B2B (Business-To-Business) and B2C (Business-To-Consumer) are two terms that often come up in the growth marketing world. You’re likely already familiar with these terms. 

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However, knowing the difference between B2B and B2C and knowing how marketing strategies are different for each is another matter.

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Marketing to B2B audiences and marketing to B2C audiences require different approaches, and that’s what this article will delve into. You’ll learn how to build a marketing strategy that makes sense, whether your focus is on B2B or B2C.

Customer Relationships

The first difference in strategies is noticed in how customer relationships are approached. Digital marketing, in general, has a big focus on building relationships with customers, and the way this is approached varies between B2B and B2C strategies. 

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While B2C marketing likes to zoom in on personal relationships, B2B marketing is less intimate and has what could be called a "transactional" focus. Building long-term relationships take the spotlight for B2B marketing strategies, and the attention is more sales-oriented in B2C marketing. 

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Keep in mind that both require customer services and good lead generation to be fast and effective. A "Speed to Lead" approach is essential.

Branding

B2B marketing takes a very different stance on branding than B2C marketing does. B2B focuses on positioning, whereas B2C is more concerned with messaging.

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For B2B, good positioning is what makes you stand out among the competition and attract your audience.  Positioning is about more than branding; it’s about perception. It encompasses various elements — from content marketing to branding and social responsibility.

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On the other hand, B2C marketing is concerned with what your target audience thinks about you. What does your company stand for? What does it support? People who feel they can relate to your brand are more likely to buy from you. 

Ad Copy

Marketing strategies also diverge for B2B and B2C when it comes to ad copy. B2B companies need to take a professional approach, while B2C companies have the freedom to be more playful and emotional.

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Successful B2B marketing ad copy should stick to terms that their audience is familiar with and avoid being frivolous. B2C ad copy should speak the same language as its target audience.

Audience Targeting

The way B2B companies approach audience targeting is also different from how B2C companies do it. To build effective B2B marketing campaigns, it’s important to find a niche and make that the focal point of all marketing efforts.

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B2C marketing is more funnel-focused, and this funnel will consist of awareness, interest, desire, and action. A PLG (product-led growth) funnel can also be quite useful. 

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Traditional marketing can come in handy but requires a good understanding of existing customers and proven ways to generate leads. 

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Using marketing automation software (like HubSpot) can make audience targeting more effective and less frustrating, especially when trying to stay focused on results rather than the small things that can distract your marketing team. 

Sales Cycle Length 

The sales cycle length for B2B marketing is, in most cases, longer than it is for B2C marketing. This is because the decision and approval process requires multiple signatures, so potential customers might need more encouragement to take the final step and make a purchase.

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More lead nurturing is required for B2B companies to get the sales they want, and user experience is an important factor here. If customers don’t get the attention they need, they’re more likely to move away and support other businesses. Customer service is a prime part of the B2B sales funnel. 

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The B2C sales cycle often requires less input from salespeople, though this varies widely across industries and audiences. 

Emotional Investment

Generally, B2B marketing is far less emotional than B2C marketing because the customers are more calculating. They are driven by evidence of performance and numbers. B2B marketing, therefore, tends to be more information-focused.

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B2C marketing calls for more creativity, entertainment, and emotional investment. Customers are more focused on achieving happiness or satisfaction and make more impulsive decisions.

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Paid media campaigns can be useful tools for building emotional investment in both B2B and B2C marketing.

Marketing Channels

B2B companies and B2C companies have different marketing channels to choose from when it comes to their marketing efforts. For B2B marketing to work, the challenges of the audience must be addressed, as well as their needs and relevant interests. For this, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial.

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Other channels that are fruitful for B2B include PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, referral marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and social media channels.

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B2C companies can use outdoor advertising, influencer marketing, traditional advertising, and digital marketing strategies. Search engines and social media also play a big role, with platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook being some of the most popular and effective for B2C marketing.

B2B, B2C, and Matter Made

Planning a B2C or B2B marketing strategy isn’t easy and shouldn’t be taken lightly. 

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A well-defined strategy that has the right approach to branding, customer relationships, and audience targeting can take your company to new heights. 

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Why not combine efforts with Matter Made? We have a team of expert marketing professionals who can help you build B2C or B2B marketing strategies that will see you rise above your competition. 

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Interested? Let’s talk!

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Growing your company always includes an overhaul of your marketing strategy. What works on a small scale is unlikely to translate as you seek to expand market share, and you could waste a lot of money and time trying—with little to show for it.

This is the perfect time to implement a Demand Gen strategy to drive growth. Do the research and plan the smart way forward.

In this post, we’ll show you how to create and implement a demand generation strategy to drive growth.

Benefits of a Demand Gen Strategy

1. Increase brand interest
2. Generate higher-quality leads
3. Nurture relationships that create brand ambassadors
4. Earn and hold market share
5. Re-engage existing customers to increase retention/ CLV
6. Turn existing customers into Demand Gen amplifiers
7. Larger deals
8. Key accounts
9. Higher ROI

Challenges of Demand Generation

1. Building an audience
2. Consistently creating high-quality content
3. Budget constraints
4. Marketing-Sales alignment
5. Capturing demand
6. Turning leads to customers

As challenges, these represent opportunities you'll need to directly address and overcome through Demand Gen strategy.

How to Create and Implement a Demand Gen Strategy for Growth

Create Buyer Personas

You have to define an audience before you can build one. Your buyer persona is a fictionalized yet data-based representation of what your ideal customer looks like.

The clearer understanding you have, the more directly and effectively you'll be able to communicate with this target audience to grow it.

You can define and refine the audience for your B2B SaaS by factors like:

• Professional factors. Industry, job role, decision-making structure, goals, challenges
• Personal factors. Demographics, interests, hobbies, news and information sources they trust, what they do for entertainment, and shared life experiences.
• Intent factors. What's driving their decision-making processes right now? What are they looking for? And what do they need to know they've found it?

