B2B Demand Generation: 10 Strategies You Need to Know

B2B marketers are notorious for sidelining demand gen. 

Under pressure to provide ready-to-buy leads, they focus exclusively on performance.  

But the evidence is clear. Blending demand gen and lead gen is by far the more effective long-term strategy. 

Give equal attention to both, and you’ll boost conversions at all stages of your funnel. 

What is B2B Demand Generation?

B2B demand generation is a B2B marketing strategy designed to develop brand awareness and attract brand followers. It focuses on teaching your target audience about your company and category.  

Compared to lead generation, which is about capturing contact information from target accounts, demand gen focuses on building trust. It precedes lead generation. And the research clearly shows that a mix of lead gen and demand leads to the best results. 

Common methods of B2B demand gen include:

• 

  Account-based marketing

  
  
• 

  Email marketing and drip campaigns

  
  
• 

  Paid advertising

  
  
• 

  Webinars and content marketing 

  
  
• 

  Social media posting

  
  

When successfully implemented, B2B demand gen expands your audience, warms them up for outbound sales methods, and increases inbound leads.

Benefits of B2B Demand Generation

Let’s look at the four main benefits of demand gen: greater brand awareness, more leads, higher marketing ROI, and longer customer relationships.

Builds Brand Awareness

B2B demand generation is a bit like wearing a top hat to the office every day. It makes people notice you. Except, instead of questioning your fashion sense, your customers think, “That’s an interesting offer. I’ll keep an eye on them.” 

Generate High-Quality Leads

Demand generation teaches people about your category and what differentiates you as a company. As a result, by the time your marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) speak to a sales rep, they already know who you are, what you do, and why it matters. 

Improve Marketing ROI

Demand gen boosts marketing ROI by improving lead quality, shortening sales cycles, and increasing lifetime value. Plus, a lot of the content — like blog posts— created for demand generation can be reused indefinitely, reducing marketing costs. 

Foster Long-Term Customer Relationships

Demand generation starts relationships with B2B buyers far before they make a purchase. So when they’re finally ready to purchase from your category, they already trust you. This makes everything easier for your sales team. 

10 Strategies for Generating Targeted Leads Effectively

From account-based marketing to hosting webinars and running email campaigns, here are ten strategies to add to your demand gen repertoire. 

1. Integrate AI into Demand Generation

AI software automates demand generation processes, from personalizing marketing emails to writing social posts. 

B2B brands are using AI to power demand gen to do the following:

• 

  Score leads with AI analysis of buyer intent data. 

  
  
• 

  Connect and engage with LinkedIn users via automated outreach. 

  
  
• 

  Optimize send times for email campaigns.

  
  
• 

  Auto-personalize marketing emails with AI tools that scrape the web for intel.

  
  
• 

  Compose emails, headlines, and social posts at scale.

  
  
• 

  Build email campaigns that auto-adapt based on lead behavior.

  
  
• 

  Build out lead profiles with automated B2B data enrichment software.  

  
  

Artisan, for example, helps sales teams create highly personalized emails at scale. She scrapes from a range of sources, including social media and company websites. 

2. Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing campaigns warm up high-value accounts. 

These campaigns often involve coordination between sales and marketing, with both teams engaging several key stakeholders at the target company.

Sometimes it involves mailing a CEO a pair of branded socks, but that’s not a scalable strategy. 

Here’s how to set up an effective ABM campaign: 

1. 

   Choose your strategy: Are you doing one campaign for each account or one for multiple highly similar accounts? Both work. Both are personalized. The difference is the level of personalization and time commitment. 

   
   
2. 

   Select your accounts: Since ABM takes time, prioritize accounts with high revenue potential that match your ICP.

   
   
3. 

   Do intensive research: Learn how these companies typically evaluate solutions like yours. Study their technographics and firmographics and develop a clear picture of their objectives and pain points.

   
   
4. 

   Create personalized content: Create valuable content—white papers, reports, case studies, etc.—that provides value while demonstrating the ROI of investing in your products and services. 

   
   
5. 

   Coordinate outreach: Align sales and marketing efforts to hit multiple stakeholders at the company across various marketing and sales channels. For example, sales could connect on LinkedIn and through paid ads while marketing runs email campaigns. 

   
   

If you follow this process and message key stakeholders consistently over the course of a month, your business will be practically impossible to ignore. 

