B2B companies are slowly reinventing the demand generation practices as more organizations begin diversifying their marketing strategies. Today, B2B companies are breaking the traditional marketing norms by creating enough room for unorthodox strategies like influencer marketing and meme marketing in their budgets.
In fact, in 2020, it was observed that 17% of companies had spent over half of their marketing budget on influencer marketing. This shows us that B2B companies are noticing the shift in consumers’ viewing patterns and are willing to change their demand generation strategies accordingly.
All of this has led us to think about a serious question. Exactly, what is demand generation in 2021?
The current state of Demand generation
Demand generation has come a long way from being a mere linear sales funnel. Today, it’s more of a dynamic funnel with consumers at different stages coming in at different points. You can say it’s evolved into a non-linear funnel. This has urged a lot of companies to tweak their subsequent strategies like lead nurturing or email marketing to cater to this dynamic buyer journey.
However, with this changing funnel, we still need to keep some basic insights in mind. The buying triggers for customers remain the same. The core principle still stays intact – understand the customer’s emotions and with those insights tailor your content accordingly.
This has resulted in the cross-pollination between B2B and B2C marketing techniques. B2B companies are slowly stepping out of their traditional style of expressing through a formal tone and experimenting with a more humane and casual approach. Lately, marketers are also achieving greater success in strategies that manage to capture the human side of a brand.
A good example of this approach can be seen in Hubspot’s latest demand generation tactic. Let’s get some insights on how the industry leader is tailoring its strategy in 2021:
How is Hubspot generating buzz in 2021?
Hubspot, the prominent lead and demand generation firm, has made a name for itself by successfully implementing content marketing strategies for generating demand. This process has become one of its main pillars and has worked charms for them in the past. But to see how it has kept up with the changing trends, let’s take a look at its latest demand generation strategy.
Hubspot: the state of marketing
In its latest campaign, Hubspot is providing a comprehensive report on the current trends of marketing. It also highlights the different forms of marketing strategies and how they are faring in today’s environment. By choosing this topic, Hubspot ensures that it appeals to its target audience by talking about a very relatable and important topic.
But, here’s the catch. Hubspot is bartering this detailed report for your professional information. It has placed a popup form that gathers insights into all your business information.
In doing so, Hubspot makes sure that it gets all the necessary information about its leads before handing over its detailed report on the current state of marketing for free. After receiving these leads, Hubspot’s sales team can proceed with its future lead nurturing strategies like email marketing.
What are the takeaways then…
- With a closer look at its heading, you’ll notice that the company has opted to go with a casual and informal style instead of the traditional formal style.
- The design template and fonts too are in bright funky colours. This allows them to feature a more dynamic and vibrant emotion palette.
- The popup page which notes down visitors’ information is also designed to be interactive and light.
- The overall tone of the landing page and the report is casual and easy to understand.
These points showcase how a big B2B company like Hubspot is perceiving the current market trend. Their inclination towards a more light and informal approach reinforces our point – B2C and B2B demand generation tactics are slowly shifting under one roof.
Have a look at the full report on Hubspot’s page.
However, being casual won’t help you boost your lead count. A successful campaign still needs to address all the pain points of your customers. So, to understand more about the ideal demand generation campaign in 2021, let’s study a case study from Logichron.
How Logichron runs a successful demand generation campaign in 2021?
Earlier in 2021, Logichron was presented with the challenge of generating demand for a billion-dollar engineering firm in the U.S. To tackle this challenge, it first started by identifying the key requirements of the company.
After getting enough details on the company’s pain points, Logichron was able to zero in on the solutions needed to tackle the company’s challenges for running a successful campaign.
Requirement:
The company wanted to…
- Target people from the manufacturing and engineering sectors.
- Set up appointments with them.
- Successfully schedule teleconferences with them.
Challenges:
The challenges faced by the company were…
- Lack of manpower and proper guidance.
- Lack of accurate contacts in their target accounts.
After understanding these pain points, Logichron devised a strategy to counter these challenges. It started off by scheduling face to face meetings with their target audience and later went on to develop effective strategies to address the pain points of their target audience. In the end, Logichron tailored its pitch accordingly and scheduled client meetings with potential clients.
As a result, Logichron was able to deliver 10 leads per month with just 2 associates in the beginning. Later it managed to generate 60 leads through telephonic calls every quarter.
This shows that demand creation campaigns can still be a total success in 2021 by just focusing on simple and basic solutions. In the end, it is all about addressing the pain points of your target audience and providing them with an effective solution.
In conclusion:
Demand generation is still reliant on understanding and addressing the pain points of your target audience. The only difference today is that the output channels have become dynamic today.
Even though traditional platforms are offering solid results. Marketers need to keep an eye out for unorthodox but trending social media platforms like Tiktok and other short video format platforms. Lately, these platforms are gaining immense traction and witnessing heavy viewership.