Mapping the Buyer's Journey

• Non-aware. They're unaware they have a problem or its impact on their ability to do their job, get business results, etc.
• Problem-aware. They become aware—or are made aware they have a problem and how much it's hurting them. They have begun seeking B2B SaaS to solve this problem and consider some options.
• Solution-aware. Now, they're aware of the kinds of solutions that exist. They're evaluating needs, benefits, pros & cons, cost, etc., to finalize their selection.

This is a journey. It can happen quickly. But most of the time, the person travels along this path looking at various sources of information.

Your demand generation strategy must ensure that you become a source of information, so they travel the path with you. This gives you the power to guide this person.

On your side of things, Generate demand > Capture Demand > Nurture/Engage > Close > Retain/Re-engage.

Fail to create a full-funnel, multi-channel experience, and you'll lose them if you can get their attention in the first place.

Determine Your Goals for Demand Gen

Goals should always be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timebound (SMART). They should take into account factors like:

• How much can I achieve with this budget? Budget constraints, along with immediate business revenue needs, can drive decision-making. You could go all out and think long-term for outstanding growth, but work with what you've got.
• Where's my target audience leading me? You've done your audience and competitor research to define the target audience. Your goals must reflect what you learned about where they are, how they make decisions, and the buyer's journey.
• What can I track and measure? Consider how you'll measure if, where, when, and how your demand generation strategy and/or implementation is working. Do you have the technology you need to do that? What do you need to set up to ensure you can consistently, reliably, and confidently track performance?

Develop a Content Strategy

An MIT study found that 66% of marketers at top companies say businesses must focus on end-to-end customer experience and journeys to succeed.

You must target the whole buyer's journey across important channels to earn the benefits of Demand Gen. First, ask yourself where you need to have content.

• Facebook ads and organic
• LinkedIn ads and organic
• Search ads and organic
• Retargeting ads (various locations)
• Email
• Website
• Downloadables
• Account Based Marketing
• Sales enablement
• Publisher Direct
• Mobile-first

A full-funnel Omni channel experience is critical for SaaS companies. If you're not currently full-funnel or omnichannel, this may seem like an overwhelming number of places to engage in demand generation.

So, I want to communicate that the right content strategy optimizes the content creation process to make this achievable.

Next, you must ensure you're creating content for the entire funnel. As a general rule, when people are non-aware, they need blog posts, videos, user-generated content, and ads that introduce them to the problem.

When they are solution-aware, they need demos and free trials to help them decide to buy your solution.

Nurture Leads

Your content strategy includes a clear path and method to not only generate demand but capture demand so you can turn MQL into SQL during mid-buyer's journey.

This is the time to build a stronger relationship with the prospect. Email is a great way to do this because you have greater control over the cadence and order of marketing messages.

• 77% of email marketers say email engagement is going up.
• A/B testing emails leads to higher ROI.

Here, your strategy should address how you'll align marketing, sales, and service. Misalignment among these three cost SaaS companies money through customer and employee churn as well as lost productivity.

They must be united through definitions, purpose, communication, and technology. For example, use lead scoring automation to Speed the Lead to Sales at precisely the right time.

Track, Measure, and Optimize

You must make sure you can see the full impact of your marketing, sales, and service alignment, automation, and demand generation strategy. You need to know how your audience experiences your full-funnel, omnichannel experience.

Clear and reliable revenue attribution and reporting are essential to achieve this.

This not only proves ROI. It helps you identify gaps in the whole funnel, omnichannel experience. You can then eliminate what's not working and double down on what is to grow.

Matter Made helps B2B SaaS businesses grow. We help you create and implement a Demand Gen strategy to attract and convert more ideal customers and grow your business. Let's talk about generating demand for your B2B SaaS.

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How to Automate Your Processes With RevOps 

Revenue Operations (RevOps) is a framework that helps SaaS brands to streamline growth marketing, sales, and customer success through data. This approach facilitates revenue growth by improving the customer experience.

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The challenge for companies is that they are lost on where to start, as RevOps is a new concept. For instance, you don’t know what kind of customer data you need to collect in a typical customer lifecycle.

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Honestly, it is challenging, considering the complexity of optimizing revenue generation.

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But don’t worry. A lot of those internal processes consist of repetitive tasks, and with the help of the right automation tools, you exceed your revenue goals.

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Below, we have explained how you can collect relevant data, analyze it to integrate it with your process, and use it to improve the revenue of your SaaS brand.

RevOps Automation Benefits

Internal processes and business functions improve by leveraging automation in revenue operations in the following ways:

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1. Improve revenue. Automation lets you do more with fewer resources. For instance, with marketing automation, you can simultaneously nurture many leads to motivate them to take the next step in the customer journey.

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2. Reduce reliance on human labor. This will decrease or eliminate bottlenecks or dependencies within your team. For example, sales teams won’t be waiting for approval to implement a new strategy for increased revenue generation. 

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3. Embrace marketing innovations. RevOps teams can implement new operations processes quickly. For example, if the data shows that email automation is necessary, transitioning to it will be simple.

How To Embrace RevOps

Now let’s take a look at how marketing, sales, and customer success teams can use automation solutions to adopt RevOps.

Use it in Email Marketing

You can implement it in two ways:

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1. Automated emails. The right RevOps strategy will automate multiple processes by automating customer interactions. For instance, sending follow-up emails can be tedious if you are doing it manually.

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2. Targeted emails. Send the right message to the right audience. For instance, it doesn’t make sense for you to send the features of using Product A if a lead has signed up from a landing page featuring Product B.

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It will help to use email automation platforms like HubSpot.

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Smarten Your Sales Calls

Sales reps are humans in the loop who carry out a crucial part of the sales process: making direct contact with the prospect by calling them.

