7 Demand Generation Strategies to Scale Your Tech Product

Demand generation is a powerful tactic that can increase brand awareness and conversions as a whole. When talking about the B2B industry, especially the tech sector, B2B demand generation strategies have one primary goal. It revolves around ensuring a steady stream of sales opportunities for the future that your sales team needs to develop.

Demand generation campaigns often include several tools such as webinars, seminars, PR events, etc. Once you have identified the right product-market fit, a combination of varying demand generation tactics can be used in the demand generation funnel to generate the best results. The most appropriate of these different demand gen strategies is the one that is most suitable to your business model and target market dynamics.

What is Demand Generation?

Demand generation in its true essence is all about creating awareness and the need for your product or service in the market. Your demand generation strategy puts a word out there regarding your product or service, creates excitement about it, leads to customer interest, and helps in lead generation.

Demand generation focuses on creating a steady pool of possible interests and customers for your sales team. The tactics you deploy in demand generation help carve a niche for your brand in the customer’s mind.

Demand generation marketing strategies help drive your target market segment in a particular direction. Demand tradition tactics engage your customer with your brand, the content you put out, and even pursue them to attend launch events or seminars that the marketing team might organize. After completing the demand generation part of the sales funnel, the sales and marketing team then focuses on lead generation.

Often at times, demand generation and lead generation are confused together. Both are two different phenomena, but one is consequential of another, which means that lead generation comes after demand generation as part of the sales funnel.

Demand generation focuses on increasing the spectrum or widening the horizon of your market segment. At the same time, lead generation is directed towards picking high-quality potential leads from the segment and nurturing them for transformation into customers.

The ultimate demand generation plan naturally feeds into lead generation. You cannot get a lead or potential customer directly if nothing is known about your product or service. If you are launching a new product or have an existing tech product, you need to create product awareness and develop customers’ interests.

This needs to be done because not every possible client or customer is ready to instantly jump on your product’s bandwagon.

Especially in the tech industry, with B2B clients being the focus, enterprises take time and do their research even before becoming potential leads for any product or service. A few significant reasons drive this approach, but the central focus is on the nature of the product or service, especially in a B2B interaction.

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7 B2B Demand Generation Strategies for New Tech Products

1. Creation of useful content to leverage inbound marketing
2. Offer free resources, trials, or services to build trust
3. Start referral and affiliate programs for increased sales
4. Utilize chatbots and auto-replies to stay connected with the customer
5. Use Technology to aid the user journey
6. Arrange an event to engage with potential customers
7. Leverage social media for increased brand awareness

The 7 demand gen strategies mentioned above are what works well and drive quick results. These strategies become equally effective when looked at in the context of the B2B technology realm.

Let’s now look at these top B2B demand generation strategies in-detail:

1- Creation of useful content to leverage inbound marketing

One of the most effective ways to generate demand for your new technology product or service is by creating helpful content that can help engage your target audience. Focus on creating quality content such as videos, tutorials, and even product reviews help generate buzz and drive awareness in the target market segment.

If you can develop informational videos explaining your product’s best features or infographics highlighting major specifications, you can receive a significant boost in terms of demand.

2- Offer free resources, trials, or services to build trust

One of the most straightforward and attractive demand generation tactics you can use to create demand for your product is offering valuable resources or services for free. This includes free trials or maybe giving out whitepapers to generate buzz about your product.

Free trials that will be limited to a shorter period will help you understand what the customer wants and create product awareness in the segment itself. A shorter period also prevents product or service exploitation.

3- Start referral and affiliate programs for increased sales

Demand generation strategies are all about putting a word out there about your brand and using the created buzz to generate qualified leads. And what better way of generating demand than taking the help of your current customers.

With referent affiliate programs, current customers can feel incentivized to create awareness about your product or service and even bring in qualified leads down the line. Their reward does not necessarily have to be monetary; you can consistently offer them a product or service upgrade in return for an effective effort.

4- Utilize chatbots and auto-replies to stay connected with the customer

Another effective demand generation strategy for your new technology product is deploying a chatbot or featuring auto-replies on your social media platforms or websites.

