7 demand generation tactics that pull in high-quality B2B leads

What if there was a way to have a continuous stream of leads with high buying intent and smash your revenue quota each quarter? It turns out an effective demand generation strategy can do just that. 

In this post, we’re sharing 7 demand generation tactics to help your sales team hit their revenue targets consistently. 

What is demand generation?

Demand generation is all about driving awareness, interest, and, ultimately, sales of your products and services. 

It includes everything from your brand positioning and messaging to attracting the right audience and closing the deal, as well as any post-purchase upsells or repeat purchases.

Demand generation vs. lead generation

Many people assume demand generation and lead generation are one and the same. However, there’s a subtle difference between the two.

Demand generation covers the entire sales process, while lead generation only tackles the top of the funnel. Simply put, lead generation is all about turning a portion of your audience into qualified leads, whereas demand generation encompasses the entire marketing funnel.

7 of the best demand generation tactics

Not sure where to start? Take a look at these tried and true B2B demand generation tactics you can use to drive sales.

1. Get clear on your ideal customer profile

Before you can run demand generation campaigns or use any sales prospecting tools, you need to have a clear understanding of who your ideal customer profile (ICP) actually is. 

• What are your ICP’s goals? 
• What challenges are they facing? 
• What pain point does your product/service address? And how does it solve this for them? 
• What are the most common job titles that your ICP has?  
• What are some common demographic details? 

By answering these questions, you’ll get a better understanding of the types of people who are the most likely to see a benefit from your product. Once you know exactly who you should be targeting, use sales intelligence software like UserGems to curate lists of people that match the characteristics of your ICP. 

2. Use buyer intent data to run smarter demand generation campaigns

The key to using B2B prospecting tools effectively is identifying purchase triggers where your ICP is the most likely to buy. So when an SDR or an AE reaches out, you’ll be more likely to start a conversation.  For instance, at UserGems, we've seen 20-30% of people change their jobs every year, across industries and across job functions. 

This applies to your customers, product users, leads, etc. 

That means at least 20% of your B2B customers are already at new companies (and 20% more will change in the next year). And, there’s a good chance they’ll buy your product again.

Using UserGem’s track job changes feature is an ideal demand generation tactic that can help your B2B demand generation strategy by: 

• Building a steady stream of leads with high buying intent: Your previous customers already know your product. So, they're more likely to buy again and buy faster.
• Hitting your revenue contribution target: New executives spend 70% of the budget in their first 100 days. That's why you want to be top-of-mind during that buying window.
• Keeping your lead list healthy: Up to 33% of your database goes stale every year because of customer job changes.

For instance, our customer, Smartling, focuses on warm leads with our job change feature to optimize its sales strategy and hit 44X ROI in 11 months. 

Pro Tip: This doesn’t just work for prospecting with new customers. You can also monitor customer job changes to increase the likelihood of adding new business when one of your customers moves to a new job. 

3. Create an ABM strategy

If your average contract value is over $10,000, an account-based marketing strategy can lead to more focus and better results for your sales and marketing teams. 

Instead of the spray and pray approach to everyone who might want to use your product, you only focus on getting in front of a segment of high-value strategic accounts. Sales intelligence tools like UserGems work great for surfacing the most opportune times to reach out to these people. 

For instance, UserGems’ customer, Gem, appreciates how easy and low maintenance it is to run. 

“[UserGems] just works the way it’s supposed to. It’s 'set it and forget it'. It’s been great for me in comparison to other tools where I'm always having to put out a fire somewhere.”

4. Send direct mail campaigns

Another great B2B demand generation tactic as part of an ABM strategy is direct mail.  

UserGems allows you to select the leads that are in your target accounts to receive a direct mail along with a personalized note. This process can be automated with software like Alyce, Sendoso, and PFL. Or you could get a team member to buy the gifts, truck them all to the post office, and send it off 🥲

We keep hearing over and over that direct mails — paired with a timely email outreach — produce the highest conversion rate, especially if they're sent to previous customers.  

When sending direct mail, here are some tips to help you stand out if your prospects work remotely:

• Send direct mail to their home address instead of to the main office. While you can probably find this information online, we recommend asking your prospect if they're comfortable with sharing it first. 
• Be different. We've seen great responses when gifts are more creative and thoughtful. For example, sending donuts and coffee to a team before the end of the month or quarter if the buyer is a sales/marketing leader or donating to a local non-profit on the prospect's behalf. 
• Send direct mail to mid-level prospects that might be more responsive. Sending some company swag to a busy COO or CEO is more likely to be ignored than if you sent it to a mid-level manager.   

5. Nurture prospects with personalized drip campaigns

Another demand generation tactic you can use is complementing your direct mail with a personalized email campaign is the best way to re-engage prospects. 

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel here either since you can leverage your existing content for these drip emails. Plus, all you have to do is sync the new batch of UserGems leads every month to your marketing automation for email nurturing. 

Since UserGems also links to the prospect’s previous information (e.g. previous account, previous title, and any information that’s captured in your CRM), you can use this information in your email templates for more personalized messaging.

That’s the exact playbook that Mixpanel used to source 30+ opportunities and hit 14x ROI within 13 months.

6. Run retargeting campaigns

To stay top of mind and convert, marketing needs to be omni-channel. That means you should be using multiple demand generation tactics at once. 

In addition to emails, upload UserGems leads to create target audiences for retargeting campaigns on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Depending on your audience size, we highly recommend segmenting the leads based on job roles or industry to offer more relevant content. However, be cognizant of your ad copy to avoid coming off too invasive (read: stalkerish).

Pro Tip: LinkedIn requires at least 310 identified contacts to create a custom audience. And the great news is that LinkedIn's match rate (from work email addresses to LinkedIn profiles) is now more than 90%, which means you can target almost everyone you're emailing with LinkedIn ads.

7. Make sure sales and marketing are aligned

Orchestrating alignment between sales and marketing is critical for ABM's success, but many organizations struggle with it. 

Often, the marketing team advertises to one account while the sales team goes after another.

UserGems provides two buying-intent signals to help both teams align on the ABM account list:

• if any of your accounts has a previous buyer, or
• recently hired a new executive that matches your persona

This is a useful demand generation tactic for sales reps. As they know that these are the top 2 buying triggers where leads are more likely bought in. We also provide prospects' email addresses and an easy way for sales reps to add them to sequences, ensuring that your sales team goes after the right prospects and the right accounts.

Here are five ways to get your sales and marketing teams aligned:

• Make sure marketers listen to or join sales calls
• Both teams MUST agree on one definition of your target market
• Proactively work towards finding and removing silos in workflows
• Hold regular joint marketing and sales standups or meetings
• Encourage difficult conversations

Ready to turbocharge your B2B demand generation efforts with UserGems?

As you can see, demand generation tactics work across the entire funnel, from brand positioning to closing the deal and any upsell and retention activities. You need a sales prospecting tool that can help you every step of the way. Ready to try out UserGems 👇🏻