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This step is important as it helps you establish rapport with your potential customer and make the sales pipeline efficient. However, it can be challenging due to factors like the volume of calls or managing the details of each lead you are calling.

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RevOps software like WhatConverts can help sales teams reach their leads on time with features like automated data entry and profile updates.

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Take Up Task Tracking

Teams that follow agile methodologies must constantly adapt to changing conditions. It becomes even more challenging when there are multiple departments involved during processes like project management.

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RevOps automation tools such as Zapier and Process Street help cross-functional teams complete their tasks within deadlines.

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Automate Lead Scoring

One of the most tedious tasks that operations teams have is estimating the likelihood of a lead converting. If this step is not carried out properly, the sales team will not only spend a lot of resources but also will have a hard time closing deals.

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As data comes from multiple sources, tools like Zoho CRM and Freshsales use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to forward the hot leads to sales.

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Use it in Customer Health Scoring

Customer health scoring is a technique to gauge and improve customer satisfaction so that they keep returning for more.

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The challenge here is that this process will add more powerful tools to your tech stack that you need to spend time and labor on. Fortunately, ops teams can rely on process automation to make this step easier.

Need Help With RevOps? Try Matter Made

RevOps automation helps brands save resources such as time and labor by automating certain tasks through data. Operation teams can embrace it in their sales, marketing, and customer success process in the following ways:

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1. Nurture leads and market better to your existing customers by automating email marketing with the help of CRM tools.
2. Call your leads with the relevant details at the right time to get to the deal stage faster through calling tools.
3. Ensure all the team members are aware of tracking and capable of finishing their tasks through AI-powered task management tools.
4. Collect information from various data sources so that you forward the qualified leads to sales.
5. Track how happy your customers are, as customer retention is crucial for growing revenue.

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To get the full benefits of RevOps for your company, you need an experienced team that can identify areas of improvement and build data-backed automated processes that drive efficiency. 

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That’s where we come in.

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Matter Made has unlocked the full potential of many brands through RevOps automation. Be it streamlining marketing and sales ops, building PLG sales funnels, managing multiple promotional campaigns, or building end-to-end pipelines — we have done it all.

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Interested? Let’s talk.

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How to Choose the Right B2B Marketing Agency

B2B marketing is a different beast than B2C marketing and can be more challenging, even for experienced digital marketing teams. To build successful growth marketing strategies, working with a B2B marketing agency might be the most productive route to take. 

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With that said, it’s not a good idea to join efforts with the first agency that shows up on search engine result pages. 

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Finding the right agency that will meet a business's unique needs is easier said than done, and this article will discuss how to identify the right B2B marketing agency.

#1. Know Exactly What You Need

Even a rudimentary content marketing strategy (or any strategy, for that matter) requires a good understanding of goals and aims. It’s important that all objectives are made clear before a B2B marketing agency is approached.

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When a business knows exactly what they want to achieve, it will be much easier for the agency to develop an effective strategy. 

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This doesn’t mean a complete and fully developed digital marketing strategy or paid media campaign needs to be prepared, but the main ideas should already be identified. It’s also a good idea to already know the target market and potential strategic foundations that could work best. 

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Having already-planned brand messaging and a fleshed-out brand identity will help the agency better understand the business as well, making the marketing and sales team’s work easier. 

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#2. Ask the Agency For Examples of Their Work

Before deciding which marketing agency has made the cut, it’s a great idea to get an understanding of what they can do and how they go about meeting goals. Naturally, no marketing agency can show off all the work they've done, but they should have suitable examples and archives to display their skills and abilities.

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Keep in mind that finding the right agency isn’t necessarily about working with one that has done exactly what you need. 

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It is highly important that the agency has an understanding of appropriate industry trends (such as the PLG funnel), though. If the team is not up-to-date with what’s going on in your industry, the agency can easily miss the mark with its strategic planning.

#3. Read Their Websites Carefully 

Once you have compiled a list of reliable and interesting marketing agencies, it’s time to see how they created their own website. An easy way to see what a prospective agency is capable of is by taking a look at its own website.

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If an agency can’t show examples of how it satisfied existing customers (or previous customers), it might be best to move on to the next agency. Getting a glimpse of previous work allows for an understanding of how an agency can achieve the goals it’s given.

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At Matter Made, for example, we offer case studies from many brands — including Dropbox, Productboard, Calm, Loom, and more.

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The website should also highlight information such as pricing, customer reviews, and how the teams behind the agency’s success do the things they do. You’ll get an understanding of the agency’s workflow and how that can help with "speed to lead" strategies.

#4. Have a Meeting With Each Agency

Getting together with the marketing agencies and personally meeting every potential agency partner is essential. Although a lot can be learned from the agencies’ websites and brochures, etc, nothing compares to physically meeting the marketing and sales teams you'll be working with.

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Allowing a business’ in-house marketing team to meet with the agencies’ team members will help everyone involved to decide if they can work together. A successful digital marketing strategy depends on every person working on it, and if there isn’t harmony, the final results may be lackluster.

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Asking questions in person also gives a business the chance to gauge how the agency’s team responds and get a feel for what working with them will be like.

#5. Slowly Weigh Up Your Options As a Team 

When all potential agency partners have been looked at, it’s time to sit back and carefully compare them. It’s important to not rush the decision and think carefully, taking portfolios, track records, skills, and pricing into consideration.

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Taking enough time to make this decision can feel somewhat frustrating, but it’s important not to make an emotional or hurried choice. 

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Keep in mind your desired marketing campaign — will you use content marketing or social media marketing? How important is search engine optimization to you? Will the agencies be able to achieve the goals you have? How will they do that, and how long will it take them? How will their approach affect your revenue operations? The answers to these questions will help make the final decision easier.

Is Matter Made the Right B2B Marketing Agency For You?

Choosing a B2B marketing agency to work with is more complex than one might expect, and having everyone on the same page about goals and ambitions is important. 