With AI and intensive market research, chatbots can now answer queries and create customer interest by offering customized responses based on their profile and browsing history. This tool is easy to deploy, but marketing insights are needed in the process to drive tangible results.

5- Use Technology to aid the user journey

When developing the right demand generation strategy for your new technology-based product, you need to leverage technology itself. Different customer relationship management solutions are now available in the market, specially customized according to your product needs.

These technology-based solutions help you interlink the whole customer sales journey from customer acquisition to customer churn. It also aids in identifying the critical points within the demand generation part of the funnel. You’re able to identify potential segments for demand generation tactics and how well your team can convert those to quality leads.

6- Arrange an event to engage with potential customers

This one is a no-brainer. One of the top strategies for generating demand relevant to your technology product or service is arranging an event. This event can be an in-person event like a seminar or a meet and greet, or even a product demo over a cup of tea and some snacks. Or you can take the digital route and go for a webinar or talk with an industry specialist.

Choosing the right channel for events depends on where most of your customer segment is and which channels will be more effective in reaching out to them via specific demand generation tactics.

7- Leverage social media for increased brand awareness

It’s 2022, and you can still never underestimate the power of social media for your new technology product. You can always use different social media platforms to reach out to your customer segment, even in the B2B sphere.

Sharing quality content on social media platforms helps in generating buzz and reach for your brand and product. But what, you need to ensure that you are utilizing the right platforms for your product’s value proposition and how well it aligns with your customer’s needs.

Demand Generation Marketing Example

To further build on the concepts and templates that we have explained above, let us look at some demand generation marketing examples to see these proposed tools and tactics in action.

Clearscope

It is an online tool targeted at content and SEO teams to optimize created content. It conducts biweekly seminar sessions that have proven to be effective in not only demand generation but also in customer retention.

Clearscope reports that the churn rate has gone down by over 6.8% using a quarter-on-quarter approach, while customer acquisition cost has also been reduced.

7-Step Demand Generation Marketing Plan

1. Creating Awareness
2. Content Focused Strategy
3. Developing of High-Quality Leads
4. Deploying Account-Based Marketing
5. Importance of Partner Marketing
6. Executing The Plan
7. Measurement and Feedback

A demand generation marketing plan helps increase brand awareness, streamlines the lead generation process, and helps nurture quality leads. Let us now explore a step-by-step approach for developing the right demand generation marketing plan for your new tech-based product.

Step 1 – Creating Awareness

The first step of the overall marketing strategy is to explore your options for creating brand awareness. Brand awareness will not only accelerate demand but will make you stand out from your competitors as well. A great example of a demand generation tactic to be used here is driving your demand generation strategy via customer reviews.

Word of mouth from a current user will impact a potential user or a customer. Individuals from the target market segment looking for a product will not only filter through to customer reviews but will also rely on them. If they’re not even ready to make a purchase right now, the review will impact them that won’t only be positive but will also help create a relationship in the future.

Step 2 – Content Focused Strategy

The second step you need to take is to ensure that your demand generation marketing plan revolves around a content-focused strategy. This strategy needs to be directed towards the right customer segment. It needs to be made up of quality content that engages.

You need to look at the pain points of your market segment through thorough market research and work on incorporating the solution into a new strategy. The content should be exciting or engaging and drive a high call to action ratio.

Step 3 – Developing High-Quality Leads

As a third step in your demand generation marketing plan, you should focus on nurturing the leads generated via your demand generation strategy. You need to select those leads which are not only of high quality but of high potential as well.

Once you have identified such leads, your marketing department needs to develop specific mechanisms to reach out to them to arouse their interest in your product further and answer any concern or query that may exist.

Sometimes you need to look at the future value of a customer or client rather than how immediately a potential customer lead can be turned into a sale. This is precisely why you need to focus on this plan step.

Step 4 – Deploying Account-Based Marketing

Account-based marketing refers to directing potential marketing efforts toward a client that displays the potential of a higher return in the future. This technique requires a deep and thorough understanding of your onboard clients and how their needs are met with your product’s value proposition.

At this stage of the demand generation marketing plan, your sales and marketing team must work together to identify accounts that show a grand promise for the future. Then they need to develop customized marketing efforts to attract, retain, and enhance these accounts in terms of sales and revenue.

