Creating Demand as a B2B Marketer

One of the biggest challenges today’s B2B marketer faces is a lack of awareness of the complexity of marketing in other functions of the business.? Long gone are the days of focusing solely on artistic output and ad placements - today’s marketers look a lot more like computer scientists and mathematicians.??

Don’t believe me?? Just look at the complexity of the technology marketing landscape as tracked by chiefmartech.com - In 2011 there were approximately 150 different marketing solution providers.? Today, there are over 11,038 unique solution providers on the market!? Personally, my work week sees me using over 40 technology platforms to engage with internal teams, execute campaigns and report on performance.

In comparison, the vendor landscape for sales technology, as tracked by https://vendorneutral.com/ is far less complex - sitting at 1,000 solutions (including duplication across some categories) - making the marketing technology landscape a minimum of 10 times as complex as the sales technology landscape.??

When sales executives put pressure on marketers to drive incremental short-term activity and campaigns, they typically do so out of the belief that more activity will generate instant demand.? Marketers who are pushed to do so should be aware that this is a misplaced concept.? Research by the B2B institute indicates that 95% of your addressable market is not currently in an acquisition mindset for your solution.

(source: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/b2b-research/trends/95-5-rule)

“Despite the evidence indicating most buyers are “out-market” at any given time, most marketers believe that advertising works right away. We saw this in a study we did with B2B marketers on LinkedIn: 96% of B2B marketers expected to see the main effect of their ad campaigns within 2 weeks.”?

This means that short-term efforts to drive demand often fail, as we are trying to convert customers who are not yet ready to purchase.? Throwing additional campaigns and budgets at short-term demand capture is mostly a wasted effort from a targeting perspective, as we are trying to influence the smallest portion of your potential base with short-term messaging that goes against what we are trying to say to build long-term consideration with our largest segment of buyers.??

Worse, as marketers you have already designed campaigns to go after these buyers and allocated your efforts as efficiently as possible, meaning that the incremental campaigns are mathematically destined to offer lower gross margin adjusted return on marketing investment and higher acquisition costs.

It also introduces significant risk.? Due to the complexity of the marketing technology set up behind the scenes to properly segment, target, communicate, retarget, nurture, track, capture, score, route, and report on lead generation activity (It isn’t unusual for a campaign to leverage dozens of technology solution as your audience moves through the marketing funnel), making short-term changes to the setup of these systems and processes isn’t just difficult - it can be extremely damaging to the long-term health of your demand creation process, as improving CRO via content performance, layout, channels and reporting of these systems requires learning through testing and small adjustments to optimize output over time.? If these systems are governed by algorithms and machine learning, changing baselines makes it impossible for these systems to analyze and optimize performance to generate high ROI.

So how do you support the executive ask for short-term pipeline results without damaging your long-term marketing infrastructure and campaigns?

Separate demand creation from demand capture

The first thing we need to do is educate executives and sales counterparts by clearly communicating the difference between demand creation and demand capture.??

What is demand creation?

Demand creation is the process of focusing on the 95% of your addressable market that is not yet ready to buy, and making them aware that:

1. There is a solution out there for the problem that they have
2. Your organization is well-positioned to solve the problem
3. You offer valuable assets (for free!) to get them started
4. Your organization is a dependable and steady communicator who is ready to engage when they are ready to start a buying journey

What does demand creation look like?

Educational Focus: Since the target audience may not be aware of a problem or solution, the emphasis is on educating potential clients.

Longer Sales Cycles: Given that you're nurturing interest from a state of low or no awareness, the journey from initial touchpoint to conversion can be more extended.

Content Marketing: This strategy heavily relies on content marketing—whitepapers, webinars, case studies, and more—to educate and nurture prospects.

Targeting Cold or Lukewarm Leads: These are leads who might not be familiar with your solution or even fully recognize their pain points.

Examples: Introducing a new software solution that addresses challenges businesses may not yet recognize, or highlighting a new methodology or process to improve efficiency in an industry.

What does demand capture look like?

Intent-Driven: The focus is on prospects showing clear signs of interest or purchase intent, such as searching for specific keywords or visiting particular product pages.

Shorter Sales Cycles: Since these leads are already looking for solutions, they may convert more quickly than those in the demand creation phase.

Search Marketing: Paid search campaigns, SEO (search engine optimization), and retargeting are vital components of demand capture strategies.

