Starting a business is no easy feat, and generating demand for your products or services can be the biggest challenge.
Without enough market demand, even the best ideas can fail.
But fear not, we’ve got you covered.
In this article, we’ll share some of the most effective demand generation campaign ideas and examples for B2B businesses. From personalized emails to engaging social media contests, these ideas will help you generate demand, qualify leads, and boost your sales.
Let’s start with the ideas right away!
1. Run Referral Programs
Referral programs are a powerful way to generate demand for your products or services by incentivizing your existing customers to promote your brand.
To create a successful referral program, you should follow the tips below:
- Keep things simple and set clear goals for your customers to accomplish.
- Offer lucrative rewards that your customers will find useful, such as a discount or gift card.
- Provide a monetary reward to spur immediate action.
2. Use Gated Content
Using lead magnets, especially gated content, is one of the most effective B2B demand generation strategies.
How does it work?
You offer a valuable piece of content, such as a research study, ebook, or an in-depth article, for free, but place it behind a form. Interested people can fill out the form, provide their contact information, and download the content.
Gated content is one of the simplest demand generation campaign ideas that will help you generate leads and build an email list.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Ensure that the content is valuable and relevant to your target audience.
- Keep the form short and collect only the most important details like name, company name, and email address.
- Promote your gated content on other platforms to drive traffic to your website and capture leads.
Here’s an example of gated content by CMI. They’ve clearly mentioned what users will get from the ebook (gated content) and added a simple form that people can fill out to download the ebook.
3. Run Social Media Contests
There are different types of demand generation campaigns that you can run on social media, but none are as quick to deliver results as social media contests.
Such contests are designed specifically for demand generation and lead generation purposes.
The rules are simple:
- You offer an exciting reward to encourage participation.
- Ask your followers to tag their friends and promote your contest on social media.
- Get participation from people who may or may not be your followers, thus widening your social media reach.
You can also ask every participant to follow you on social media. This will help boost your social media presence.
This is one of the simplest types of demand generation campaigns, which works well for reaching new audiences on social media.
Here’s an example of a social media contest where the winner was offered a relaxing stay at the resort. Note how the post clearly details the criteria for participation and mentions the reward.
4. Offer a Free Tool, App, or Trial
The demand generation campaign planning process can be tough as there are a lot of ideas that you can implement. One such idea is offering a free tool or free access to an app or software solution.
This works great for most B2B marketers who want to generate demand for a platform or tool.
Offering a free tool helps drive more traffic to your website. People love such resources and if they frequent your website for using a tool, chances are they’ll explore other products and resources you offer.
Plus, they can also upgrade to a paid plan of the tool.
To make the process more streamlined, you can ask visitors to sign up using their email address before they can use the free tool. This will help you capture their basic information.
Similarly, offering free access to your app or software solution also involves people signing up and providing their contact details to use the resource.
CoSchedule, for example, offers a free headline analyzer tool but you need to sign up before you can access the report. This is one of the best demand generation campaign examples that you can easily replicate.
5. Leverage Email Marketing
When it comes to cost-effective B2B demand generation campaign ideas with a wide reach, email marketing is a proven winner.
Despite being around for over a decade, email marketing remains a highly effective strategy for generating demand. It allows you to reach a large audience with minimal costs and provides ample opportunities to personalize your message to specific segments of your target market.
Plus, with the rise of mobile devices, more people are checking their email on the go, making email marketing an even more powerful tool for B2B businesses.
With our targeted email strategies, we successfully generated 165 high-quality leads for one of our SaaS clients within three months. You can replicate similar results from our case study.
Here is how to use personalized emails for demand generation:
Build a solid email list of potential leads who may be interested in your brand. Use tools like lead magnets and landing pages to encourage signups.
Segment your email list to create different lists for different types of target customers. This will allow you to tailor your messages to specific segments and increase the relevance of your emails.