3. Email Marketing Campaigns

Email campaigns provide recipients with educational content that helps them achieve their goals. Over time, trust builds, and so does interest in your brand.  

Here are some tips for creating effective drip campaigns that nurture leads: 

• 

  Use email automation software to segment your audience and automatically send personalized emails.

  
  
• 

  Use B2B email list providers like Artisan to automatically generate lists of leads that match your target audience criteria. 

  
  
• 

  Offer various content types in your emails, including white papers, case studies, blog posts, ultimate guides, and webinars. 

  
  
• 

  Make each email address a specific pain point to build your brand’s reputation as a problem solver.

  
  
• 

  Provide educational content rather than sales messaging. You’re aiming for brand awareness and trust, not sales just yet. 

  
  
• 

  Create separate campaigns for different audience segments so your emails are relevant to the recipient’s interests, goals, and business type.

  
  

An AI email tool like Artisan can help here. AI BDR Ava automatically creates, writes, and sends targeted emails. Ava also has access to an extensive B2B contact database that she filters based on your ICP criteria. 

4. Social Media Marketing

Social media platforms, especially LinkedIn, present a unique opportunity to establish your company executives as thought leaders in your industry. 

Founders, CROs, and sales reps can post about their business on LinkedIn. They can also write about frameworks, stories, and trends that help their target audience. 

For example, Jaspar, our CEO, posts regularly on LinkedIn: 

Posts like these help us grow our audience on LinkedIn. They keep us top of mind when leads are ready to buy. 

Here are the top post ideas for LinkedIn demand gen based on our successes: 

• 

  Share your honest reaction to a new trend in your industry. 

  
  
• 

  Give your audience a behind-the-scenes look at your company’s culture.   

  
  
• 

  Tell a story about how you solved a painful problem your audience suffers from. 

  
  
• 

  Recommend five software tools that help your target customers save time. 

  
  
• 

  Share the highlights of a recent customer success story. 

  
  

When your team consistently posts educational and personal content, your audience will start to see you as a trusted thought leader, and the chances they buy your solutions will rise. 

5. Paid Advertising and Retargeting

Paid advertising is a great way to reach potential leads. Many big brands use paid ads as their primary demand gen channel. 

Popular types of paid ads in the B2B space include the following: 

• 

  PPC Campaigns: Straddling the line between demand gen and lead gen, these are great for companies that have products or services people are actively searching for.

  
  
• 

  LinkedIn Ads: Ideal for getting your content in front of business professionals. 

  
  
• 

  Retargeting Ads: Helps you re-engage visitors that never converted—maybe they visited your free trial page but never signed up. 

  
  

Also, don’t sleep on physical ads like billboards. They can be great for generating buzz, especially if they’re a bit provocative, like our recent “Stop Hiring Humans” campaign:

Rage bait? Definitely. Did it pay off? Yes. The billboards garnered media attention. We landed on the radar of a host of execs and business owners. 

6. Hosting Webinars and Virtual Events

Free webinars are excellent for establishing your brand as a go-to resource in your industry. 

Here are some tips for running engaging webinars:

• 

  Keep presentations to 30-45 minutes. This ensures you remain on topic and concise.

  
  
• 

  Stick to educational content that teaches your audience how to solve a real problem.

  
  
• 

  Consider including interactive elements like polls, chat Q&A, and breakout rooms. 

  
  
• 

  Tap into your own company’s expertise. If you’re creating a webinar about sales trends, interview your VP of Sales. 

  
  

An added benefit of webinars is that they double as lead magnets. You can ask for contact info in return for a seat at the webinar. 

For example, Airtable runs regular webinars interviewing marketing leaders to learn how they’re using Airtable’s software to operationalize marketing. 

7. Collaborating With Industry Influencers and Complementary Brands

Collaborating with influencers in your industry is an excellent way to amplify your campaigns and tap into lookalike audiences.  

Here’s are some ideas for mutually beneficial collaborations: 

• 

  Host a dual podcast with an influencer in your space: They’ll bring their audience members along, and you can wow them with your stellar content. 

  
  
• 

  Work with another brand to create an industry report: Maybe they have the industry data and you have the content marketing chops and the audience, or vice versa. 

  
  
• 

  Set up cross-promotional campaigns with complementary brands: Not direct competitors but solutions that act like ketchup to your hamburger. You can recommend them to your customers, and they can do the same for you. 

