Demand generation has been around for years, but it’s recently taken centre stage in B2B marketing strategy—particularly for SaaS and tech-focused businesses. Why? Because it shifts the focus away from high-volume lead generation (where many leads aren’t sales-ready) and instead prioritises genuinely engaged prospects with a real appetite for what you’re offering.
In other words, instead of passing along lukewarm leads that may or may not convert, demand generation aims to cultivate real buying intent. This approach aligns more closely with modern sales teams, who would rather talk to 10 highly qualified prospects than 100 casual browsers.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the essentials of B2B demand generation: from its core components and strategy-building steps, to how you measure success and overcome common hurdles. Let’s dive right in.
What Exactly Is B2B Demand Generation?
B2B demand generation is the process of creating awareness, fostering interest, and ultimately nurturing prospects until they’re primed to talk business. You might say it sounds like what good marketing should be doing anyway—but there’s a key difference.
Traditionally, many marketing teams fixate on generating as many leads as possible, even though a majority (up to 95%!) of those leads aren’t immediately ready to buy. Demand generation flips the script by accepting that most of your target market won’t purchase right now. Rather than forcing them through funnels prematurely, demand gen focuses on staying relevant, visible, and valuable so that when prospects are ready, your brand is top of mind.
The Three Building Blocks of Demand Generation
- Demand Creation
Use your entire marketing ecosystem—blog content, social media, webinars, and more—to keep prospects engaged around their challenges, pain points, and potential solutions. Often, people don’t even realise they have a specific problem until you draw attention to it. - Demand Capture
Leverage organic and paid channels to be visible where high-intent buyers are searching right now (e.g., specific keywords, solution-based queries). Essentially, you’re meeting prospects in-market at the exact moment they’re considering options. - Demand Conversion
Once prospects arrive on your site, you need a frictionless experience that guides them toward a conversion—be it booking a demo or contacting your sales team. Streamlining landing pages, forms, and calls-to-action ensures you capture leads at their most interested.
Steps to Develop a B2B Demand Generation Strategy
1. Set Clear Objectives
Start by establishing concrete, measurable goals. Demand generation requires a company-wide mindset shift away from chasing lead volume. If you’re only measured by MQLs, chances are you’ll generate a boatload of leads with little intent to buy.
Instead, align with revenue-focused KPIs—like pipeline value or qualified opportunities. This encourages marketing and sales to work together toward real business outcomes. Everyone should know the end goal: is it revenue growth, market share expansion, or something else entirely?
2. Develop (Truly) Comprehensive Buyer Personas
Buyer personas shouldn’t live in a vacuum. Conduct in-depth market research, speak to actual prospects, and most importantly, chat with your sales team to uncover real-world objections and success stories.
- Demographics and job roles: Who are these people and what do they care about?
- Challenges and pain points: What’s keeping them up at night?
- Buyer motivations: Which problems are they trying to solve ASAP?
- Preferred channels: Where do they spend their time online?
This insight forms the backbone of your messaging, allowing you to craft laser-focused content that resonates from the first touch.
3. Create Compelling, Valuable Content
Content is the fuel that powers demand generation. Aim to address your audience’s biggest headaches, offer real solutions, and showcase your expertise without being overly promotional.
At a minimum, cover these bases:
- Pain-focused resources: How can you solve the challenges your personas face?
- Thought leadership: Position your brand as an authority through expert articles, podcasts, and webinars.
- Category-level content: Provide transparent solution comparisons and industry insights.
- Value proposition: Clearly articulate what sets you apart—both in macro (brand-level) and micro (feature-level) terms.
- Customer success stories: Demonstrate real ROI through case studies or testimonials.
4. Implement a Multi-Channel Approach
Your prospects discover information in a variety of places—social media feeds, search engines, industry forums, and more. Demand generation is at its best when you show up consistently across multiple channels.
Here’s how to align specific channels with the three core demand-gen components:
- Demand Creation
- SEO-focused articles that address known pain points.
- Webinars or live events that present fresh ideas or insights.
