Your customers demand a high-touch experience. To deliver, you must nurture each customer throughout their journey—no matter how long it takes.

Demand generation enables you to use each marketing tactic in your strategy to create touchpoints throughout the customer journey. As a result, you can build a lasting relationship with your customers that withstands the test of time (and those come-and-go marketing trends).

Challenges Solved Through B2B Demand Generation Tactics

According to HubSpot, generating leads is the top priority for marketers across the board. There are virtually endless methods to do so, each with its unique challenges. 

For B2B companies, demand generation solves many challenges that result from traditional lead generation tactics, including:

• Unqualified leads: Not every lead is a good lead. Not every visitor who comes to your website, for example, is ready to make a purchase. Demand generation enables you to nurture that lead to determine if they’re qualified or not. As a result, your team can spend more time on leads that will move the needle. 

• Siloed internal teams: To provide the high-touch experience your customers want, your internal teams must work together. Demand generation bridges the gap between sales and marketing as both are required to make it work.

• Finding customers at just the right time: Through a more traditional approach, you must find the right customer at just the right time through a paid ad or a blog post and hope they’re ready to convert. Unfortunately, this guessing game doesn’t result in the highest quality leads for your business. Demand generation nurtures the lead until they’re ready to reach out.
•  

5 Types of Demand Generation Activities to Add to Your Strategy

Have a demand generation strategy in place that isn’t quite working the way you expect? Do you know you need to develop a demand engine for your business, but you’re not sure where to start? Let’s dive into some activities you can add to your strategy now to start increasing your leads and improving the customer journey.

1. Content & SEO

Content is a powerful tool. Indeed, it can directly impact your customers’ purchasing decisions. According to the Demand Gen 2020 B2B Buyer Behavior study, 76% of respondents said that content had a significant impact on their buying decision when selecting between vendors.

Content comes in many forms, including blog posts, videos, whitepapers, case studies, emails, website pages and beyond. These tools are on the frontlines of your digital marketing strategy, introducing potential customers to your brand and nurturing them throughout their buying journey.

Content is also critical for improving your SEO. After all, Google analyzes the quality of the content found inside a search result to determine its relevance.

2. Outbound Email Campaigns

Even with the rise of social media, chatbots and branded test messaging, the email inbox continues to thrive. Around 81% of B2B marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters. Plus, 59% of respondents say that marketing emails influence their purchasing decisions.

Email campaigns make it easy to deliver specific content to leads based on their position in the customer journey. Through segmentation, you can easily deliver personalized content to the various groups that make up your email list.

For example, you can deliver a whitepaper download email to newer prospects who are in the learning stage of their journey. Or, you can send a sales email to those who are further in the funnel.

3. Paid Search Campaigns

It’s estimated that Google alone receives 5.8 billion search queries a day. Each of those queries features ads directed toward the potential customers on the other end of the search. When the search giant says its users generate $2 for every $1 spent on paid ads (a 200% ROI), we can see why.

Paid search campaigns are helpful tools for every part of the customer journey. First, they can be used to target new leads based on search queries. Yet, they can also go further. Through Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs), you can retarget customers who have visited your website before with personalized ads.

4. Online Customer Review Generation

According to a recent study by G2, approximately 92% of B2B customers are more likely to purchase a product if they read a trusted review. Customers trust other customers who have experienced your brand before. That’s why online review generation is worth its weight in gold.

There are many ways to showcase your reviews online, from Facebook to online review websites for your industry. To make the most of these tools, you must be sure to build automatic review generation into your demand engine.

5. Customer Marketing

It may seem counterintuitive, but new leads shouldn’t be your only focus. For sustainable business growth, you must also market to your existing customers. Why? It costs much more to gain a new customer than it does to retain one.

Customer marketing also inspires your customers to become advocates for your brand. These advocates are invaluable to your business. A customer marketing strategy can include personalized content aimed at touchpoints after the initial sale. For example, product updates, newsletters and customer spotlights.

Increase Your B2B Leads & Grow Your Business With OpGen Media

To keep your business moving forward, you must develop a customer-focused demand engine. Whether you need an engine tune-up or a completely new build, OpGen Media is here to help. To learn more about our demand generation services, reach out to our team today.