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Although working with a good agency can make digital marketing easier, teaming up with the wrong one can cause frustration and waste money as well as time. 

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Matter Made’s team of experienced experts could be just what you’re looking for. Interested? 

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Let’s talk!

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There are many effective demand gen strategies. But knowing which works best for B2B SaaS or your individual business isn't always straightforward.

In this blog post, we will explore the best demand generation strategies for B2B SaaS. We'll look at how to use them to meet your goals and how they'll inform your current or future marketing strategy.

What Are 9 Key Strategies for Demand Generation?

Before I talk strategy, I want to get one concept out in the open. We're going to look at 9 effective demand gen strategies that are very effective for B2B SaaS looking to grow their companies.

But I'm not suggesting you use one of these and run with it. These strategies are interconnected. Implementing each of these together amplifies your demand generation to not only generate more revenues.

And you can do it time- and cost-effectively to generate the positive cash flow you'll need to grow.

1. Define Your Audience for Better Targeting

Create data-backed buyer personas that represent your ideal customer. Use this demand gen tool to connect more efficiently with targeted messaging within these other demand generation strategies.

2. Focus on Full Funnel

Buyers go through three distinct stages of a buyer's journey.

• Non-aware. They don't know they have a problem or how much it's impacting their productivity, business goals, customer relationships, etc.

• You have the answer to this problem, but they don't know they have a problem yet.
• To generate demand, research, plan, create, and publish content to expand awareness of the problem.
• Use it to guide them into the next stage and capture the lead (email list, etc.) to improve your ability to nurture.

• Problem-aware. They now know they have a problem. They want to learn everything they can about possible solutions.

• Engage them with content that helps them explore the solutions.
• Focus on benefits, not specific SaaS features, which will seem overwhelming right now.

• Solution-aware. They now need to define and refine the solutions that will work best for them.

• Allow them to experience the solution with a demo or free trial.

Map out the buyer's journey within your company to enhance the timing and relevance of your messages.

3. Be Omnichannel

According to McKinsey, 94% of survey marketing leader respondents said the move toward a more omnichannel experience has been good for businesses and customers. B2B customers regularly interact with brands across at least 10 channels.

These include various channels:

• Organic social media and search
• Paid social media and search
• Influencers
• Display ads on Google and Facebook partner websites
• Remarketing
• Email
• Website
• Apps

To implement an effective omnichannel experience, you must be consistent, targeted, and resourceful. This allows you to work within time and money constraints.

For example, deploying effective analytics, A/B testing, a robust content management system, and automation allows you to streamline content creation and related processes. Eliminate duplicate efforts to maximize ROI.

4. Build a Relationship

Demand generation gets much easier when B2B SaaS companies focus on solving real-world problems. You build authority, industry relevance, and a following of loyal fans/customers.

This becomes a magnetic force that amplifies demand generation.

To build a relationship, listen to your customers and prospects. Build your content messages around their needs, goals, and preferences.

Showcase your willingness to solve B2B problems and how others use your SaaS to meet their goals.

5. Publish High-Quality Content

High-quality content is the substance that turns "strategy" into tangible business results. Use it to communicate thought leadership, authority, relevance, and your unique value proposition (UVP).

Guide and influence by presenting the right kind of content at the right stage of the buyer's journey.

For example,

1. Someone is not aware they have a problem. Social media posts, blog posts, and videos can help them learn about their problem.
2. Guide them to the solutions. Leverage valuable content to capture demand through email list sign-up. Checklist, Guide, etc.
3. Send them solution-focused content via email to nurture that interest into making a decision. Case studies Vs. Content, etc.
4. Offer them a demo or free trial so they can experience the solution.
5. Assign the lead to a sales rep. Follow-up with a Sales email sequence (email automation) that includes sales enablement content.
6. Support and re-engage them to increase retention and CLV through retargeting, social media, email, customer support

6. Streamline Workflows with Automation

Identify repetitive and time-sensitive tasks. Use automation to enhance workflow and improve results.

For example, lead scoring automation tracks a lead's behaviors. It identifies when the MQL becomes a SQL. It can then assign that person to a sales rep to begin email sequences and sales outreach.

This is known as Speed the Lead.

According to Oracle research, lead quality increases by 80% when companies employ automation. And this is just one pivotal moment you can use it to enhance results.

7. Unify Marketing, Sales & Service

A unified marketing, sales & service team communicates one message and accomplishes perfectly timed hand-offs. Achieve consistently delightful customer experiences. People want to share these experiences online.

This sharing feeds the top of funnel. It generates more demand.

8. Target Key Accounts

Key accounts:

• Are high ROI and CLV
• Help you generate buzz and demand
• Show that your SaaS works
• Give you valuable feedback that helps you improve your product

They've also been working with you for a while, and it may be a name people know. Even better!

Identify key accounts to acquire and retain. While you never want to be too reliant on one account, these are critical for Demand Gen and growth.

9. Optimize with A/B Testing, Tracking, and Analytics

Track, test, and analyze to improve how you apply these strategies continually. Invest in tools to correctly attribute revenues across the buyer's journey—not just the last touch.

Track ROI of your various strategies, channels, and companies to determine which ones you should increase to grow.

This not only improves their effectiveness. It cuts costs to increase ROI.

How to Build a Successful Demand Gen Campaign?

Leverage these strategies to provide real value to customers. This builds credibility that attracts the right people and guides them through the buyer's journey.

Want to know more about how to implement demand gen for your B2B SaaS company? See how Dropbox increased targeted engagement by 6.5X.

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Driving growth is critical to business success. In B2B SaaS — and any industry — if you're not growing, you're losing ground. But what if you don’t know where to start?

Running an expensive ad campaign and hoping for the best is a common best attempt at demand gen. But you've been burned by the short-lived results and low ROI of this method before.

Alternatively, demand generation is a high ROI, long-term growth-driving vehicle you need to know about. Here's how to use demand gen to drive growth.