- Organic social media featuring thought leadership, discussions, and behind-the-scenes peeks.
- Email marketing for sharing success stories, product updates, and valuable content.
- Paid social to amplify your best content and target your ICP effectively.
- Demand Capture
- SEO content aimed at solution-specific or intent-based keywords.
- Paid search for capturing those already in buying mode.
- Website hygiene—fast loading times, clear navigation, and relevant landing pages to keep users around.
- Demand Conversion
- User-centric website design that mirrors a consultative sales process.
- Regular CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) audits to remove friction.
- Sales intelligence reports in your CRM or analytics platform to spot high-intent prospects.
5. Align Sales and Marketing
Demand generation thrives on a close-knit relationship between sales and marketing. If both teams share the same target accounts and collaborate on messaging, your entire pipeline benefits.
- Sales to Marketing Feedback
- Quality of leads and biggest objections
- Emerging decision-makers or new job titles
- Effective sales messaging or pitch angles
- Marketing to Sales Insights
- Known contacts revisiting your site and engaging with specific content
- New leads in target accounts, indicating internal discussions
- Top-performing ad messaging or campaigns
6. Leverage Marketing Automation
From automated lead nurturing workflows to real-time alerts for sales reps, marketing automation supercharges your demand generation strategy. It ensures that no prospect falls through the cracks and that your messaging remains relevant throughout the buyer’s journey.
Think about what information is most valuable for your sales team to have at their fingertips, and automate the process wherever possible.
Measuring the Success of Your B2B Demand Generation Strategy
Consistent measurement and iteration are crucial to long-term success. Here are some key metrics to track:
- Website Traffic & Engagement: Monitor unique visitors, time on page, and pages per session to gauge user interest.
- Qualified Leads: Focus on leads that match your ICP and show genuine intent, rather than raw volume.
- Pipeline & Revenue: The ultimate health check is how much revenue your demand-gen efforts are driving or influencing.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) & Lifetime Value (LTV): Compare acquisition costs to the long-term value of customers. A sustainable ratio signals you’re on the right track.
Overcoming Common B2B Demand Generation Challenges
1. Getting Stakeholder Buy-In
Not everyone is immediately comfortable with pivoting away from volume-based lead generation. The solution? Speak the language of executive leadership: revenue, profit, and growth. Show how a lower volume of highly qualified leads can have a bigger impact on the bottom line than a high volume of lukewarm ones.
2. Attribution Complexities
Attribution is a classic B2B challenge. There’s no one-size-fits-all model—first touch, last touch, and self-attributed data each tell part of the story. In a cookieless future, focusing on first-party data collection and CRM hygiene becomes even more important.
3. Data Quality Issues
Dirty or outdated data leads to wasted outreach and inaccurate insights. Regular data cleansing, validation, and enrichment processes ensure you’re working from a reliable foundation. Keep a close eye on form submissions, CRM updates, and marketing automation triggers to maintain data integrity.
In Summary: Why Demand Generation Is Worth the Investment
At its core, demand generation is about aligning your marketing strategy to the way today’s B2B buyers actually behave. It’s a holistic approach that values quality over quantity, prioritises sales and marketing alignment, and holds everyone accountable to the right KPIs (i.e., revenue-focused goals).
It’s also not a standalone tactic. Demand generation can (and often should) work in tandem with other approaches like account-based marketing. Remember, only about 5% of your total market may be ready to buy at any given moment—which leaves a massive opportunity to spark genuine demand among the remaining 95% over time.
Key Takeaways
- You can’t force buyers to be “in-market,” but you can stay visible and relevant for when they are.
- Align marketing efforts with sales, sharing both insights and objectives.
- Place more emphasis on pipeline and revenue than on MQL volume.
- Demand generation can dovetail with ABM strategies for a powerhouse approach.
Ready to embrace a more effective way of attracting, nurturing, and converting B2B prospects? Demand generation just might be the difference between a pipeline that’s brimming with ready-to-buy leads and one that’s filled with the wrong people.