  
  

Unsure of how to start making partnerships?

Start by engaging with your industry peers. Specifically, follow and engage with thought leaders on social media. That way, by the time you reach out to request a partnership, they’ll already recognize your name.  

8. Implement Referral Programs

Referral marketing is powerful because peer-to-peer recommendations carry a lot of credibility. It’s a great way to build brand awareness and generate revenue. 

Take the case of SmartBear. They used CustomGauge’s customer experience tracking software to identify their happiest clients, whom they systematically asked for referrals. That initiative led to over $6 million in referral revenue over the year.

Here are some tips for implementing a referral program:

• 

  Offer two-sided incentives so both parties benefit from a successful referral. 

  
  
• 

  Establish criteria for a successful referral—for example, an introductory meeting is held between you and the referred customer. 

  
  
• 

  Consider non-monetary incentives like access to premium features or services. 

  
  
• 

  Use referral program software like Referral Factory or Cello to set up programs, track attributions, automate payouts, and analyze program performance. 

  
  
• 

  Make spreading the word easy for your referrers with pre-built ads, emails, and shareable social assets. 

  
  
• 

  Identify key touchpoints in the buyer journey when customer success reps and account executives should ask for referrals.  

  
  
• 

  Promote your referral program to new customers in your onboarding email sequence. 

  
  

9. Invest in Content Marketing

Whether it’s a blog post or a video course, content is a tested way of educating potential leads about your brand, their problems, and your solutions. 

Let’s look at the four effective types of top-of-the-funnel content you should create for B2B demand generation:

Social Content 

Social content is any social post or video created by your brand. This includes content created by your CEOs, sales reps, and executives, which is often the best-performing type since people generally like to consume content by humans rather than a company. 

For example, our founder often posts about Artisan and AI sales topics to position himself as a thought leader and generate buzz:

SEO Blog Posts 

SEO-optimized blog posts answer questions your audience is asking on search engines like Google. They can bring lots of consistent organic traffic to your site. 

For example, at Artisan, we provide an AI BDR platform. Our blog post covering the ins and outs of AI BDRs currently ranks in the first and second positions for the query “AI BDRs.”

Lead Magnets 

A lead magnet is a piece of gated content that leads access by submitting their contact information into an online form. Examples include worksheets, ultimate guides, weekly newsletters, webinars, and eBooks. 

Annual reports, like this one from HubSpot, also get a lot of downloads in the B2B space as they examine industry trends that help businesses improve their strategies:

Newsletters

A newsletter gives you direct access to a potential lead’s email inbox. The key to long-term trust is to consistently send engaging, educational emails that help prospects reach their business goals.

They’re also excellent for promoting events and initiatives. For example, LucidChart promotes its virtual workshops via email: 

10. Build a Community Around Your Brand

By providing a dedicated online space for your target audience members to connect with their peers, talk shop, and stay up to date on industry trends, you’re not just helping their careers. You’re satisfying a deep human need for human connection. 

Here are some tips for building a community around your brand: 

• 

  Choose a well-known platform: LinkedIn groups, Slack communities, and Discord channels are all good options. Look at which platforms your audience already uses.

  
  
• 

  Consider community management software: Want more control over your community? Invest in software for building and managing it. A tool like Mighty Networks enables you to host courses, track member analytics, and create a feed. 

  
  
• 

  Share exclusive content: Create valuable, members-only content—in-depth case studies, ultimate guides, free video courses, industry reports, and so on. It’s an incentive to join and a reason to stay, not to mention a demand gen method in itself.

  
  
• 

  Host in-person events: Host roundtables, interviews with experts, and webinars to help members solve current problems and learn about industry best practices. 

  
  
• 

  Encourage peers to talk: Post questions and opinions designed to spark conversation among your members. Facilitate networking by introducing peers with similar interests. 

  
  

Atlassian, for example, hosts a thriving B2B community on their website. It’s basically a collection of forums about different topics relevant to their audience.

Empower Demand Generation With Artisan

B2B demand generation is a lot of work. You have to set up campaigns, create relevant content for different buyer personas, and track and optimize performance. 

Fortunately, there are AI tools that can automate many of these tasks.

Artisan is an AI sales platform that automatically finds B2B leads and writes personalized email campaigns for them. This is like nitrous oxide for demand gen strategies like account-based marketing and email marketing campaigns.