🕵🏻‍♂️ Building a demand gen program from scratch

Hey ,

Today, we're going to talk about developing and implementing a complete B2B demand generation function from scratch.

Let’s get right into it.

First step: Develop your demand gen strategy

Lots of marketers still assume that demand gen is just a bunch of organic content and paid media tactics where all you need to do is publish ungated content and boost it to your ICP.

But in fact, before you launch any program or campaign, you need to have a clear strategy that involves your ICP.

Speaking of ICP, it's important to set the five pillars, including the firmographics and buying committee structure. This is necessary as you are selling to many people and need to spark interest within your target accounts.

Next, you need to understand that not all companies are created equal. You have different tiers and therefore, you need to have a clear account qualification and disqualification criteria.

Also, try as much as you possibly can to understand how your customers are buying:

• What channels do they use?

• What questions are they generally interested in?

• What questions do they have across their buying journey?

• What are the demand triggers? What can attract their attention?

Furthermore, you can't expect an immediate impact on your pipeline, especially if your sales cycle is long. You need to build a (small) team and plan your resources accordingly.

But here’s where it gets interesting: you need to get buy-in and support from your executives and that's probably one of the most difficult tasks for B2B marketers, especially if they work for companies where marketing doesn't have a leading role. Generally, these are companies led by a CRO or the sales team.

Here’s what Sam Kuehnle had to say when Andrei asked him how he goes about getting buy-in from key stakeholders.

That implies that you need to set specific goals: pipeline and revenue target.

This is something that many marketers get wrong because they generally wonder how many leads they need to get instead of worrying about the revenue and the pipeline.

Get a load of this: some organizations need a million leads to hit their revenue target while some others just need 100. It all comes down to the definition of how you want to attract people.

Once you have that, you need to look at your current state.

Example: Let’s say you want to get to 10 million in revenue but right now you're at 5.

How are you going to reach that over the course of the year? When you get into that, Sam advises looking at what your current resourcing looks like, whether that's people, infrastructure, or budget that you have to run.

And then get into some basic projections and start thinking about the different levers that you have to pull.

• Is it more spent?

• Is it more leads at the top?

• Is it more BDRs?

• Is it efficiencies through the funnel?

Then figure out the different things that you can pull in order to make that happen.

But before you start pulling all those, pick out the CEO or the CRO to get ahead of the conversation around leads and ask them questions about the last purchase they made for the company. Ask them how they went about it? Marketo? Hubspot?

Chances are you’ll hear them say things like:

• I talked to my buddy at X organization who uses it;

• I saw the CEO post something on LinkedIn;

• I heard it on a podcast;

• I watched a How-to Video;

• I saw it in a community;

• Etc.

When you analyze that, you’ll realize that none of those are like your traditional leads.

That will help you get off on the right foot. It will help you understand that demand generation isn't just about getting leads, inserting them into a funnel, nurturing them via a drip campaign, and magically getting customers.

Think about all of the levers at your disposal. It's not just about more media budget or more organic social posts.

With demand gen, you really have to go all the way through the funnel. Go past the platforms and think about the experience of the prospect, the way you are working closely with sales, and customer success. And that's what's going to help you accomplish these different goals.

Let's assume you succeeded in getting buy-in from your stakeholders and you’ve started with the fundamentals: setting up your ICP, defining specific goals, crafting your market message, etc. One of the things you now need to work on is customer research.

Step 2: Customer Research

Run customer interviews and analyze the digital behavior of your buyers to understand:

• What channels do your buyers use for education and research?

• What are the questions and topics they are interested in?

• What are their KPIs, “jobs to be done” and their typical challenges?

• Who do they follow and trust?

• What communities/associations do they engage with?

Step 3: CATEGORIZE DEMAND TOPICS

1. B𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐩𝐮𝐬𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐮𝐲𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬.

2. D𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬: what can attract their interest and motivate them to learn more about the problem or an opportunity?

3. 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬.

4. 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧-𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠: what can influence their decision?

Step 4: Prioritize campaigns

Map out all demand campaigns you believe make sense to launch. Prioritize by:

• scope;

• budget;

• resources;

• easiness of launching; and

• potential impact.

Step 5: Develop or refine demand capturing

Before launching a pilot demand gen campaign:

• Reduce friction points (long forms, pricing unavailable, etc.)

• Define one process of demand capturing (retargeting of engaged accounts, intent data, etc.)

Step 6: Launch a pilot campaign

Don’t push all of your resources into the pilot campaign. Instead:

• Define the goals and align them with sales and execs;

• Define a small pilot team;

• Select only one channel and one program. Don’t do multiple things in parallel;

• Create a clear timeline and leading metrics to track progress.

Step 7: OPERATIONALIZE

After your campaign gets traction, document the process and onboard or hire a team member to maintain the campaign.

Step 8: Create a report

Add a mix of self- and digital attribution (digital analytics + How did you hear about our product?) to show the impact of marketing on revenue.

Step 9: Demand capturing

Gradually launch and document new brand demand generation and demand-capturing campaigns

Step 10: Document and build a demand gen team

Don’t hire for the process that doesn’t exist in the beginning. Bring people to maintain the existing campaigns, refine them and give some space for experimentation.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN MORE?

Andrei and Sam spent an hour diving deeper into this on our weekly podcast.

They spoke about:

• the framework of developing a B2B demand gen program from scratch;

• questions about budgeting;

• planning the resources;

• channel prioritization;

• experimentation;

• key metrics and report that you can leverage

Watch the full recording here.

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