sales development representatives) can send gifts to prospects as per their interests. The main idea here is to personalize their communications with potential customers. Hence, they utilize personalized gifting with the help of ABM marketing in order to generate more interest and demand for their products and services.
Here’s an example-
13. Webinar – Notion
Webinars are the most successful top-of-the-funnel engagement tactic for almost 60% of B2B demand-generation marketers. On top of that, they are also extremely effective in moving the prospects further along the sales funnel.
Notion, the all-in-one workspace, gives real online business advice through its webinars. Their webinars are extremely valuable and powerful. Moreover, they have a YouTube channel where they provide their audience with videos about a multitude of topics concerning different activities related to their services.
14. Office Hours by SparkToro
SparkToro is an audience research platform that helps put valuable information about your audiences at your fingertips. In order to reach out to a wider audience and generate more demand in the B2B sector, they run a podcast series called ‘SparkToro Office Hours’ where they conduct live sessions on trending marketing topics.
This is an excellent B2B demand generation tactic as it helps attract marketers and entrepreneurs from all around to gain valuable insights from their sessions. This ultimately brings them to check out their tool and has proved to be an extremely lucrative demand generation strategy.
Conclusion
There you go! In this blog, we’ve discussed some of the best demand generation strategies used by some of the top brands out there. We hope that you’ve grasped the key points and are ready to try one or more of these ideas for your business.
If you want to try idea #1, building tools and widgets to generate demand, use Outgrow’s 7-day free trial here (no card required)!