What Is Demand Generation?

Demand Generation is a data-driven marketing strategy that creates demand for your SaaS solutions. To accomplish this, you must determine the why, where, and how of the target audience's relationship to your B2B SaaS.

Why do they want it? Analytics — mixed with some common sense — tells you the goals and pain points.

Where do they look for it? It tells you the channels they frequent and sources they trust.

How do they need to get it? Demand gen focuses not only on how you initially deliver your SaaS. It cares about "how they receive it". Do they love it and tell others?

Focus on the full funnel

Demand generation seeks to align your marketing, sales, and customer support. In doing so, you create a seamless customer experience that delights customers — top to bottom, start-to-finish, a full funnel experience.

But demand gen doesn't see a funnel that ends at the bottom. It sees a cycle where the bottom of the funnel feeds the top. To accomplish this you'll focus on four demand engines.

Use all four demand engines

What's an engine do? It powers something. To get the most out of demand gen, you need to get all four engines humming in unison. This drives growth.

Creating demand

This engine focuses on generating awareness about the problem your SaaS solves for businesses.

Capturing demand

This one involves engaging people who've shown interest. Start conversations and engage them in the solutions in a meaningful way.

It's critical to note that small actions lead to bigger actions. Leverage this interest to strengthen this bond. Get them to take action like following you or signing up for an email list.

After all, 79% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective distribution channel. It's important to capture demand here when possible.

Accelerating demand

What's it mean to accelerate? You want to not only fill the funnel with high-quality leads but speed the funnel up.

How? Invest in deepening and widening this connection.

Deepen the connection by providing helpful content that serves their needs and goals. Simultaneously, they're learning about your offerings and developing greater intent to buy.

Use data to know when an individual is ready to buy. Deploy automatic lead routing technology to Speed the Lead to sales and close the deal.

At the same time, widen a connection. Encourage interested people to engage with you on multiple channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Email, etc.). They may not even be a paying customer yet! But this both passively and directly engages other decision-makers in their company (and others).

This also widens the bond because now they're talking offline too! As a result, more people are becoming aware of the problems and entering Top of Funnel.

Growing demand

What do you do after you've made the sale to delight new customers? You should offer robust customer support (people and self-service) along with data-driven, automated onboarding procedures, and advocacy programs.

Marketing creates relevant content to support these efforts, thus aligning marketing and customer support.

Create content for the full funnel...for each demand engine

Each engine needs its own special type of fuel to work. Content is that fuel! But the type of content is different for each stage.

• Creating demand

• Educational problem-centered content, blog posts, infographics, long-form guides, videos.

• Capturing demand

• Content focused on solutions, eBooks, case studies, white papers, webinars, social media posts.

• Accelerating demand

• Sales enablement content, managing objections content, success stories, demos, free trials.

• Growing demand

• Onboarding emails, videos, and other guides, troubleshooting guides, self-service content, ChatBot content. Simultaneously, you're facilitating and promoting User-Generated Content (UGC), Loyalty and Advocacy programs.

Identify and Grow Key Accounts

This demand-gen customer success strategy focuses on strengthening the bond you have with high-value accounts. Your goal is to maximize customer lifetime value.

On the surface, this sounds like an account retention strategy. After all, you've heard that increasing retention by just 5% can double your revenue. Of course, retention matters.

But customer lifetime value is more than how much one business account spends in their lifetime. Keeping that company engaged in the solutions fuels all four demand generation engines.

This engagement translates to ROI. This happens in several ways, all of which you can amplify through this strategy

First, simply having a long-standing well-known and/or active customer demonstrates stability, authority, and relevance. Key accounts often have many employees who engage with you on social media.

Let them do the talking. What they say about your products will mean more than anything you ever say about it.

To employ this strategy, actively build a platform that encourages these key accounts to create user-generated content. Then, promote on social media and at various stages. At the same time, leverage their feedback to make your product, pricing strategy, features, and content better.

They'll feel heard—a very basic human need. When businesses fill this need, they strengthen the connection and turn key accounts into brand advocates. These voices drown out the competition as the advocates further drive growth.

Ready to Grow?

Real Growth drives itself — but you have to get the engines started and fueled up. As you focus on full funnel demand gen, you fuel the four engines that turn customers into advocates.

These advocates propel others faster through the funnel. They amplify results you get from your efforts, saving you time and money. Then just keep those engines running, and you have long-term, sustainable growth.

To learn more about demand generation, check out our guide to demand generation. Here, you'll learn more about how to generate the demand that drives growth.

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How To Create a Successful Growth Marketing Strategy

According to 3Q Digital's Growth Marketing Survey Report, less than 1 in 5 marketing leaders have the structure in place to execute an effective growth strategy.

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Without a plan to facilitate the continued growth of your company, you will be left vulnerable to changing market dynamics and a volatile customer base.

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Having a concrete strategy for growth is the secret to overcoming internal and external barriers and building an effective, scalable growth marketing model that will sustain your business in the long term.

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This article will show you how to create a growth-oriented marketing strategy to drive customer acquisition and retention.

Step #1. Define Your Vision

It's not enough to say you want to grow your business. You need to figure out what growth means for your company at the moment.

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If you don't have a clear vision for what you want to achieve with growth marketing, you will end up chasing the wrong things, getting distracted, wasting resources, and taking forever to hit milestones.

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So you need to decide which target business goals your growth strategy will support within a set timeline. This way, it will be easier to stay on track and measure your progress. For example, your goal might be to:

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• Increase newsletter signups by 10% every month
• Grow cart value and website conversions by 25% in four months
• Break into x and z new markets by year's end
• Generate 30% more revenue every quarter for two years

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The more SMART your vision is, the better.

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Step #2. Establish Success Metrics

Your growth marketing efforts will likely involve both digital marketing and traditional marketing tactics, so there are going to be all kinds of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you can track. But not all of them are going to be important to you. 