Step 5 – Importance of Partner Marketing

With the shift to a more digital marketing era due to several factors, the importance of partner marketing has increased considerably. At this stage of this plan, you need to understand and rely on partners or third-party enterprises to help you market your product.

Develop understandings and partnerships with companies that operate in the same realm as yours to help you reach out to your target segment. The more established a digital marketing partner is, the better it is to work with them. They might charge you in financial terms, but you would be utilizing their market reach and penetration.

Step 6 – Executing The Plan

Once you have gone through all these stages and developed the plan accordingly, you need to execute it. The execution needs to align with your business model and how well you can manage it first. A well-managed implementation is guaranteed success and helps develop a learning curve within the organization itself.

Step 7 – Measurement and Feedback

Once you have executed the plan, it is time to wait for the results. Once the outcomes of the demand generation marketing plan start to come in, you need to measure how practical your step-by-step approach was and be open to feedback.

We recommend that you take in the feedback constructively and improve your demand generation strategy by polishing it further. You can seek improvements and professional guidelines by utilizing third-party demand generation services or by bringing a strategy consultant onboard.

How to Measure the Impact of Demand Generation Campaigns?

Once you have executed your demand generation strategy or demand generation campaign, of course, you would want to know how impactful and successful it was. Let us look at a two-pronged approach to analyze the success of your demand generation campaign.

1- Develop KPIs

You need to adopt a systematic approach to measuring the effectiveness of your demand generation campaign. As a part of the strategy itself, you need to have specific key performance indicators in place that will help you understand and determine the impact of the strategy.

These KPIs need to be objective, quantifiable, and easy to understand. You can also incorporate specific subjective KPIs, but the nature of their measurement can impact decision-making.

• No. of Meetings Generated

A KPI that you can use to measure your performance in terms of your demand generation campaign is the number of individuals interested in your product who want to meet for further information.

• No. of Opportunities Created

Building on the previous KPI, you can enhance it further by keeping a record of how many meetings were converted into potential leads, and people came back with renewed interest in your product or service.

• Average Contract Size

As the name suggests, you can also measure your performance by calculating the average revenue or average size of the deals that you have closed. This metric helps you understand the effectiveness of every dollar spent versus every dollar earned in revenue.

• Customer Acquisition Cost

Customer acquisition cost refers to the financial bearing of acquiring a new customer. The lower the cost, the more impactful is your demand generation campaign. You need to measure the effectiveness of the demand generation campaign in relevance to your customer acquisition cost.

• Cost Per Lead

This refers to the financial impact on your business to generate one quality lead. This is also very important because it helps you understand which avenues of demand generation and lead generation provide a more cost-effective approach and hence should be pursued.

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLA)           

Customer Lifetime Value incorporates and accounts for all the revenue streams generated from one customer over the lifetime of their relationship with your company. This is an essential KPI because it helps you identify more significant accounts and customers that may be at the start are not producing a specifically targeted revenue. However, they are very beneficial to the company in the longer run.

2- Tracking Data

The second approach that you need to take in analyzing the impact of your demand generation campaign is reflecting on the data generated via your KPIs over an extended period of time. It would be best if you compare your year on year, even quarter on quarter performance, and see in which KPIs you have lagged and in which KPIs you have improved.

This will help you ensure consistency in your performance but will also aid in identifying weak links within the demand generation campaign itself, which you can improve upon.

You can also adopt this approach in comparing your numbers with your competitors to help you identify how and where a competitor might be doing better. Not only that, a competitor on competitor analysis using overtime KPIs data can help you in identifying your strength as well.

Conclusion

Demand generation strategy is a core pillar of any business, whether operating in the B2B sector or the B2C sector. It is important to note that the principles of demand generation campaigns become highly relevant when the concept of new tech products is brought in.

While there seems to be no one perfect strategy that guarantees success, you can surely achieve success with the right tools and tactics. It would be best if you worked in close coordination with your internal and external stakeholders to develop a demand generation plan that aligns well with your business model and is effective in terms of your market segment and their requirements.

Lastly, do not be afraid to take the help of strategy experts and consultants to help you carve out the right match for your business when it comes to demand generation and relevant marketing plans.

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