Blog Post

Demand Generation

The Best Demand Gen Strategies and How to Implement Them

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.

Blog Post

Demand Generation

Growth

Why You Need to Implement a Growth Marketing Strategy

Budding SaaS brands leverage growth marketing by constantly trying innovative marketing strategies, measuring their efficacy, and scaling them up accordingly to get more paying customers that add to a strong user base.

In this article, let’s look at five reasons why a go-to-market strategy is a must-have for every budding business aiming for hyper-growth.

1. Growth Marketing Improves Your Brand Awareness

The biggest challenge growing businesses face is that only a tiny percentage of their target audience is aware of them. This increases the effort that a brand has to put in to convert leads into loyal customers.

Growth marketing focuses on getting your business on the front page of the internet in the following ways:

  1. It increases your ranking on search results through strategies like link building and PR mentions.
  2. It boosts your social media following by capitalizing on User-Generated Content (UGC) and increasing activity on social media platforms.
  3. It increases the dwell time of visitors to your website through content creation.

All the above advantages get you more qualified leads, boost your conversion rates, and improve your average customer lifetime value.

2. Growth Marketing Increases ROI

Traditional digital marketing tends to have a lower Return On Investment (ROI) as it shares a one-size-fits-all promotional message without considering the factors that make each of its viewers unique.

Growth marketing is just the opposite. It segments the audience based on various parameters such as age and location and shares customized messages by understanding their pain points and requirements.

This personalized approach pulls the prospect closer to your product or service as they can relate to the message on a deeper level. Consequently, your conversion rates and customer lifetime values increase, and your customer journey improves.

An indirect way growth marketing increases ROI is that some of its tactics (like email marketing) can be automated, saving you time and labor.

In the long run, through sustainable growth marketing tactics such as content marketing, the cost of acquiring customers decreases. 

It also becomes more effective, as you can target your approach for each funnel state (as we know some demand generation content works best at certain stages).

Source: Content Marketing Institute. A table showing the effectiveness of each marketing channel at each buyer stage.

3. Growth Marketing Makes Customer Acquisition Easier 

You have ‘acquired’ a customer when a prospect who doesn’t know your business exists eventually purchases from you. For that, they need to find you, connect with you, and trust that you will give them the value they are looking for.

Growth marketing facilitates each of those things.

Through a diverse set of strategies like content marketing, referral programs, and social media marketing, you can increase brand awareness which will make your audience trust your business.

Once they become a lead, you can nurture them through the sales funnel using strategies like email marketing. Drip marketing campaigns through email (or any platform) are a great way of delivering value through personalized content.

Furthermore, by leveraging UGC, social mentions, and testimonials, you can earn their trust by delivering a great customer experience. This will not only increase the rate of customer acquisition but will also keep the acquisition costs low and improve customer retention.

4. You Can Adapt Growth Marketing to Your Needs

Adaptability lies at the heart of effective growth marketing. This makes growth marketing platforms an excellent option for businesses of all sizes, regardless of their marketing budget.

Based on your current objectives, you can facilitate rapid business growth by investing in selective growth marketing strategies. 

For instance, if you want to position yourself as a thought leader, you can just focus on PR campaigns. Or, if you want to increase your conversion rates, you can invest in tactics such as programmatic ads.

However, to know what will work best for you, it can be hugely beneficial to take assistance from successful growth marketers who have a wide array of experience. As every business, including yours, is defined by many variables, it can be easy to make mistakes that you cannot afford.

This is where a growth hacking team like Matter Made can help you immensely. 

5. Growth Marketing is Scalable 

Unlike traditional marketing, you can selectively scale up your growth marketing efforts to give you specific results.

For instance, if you want to increase the number of visitors to your website, you can scale up your content efforts. If you want to get more followers on social media, increase your activity on corresponding social media platforms.

Furthermore, you can scale up any of your growth marketing experiments whenever you want to. 

Apart from being adaptive to your need of the hour, scalability is another reason why working with an experienced growth marketing manager is indispensable.

Need A Growth Strategy? Chat To Matter Made

Growth marketing helps you in the following ways:

  1. It increases your brand awareness
  2. It improves your marketing ROI by targeting potential customers that are more likely to convert
  3. It makes it easy for you to gain new customers while reducing CAC
  4. It adapts to your needs and constraints of the moment
  5. It scales in the way you want to and when you want to

Matter Made's growth marketing team has helped SaaS companies like Loom and Dropbox grow astronomically by creating and implementing various growth marketing strategies suited to their respective niches.

Our growth hackers can help you strategize and execute growth strategies for faster revenue growth, get you more customers through demand generation, and cement your position as an industry leader through paid media campaigns.

Interested? Let’s talk.

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