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Your job is to identify the key growth metrics you will use to determine how well you are progressing toward the goals you set earlier. Some examples of metrics you can set for different goals include:

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Goal

Metrics

Acquire new customers

Click-Through Rate (CTR) on paid media campaigns, email marketing open/CTR, landing page conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, etc.

Increase revenue

Customer lifetime value, monthly/annual recurring revenue, average revenue per user, customer lifecycle, revenue churn, etc.

Step #3. Research Customers and Competitors

Now that you know what areas of your business you want to grow, it's time to begin gathering data to help you get there. 

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Start by understanding who your ideal and existing customers are. Dig into their pain points, behaviors, and entire customer journey. Figure out which customers use your services the most and which ones you generate the most revenue from. What characteristics set them apart?

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Look at your competition or businesses in a similar niche that are experiencing tremendous growth and see what you can learn from their strategies. Pay attention to what differentiates your brand from theirs, then leverage that to blaze past the competition.

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The information you glean from your research will help you shape your growth marketing plan, identify market gaps that you can fill, find ways you can better serve your customers, and position your brand to claim a bigger market share.

Step #4. Brainstorm Potential Strategies

Growth strategies aren't going to fall into your lap; you have to come up with ideas for how to connect with your customers, improve your speed to lead time, and make your brand a market leader.

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Don't limit the strategy brainstorming process to your growth marketing team alone. Source for ideas from people across the organization. Additionally, use social listening to discover what your target audience is saying about your product and competitors, then harvest their suggestions or build on interesting ideas.

Step #5. Choose Tactics in Line With Your Goals

All the strategies you came up with in the last step won't be winners, and you probably won't have the time or resources to try them all out, even if you want to. 

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Your energies should be focused on the tactics that align with the objectives you have set and are equipped to drive the business growth you want within the timeline you are working with.

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Once you identify your top-performing strategies and channels, double down on your efforts and focus on optimizing them.

Step #6. Budget, Execute, and Evaluate 

When creating a budget for your growth marketing efforts, don't get too hung up on what it will cost. Instead, consider the value that it will generate for your brand and factor that into your calculations. Don't forget to factor in the cost of whatever growth marketing platform you will use — e.g., Hubspot.

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Once you have allocated the amount of money you can afford and intend to spend to implement your growth plan, all that's left is to put it into action and start reaping the rewards.

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As you execute your growth marketing strategy, diligently monitor the results you are getting so you can pinpoint new trends and know what's working for you, what needs to be adjusted, and the tactics to move away from.

Want to Jump Start Your Growth Marketing? Connect With Matter Made

Devising, executing, and tracking the performance of a sustainable growth strategy is key to building a successful business that is constantly growing and beating the competition.

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Matter Made helped Productboard achieve deeper market penetration for their product and 99% month-on-month enterprise lead growth using a five-point omnichannel integrated campaign.

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Want to turn your marketing initiatives into a similar relentless growth engine? Let's talk.

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Demand generation is a powerful tool to use in your B2B marketing strategy. It’s a full-funnel approach that engages customers and prospects at every stage.

Demand gen works by creating targeted interest to develop value for your brand. By providing essential information at the moment of need, demand generation strengthens relationships. This approach works at each stage of a prospect or customer relationship.

How Does Demand Generation Work?

A properly developed demand generation strategy uses multiple approaches. It uses strategic content, strategic messaging, data, and buyer personas to align customer needs with valuable insights.

Demand gen positions your brand as a provider of valued information at each stage. It’s the glue that connects you to your customers.

There are several key stages to demand generation. Below we will delve into each and show how it can transform your marketing strategy. The stages are:

• Raising Brand Awareness
• Developing Content
• Nurturing Relationships for Sales
• Retaining Customers

One important note: Demand generation is not lead generation. Lead generation is a narrower, focused strategy designed to collect qualified leads for sales teams to pursue. One example is collecting names and contact information on an online form.

Demand generation is a more comprehensive approach that nurtures relationships at each stage. While it uses many of the same tactics as lead generation, it’s a broader strategy.

Raising Brand Awareness

One of the most essential tasks marketers need to complete today is to develop brand awareness. Today’s customers want to relate to brands they frequent. They expect brands to know them, their needs, and interactions with your business.

Brand awareness leaves buyers with a lasting impression of your company. It fosters trust, confidence that the solutions your company provides are reliable, accurate, and impactful.

Brand awareness has multiple components, including:

• A clear brand identity helps you differentiate your company from competitors. Your identity should provide customers with easy recall of who you are and what you’re about
• A go-to-market strategy based on research that articulates what you’re going to sell and how. Demand marketing can be seen as a way to prove whether your assumptions are correct. It can also help to adjust based on data and results
• Buyer personas articulate who you’re trying to reach and what characteristics they share. Identifying and developing brand personas lets you understand who you’re approaching and how
• Thought leadership helps position your brand as an expert and authority within your space. You want people to think of your brand when they think about industry leaders
• Strong reviews management, which includes encouraging customers to leave reviews and responding appropriately to customer feedback
• Social media presence on the right platforms. Leveraging social media lets you set the tone and messaging for your brands. It’s a powerful way to communicate broadly

Developing Content

Your content strategy is at the core of your demand marketing approach. You want to develop content that addresses customer pain points and answers critical questions.

Content development should occur for each phase of the sales funnel. By identifying key needs at each phase, you’re able to position your brand as authoritative and valuable.

Content should answer the questions that buyers will have throughout the customer journey. The information should also be displayed in multiple formats. Today, for example, video is an increasingly important medium for gaining information and answering questions.