Targeting Warm or Hot Leads: These are leads who have shown an interest in your product category or have engaged with your brand before.

Examples: Bidding on specific industry-related keywords in PPC campaigns, or using SEO strategies to rank for terms that potential clients might use when seeking solutions in your domain.

Measure and communicate the value of demand-creation activities

Since demand creation activities generate value over a long period of time, it is important to identify KPIs that you will track and share that are meaningful to the executive team and sales leaders.? Rather than report on the number of press releases issued, report on the total number of media articles published and influenced, and the potential reach of those articles across all of the publications that reshared the content.

On social - look beyond # of posts and the lead generation driven by those posts.? Look at health metrics across your digital ecosystem including shares, likes and comments to ensure your content is resonating.

For SEO - don’t just track # of top keywords - combine your progress on keyword ranking with organic traffic to demonstrate the positive impact on demand creation.

In content marketing, look at page views, time spent on page, and content downloads to ensure that your e-books, whitepaper, and case study content is aligned with the topics your target market is most interested in.

It’s also helpful to gather qualitative feedback from the sales team and customers.? Understand how demand creation activities are influencing perspectives, and conversations to potentially accelerate the sales funnel. Use the insights from your measurements to continuously refine your demand creation strategies. Iterate based on what's working and what's not.

When sales leaders are asking for large-scale changes to marketing deliverables in order to satisfy short-term lead goals, you will be in a position to communicate a holistic view, understanding not just the immediate impact but also the long-term influence on brand perception and customer behavior to ensure that you are able to continue to commit resources to influence the 95% of customers who aren’t yet in an active purchasing cycle.

So what do I do when I need a short-term boost?

You might be thinking “Well thanks a lot - that didn’t help me with my need to boost short-term demand generation at all”.? You are right - to influence short-term demand generation, you’ll need to focus on demand capture activities.? Here, we need to look at two areas - expansion of in market campaign to generate more lead flow and refinement of the lead capture process to drive higher conversions.

Ideas for expanding to drive additional leads flow:

1. Quick wins with content.? Most organizations have built out great content, and only a small percentage of it is available for potential customers to find and use.? Look for high-performing sales content, and see if you can leverage it into your external communications and campaigns.? Update old/dated content to ensure it is market-ready and performing at its peak.? You may also purchase additional third-party content such as analyst reports that have high perceived value AND indicate intention to purchase.? Try paid promotions of content pieces you might already have to generate additional downloads.
2. Referral programs:? If you have a customer advocacy program in place, it might be time to offer up some higher incentives for your happiest customers to refer their industry peers.? Often specialists using B2B applications know of others in the community that may be looking to acquire solutions to solve similar challenges.
3. Collaborate with the sales team.? What are they missing the most?? Can we help nurture warm leads that are almost ready to buy?? Rather than add more leads to the funnel, can we help accelerate opportunities that are already in flight?
4. Partner marketing: if you have an indirect channel, can you offer stronger incentives to drive more leads from their sales organizations?? Can you offer up content assistance in the form of webinars, co-othered content, or others to help them drive shorter-term demand?? If your partners aren’t yet focused on their 5% of the addressable market that is in a buying mode, this can be a powerful lead generator to activate quickly.

Ideas for refinement to drive higher conversions:

1. Optimize your conversion points.? Do a heat mapping and A|B testing of your top converting pages.? Are your forms easy to fill out - or do they ask for too many fields?? Do they look good on mobile devices?? Do your chatbots route to real people quickly and easily?? If you offer a solution that allows people to sign up for free as a trial, how easy is that process???
2. Optimize your email campaigns.? Introduce A|B testing into your email nurture campaigns to optimize click-through rates. Segment your lists based on position in the sales funnel, segment, or industry, and try to get more specific in your messaging to see if you can increase conversion rates.
3. Invest in paid ads.? It’s likely going to have a diminishing return on investment, but it’s always possible to scale up paid campaigns in order to generate more volume in the short term.

Regardless of the path that you choose, the key is to be agile and adaptive. Have empathy for your sales teams, and share their burden of working toward their short-term lead goals.? Identify the areas of expansion that you can influence by adding funds and scale to existing programs, without sacrificing the efforts being put into longer-term demand creation activities.? By combining short-term tactics with long-term strategies, you can meet immediate demands without sacrificing the future health of your marketing infrastructure, and keep your team engaged and energized as you act as a catalyst for long-term revenue growth!