Create and send personalized emails to each list, with a clear call-to-action that encourages the recipient to take the next step in the buyer’s journey.
Keep in touch via email and continue to nurture those leads until they become customers or choose to unsubscribe. This will help you build trust and rapport with your audience, increasing the likelihood of a future sale.
You can use emails to share the latest company updates, announce new products or features, promote your blog content, announce the latest offers, and more. Sharing regular newsletters is also a great way to keep the leads warm and stay on top of their minds.
DataCamp, for example, announced their cyber week discount via a short and crisp email, with a clear CTA.
6. Share Video Content
Videos are the second-most used form of content that B2B marketers use to drive revenue and growth, after short articles.
Source
And the use of videos for B2B content marketing will only increase, given the continued popularity of social media channels that focus on various types of video content.
So if you’re looking for the best demand generation campaign ideas, you can’t ignore video marketing.
Here are some ways in which you can use videos for B2B demand generation campaigns:
- Create product demo videos to explain to potential clients how to use your tool or software solution.
- Share explainer videos on social media and other channels to explain your innovative business concept or ideas and generate interest in it.
- Share informative videos related to industry topics to establish yourself as an authority and build your credibility.
7. Blog Consistently
Blogging consistently is a highly effective demand generation strategy for B2B businesses. It can help you generate leads organically and sustainably.
And, as mentioned in the former point, short articles are the most popular form of content used by B2B marketers, and for good reason.
By sharing informative, keyword-rich, and SEO-friendly articles on your website, you can rank for relevant search queries and attract organic traffic.
These visitors are already interested in what you have to offer, increasing the likelihood of them becoming your qualified leads.
To make the most of this B2B demand generation campaign idea, follow these tips:
- Create content that is relevant to your target audience. Start by identifying their pain points and challenges, and create content that offers solutions.
- Conduct keyword research to identify the most important and trending topics in your industry. Use these keywords to optimize your blog posts for search engines and attract more organic traffic.
- Cover topics in depth to establish yourself as an authority on the subject. Share your unique insights and actionable tips that set you apart from competitors.
- Use internal linking to direct readers to other relevant resources or your landing pages to drive conversions.
HubSpot, a CRM software company, has a blog dedicated to marketers. It offers tons of valuable content on everything related to marketing and has become the go-to website for many marketers.
8. Design Targeted Landing Pages to Generate Demand
To effectively generate demand for your products or services, it’s important to have targeted landing pages that drive visitors to take specific actions.
Unlike blog posts, landing pages are designed to push visitors to make a purchase or sign up for a service or a webinar.
To create effective landing pages for demand generation, consider the following tips:
- Create a separate landing page for each product or service you offer.
- Optimize each landing page for a primary keyword to improve search engine rankings.
- Include a clear and compelling call-to-action (CTA) on every landing page.
- Clearly communicate the value of your offering and the benefits of taking the desired action.
- Use social proof, such as customer testimonials or ratings, to increase trust and persuade visitors to click on your CTAs.
With well-designed and optimized landing pages, you can turn visitors into qualified leads and drive sales for your business.
Take the homepage of Monday.com, for example.
The website greets you with a banner section that showcases all the amazing things you can accomplish using the platform and also guides you towards your goals.
With its interactive design and clear value proposition, it’s no wonder Monday.com is a master at generating demand.
Ready to Take Your B2B Demand Generation to the Next Level?
In conclusion, generating demand is essential for the success of any B2B business.
By implementing these eight demand generation campaign ideas, you can attract more qualified leads, boost engagement, and, ultimately, increase your revenue.
Remember, the key to a successful demand generation campaign is to create valuable, relevant, and engaging content, and use data to refine and improve your strategies over time.
With persistence and the right approach, you can build a sustainable demand generation engine that powers your business growth. So go ahead and experiment with these ideas to find the ones that work best for your business, and start generating demand today!
You can also outsource demand generation to a reputable agency like ours.