Among the content options are:

• Blogs that educate your website visitors and drive SEO, with keyword-optimized content. Your blogs should be about topics of keen interest to customers and prospects.
• Email marketing gives leads multiple opportunities during a campaign to engage with your brand. Email marketing can answer questions and speak directly to their needs while acknowledging actions already taken. If resources permit, this content can be personalized to provide more resonance
• Conversion optimization which uses your website to gain information about prospects. At strategic points, visitors should be encouraged to seek more information. Gated content such as white papers, product guides, or videos allows you to secure contact information. Investing in website user experience (UX) tools can help to ensure visitors navigate your website to maximize leads
• Paid advertising increases your presence and can be highly targeted based on desired customer demographics. Paid ads on both search engines and social media attract visitors and facilitate a larger prospect pool
• Conversational marketing using chatbots and other technology lets you connect with visitors. Automated and live engagement lets you answer questions and add value to the visitor experience

Nurturing Relationships for Sales

Leads are critical and sales teams are eager to connect with prospects, especially those of high value. However, with demand marketing, there’s much more than a marketing-to-sales handoff.

Throughout the sales process, marketing tactics can deepen the relationship and assist in closing deals. Sales enablement tools include:

• Case studies, with narratives from actual customers about the work you’ve done and solutions you’ve provided. Compelling case studies build trust and provide real-world examples of your brand’s impact
• Testimonials are narratives provided by your customers, ideally, those who are similar to your target audiences. They are quick statements that reinforce your value and worth to a customer’s peer
• FAQs and fact sheets offer details in easy-to-digest formats. FAQs typically use a question-and-answer format for commonly asked questions. Fact sheets are often more detailed with specifics about products and services

Retaining Customers

Retaining customers is essential for repeating business, advancing your brand’s reputation, and extending the customer relationship.

There are many ways you can provide services that focus on retention, including:

• A knowledge base where customers can share solutions and insights and learn from each other
• Customer support that includes ticketing tools and transparency to track inquiries and provide timely service
• Incentive programs for customer referrals can generate new business while providing discounts for existing customers
• Customer-only content such as first-to-know emails, special discounts, and promotions tell customers how valued they are

Demand generation marketing connects you to customers at every step of their journey. It’s the right way to engage, provide value and build credibility for deeper long-term relationships and more opportunities for business.

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Demand generation is a full-funnel approach that’s designed to provide information at the moment of need.

Demand gen is critical to success today in B2B marketing. It’s a strategy that builds brand awareness and demand for your products and services. Today, demand generation uses multiple channels and approaches with decentralized information used across platforms.

Despite the power and efficacy of demand generation, there are many persistent misconceptions. Here’s a look at 7 myths about demand generation and why they’re inaccurate.

Misconception #1: Demand Generation and Lead Generation Are the Same Things

People incorrectly believe lead generation and demand generation are one in the same. However, they are very different in scope and practice.

Lead generation is a much more basic sales strategy that’s focused on a singular goal: obtaining more leads. It’s a basic approach that’s designed to collect contact information from customers who might be interested in your product or service.

Lead generation takes a blanket approach to market to the masses. One example: using blogs or webinars to entice readers to leave contact information on a web form.

This is not to diminish lead generation. There are effective ways to garner more leads. Many businesses, impatient with the time needed to deploy demand generation, turn to lead generation instead.

Demand generation is a more comprehensive approach to sales and marketing. With demand gen, you will attract, convert and keep customers.

Demand generation is about nurturing relationships at each stage, as opposed to lead generation, which is more transactional. Instead of passing leads on to a sales team for follow-up, demand gen looks to meet prospects and customers where they are.

With demand generation, you identify what a customers’ needs are and provide solutions, whether it’s content, free tools, or product guides. These solutions are dependent on where a customer is in their journey. They can be personalized using data gleaned from the customer relationship.

Misconception #2: Demand Gen Is a Top-of-the-Funnel Activity

It’s a common misconception that demand generation focuses exclusively on the top of the funnel. Generating demand, however, is not just about acquisition. It’s about engaging and re-engaging customers.

Demand generation takes the long view. It’s about obtaining new prospects and converting those prospects. It’s also about reinforcing your brand and continuing to provide value throughout the lifetime of a customer’s relationship.

Misconception #3: You Can Control the Buyer Journey

Demand generation marketing is not about controlling the buyer. In fact, today, the buyer has more control over the customer journey than ever before.

Why? First, the expectations are different. Customers want relationships with the brands they use. They expect brands to know the extent of the engagements, their preferences, and their needs.

In addition, buyers today have lots of information available, including independent product reviews, message boards, and social media channels. These forums give buyers far more insights into your products and services and the ability to do their own research.

With buyers having information and freedom, demand generation is the right choice. You cannot control the buyer but you can be prepared to meet them where they are.

Demand marketing focuses on having high-value information available at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Creating great content and using your CRM to manage buyer engagements results in better outcomes for buyers and your brand.

Misconception #4: Demand Generation Is a Singular Approach

Demand generation is not a singular strategy to use for your marketing. Instead, it’s the collection of multiple marketing initiatives, across multiple channels.

These activities are coordinated, integrated, and driven by shared data. They also are evolutionary and iterative. If one approach is not working, such as search engine display ads, demand gen allows for rapid pivots. You can shift out of one strategy and try another.

The key is to develop a strategy that engages prospects and customers across channels. Social media, web, SEO, email, video, and other channels all factor into engaging your target audience.

The reason for this approach is evident. Your buyers do not operate on one channel only. Your marketing should not, either.

Misconception #5: There Are No Targets in Demand Generation

With its multi-channel approach, demand generation sometimes suffers from an assumption that targets are not necessary.

The opposite is true. You should use targets for each challenge used. Targeting likely buyers on the right channel at the time of need is the smart move. It leads to higher levels of engagement and higher conversion rates.

Setting these targets requires some work. You need to know who your ideal customers are. You need to understand when they will be looking for solutions and where.

Misconception #6: Content Format Is Irrelevant

Not true: Walls of copy rich in information and stuffed with keywords is the way to go with content.

Remember, the buyer is in control of the relationship. And your brand will not be the only one creating content.

You need to cut through the clutter and noise. That means creating content in the format that your customers want. Increasingly, customers are interested in content in different formats – infographics, videos, and podcasts.

The good news is that often you can repurpose content. A Q&A video with a product manager can be converted into a blog post. A new product announcement can be used to create a graphic that explains key features and enhancements.

Misconception #7: You Need Channel Specialists to be Successful at Demand Generation

Channel specialists are certainly valuable. They know how to effectively manage one channel and bring expertise and experience to your business,

However, they are just that – a specialist who knows one channel, albeit well.

Demand gen requires the use of multiple experts who understand the big picture. You need a team that can work together on strategy messaging, execution, and measurement.

Matter Made helps B2B SaaS businesses grow. Our demand generation, go-to-market, growth marketing, and paid media services help brands attract more customers and convert more sales.

To learn more about how Matter Made can optimize your demand generation strategy, contact us today.

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It's normal to ask if there is a difference between demand generation vs. lead generation. On the surface, they sound like two sides of the same coin—like calling your pipeline the Buyer's Journey vs. a Sales Funnel.

But demand gen and lead gen are different concepts.

Understanding that difference transforms the effectiveness of B2B SaaS marketing strategies. It re-focuses your efforts on what matters at the end of the day—the quality of the lead.

At the same time, you'll avoid wasting your limited time, resources, and talent on leads who will never—I repeat "never"—become paying customers.

When you're finished here, you'll know the difference and how/when to use both to get more out of your SaaS marketing.

Demand Generation vs. Lead Generation: The Definition

Demand Generation is the act of deploying marketing campaigns to create demand for a product or service. It uses data to determine when, where, and how to accomplish this effectively.

Lead Generation is the act of leveraging marketing to collect contact information from people who may be interested in your product or service now or in the future.

The Purpose

With demand generation, you create buzz. Get the right people excited and talking about a problem your SaaS fixes. You want them to want you and see you as the solution to their business problems. As demand progresses, you become the missing link to meeting their goals, something they can't do without.

While demand gen does generate leads through landing pages, its purpose is to play the long game. You want awareness and positioning that can only happen over time.

By doing so, demand generation expands your reach and becomes a magnet for your ideal customers.

Lead generation, on the other hand, focuses on capturing identifying information, like an email. This allows you to personalize and continually improve the effectiveness of your nurturing.

Through it, you achieve a higher and faster MQL-to-SQL and Lead-to-Close Ratio in the shorter term. You increase your ability to deliver the most relevant marketing messages and content.

Additionally, that data reveals the precise moment a lead meets qualified lead criteria. This makes it possible to time the hand-off to sales and Speed the Lead expertly.

In the long term, you're gathering both quantitative and qualitative data. This helps you understand which leads are worth your time and energy. What are the signs that a lead is ripe for a conversation with sales?

Now, take this information back to the demand generation side. Through it, you improve your demand generation targeting precision.

And it comes full circle.

You have a clearer understanding of who to target. As a result, you generate demand from the right people, refining your top-of-funnel.

In doing so, you generate higher quality leads. And the cycle begins again, leading to exponential outcomes.

So it's no wonder 78% of marketers say they plan to commit a higher percentage of the marketing budget to demand gen, or at least keep it the same. While the top priority is generating leads, they recognize demand gen is critical to meeting that KPI.

Timing

Demand Generation vs. Lead Generation isn't an either/or proposition. You need both to grow your company effectively, but timing matters.

You have to create the buzz first. Any lead generation efforts will trickle if you're not implementing strategies to generate that demand first.

You can break this timing down into three stages of awareness:

• Stage 1. Non-aware. They don't even know they have a problem. Top-of-funnel (ToF)
• Stage 2. Problem-aware. They know about the problem but not how to fix it. Middle-of-funnel (MoF)
• Stage 3. Solution aware. They know solutions exist but aren't sure which is right for them. Bottom-of-funnel (BoF)

This all comes down to the right message, the right time. One way to achieve this timing is through educational content.

This serves two primary purposes.

1. It generates awareness. Of the problem, then the solution.
2. It builds authority. Why should people listen to you in the first place? Content builds your authority and expertise. At the end of the day, they have a reason to choose your brand over another.

You'll focus on creating demand by ensuring the right people see the right content at the right time. To this end, specific content formats work well at each stage.

• Stage 1. Non-aware. Make it easy and "low-risk" to start learning about their problem. Become present where they are but don't push them. Use long-form guides, blog posts, etc.
• Stage 2. Problem-aware. Get them to take action toward learning more in-depth information. At the same time, you build trust and authority. Offer white papers, eBooks.
• Stage 3. Solution aware. Help them finalize their decision. Share case studies, free trials, and demos.

Timing matters. Throwing problem-aware and solution-aware content at non-aware people will bounce right off. Sadly, a lot of B2B companies are doing just that.

Only 2% of B2B companies create non-aware content at ToF. This represents a tremendous opportunity for those who do.

At any given time, many more people don't know they have a problem.

Creating Demand

The gurus can argue all day long about whether demand is created or products merely fill a void already there. Both are true to some extent.

The problem exists. It's real, and it's impactful.

But with so many moving pieces in the typical business, it's not always easy for your future customers to name it, let alone find a fix.

If people aren't talking about the problem, few are aware of how impactful it is. They don't know others share the same frustrations. So it doesn't cross their minds that there could be a better way.

You need to create that buzz. That's where demand comes from.

By doing so, you start a chain reaction.

More leads. Better leads. More Leads. Better leads. Higher and higher revenues. Exponential growth.

Time to Create that Demand

It's all about timing. It's time to take your business to its next growth stage—generate demand, so high-quality leads come to you.

Curious about the power of demand gen? See how Dropbox increased targeting engagement by 6.5X.

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