B2B Demand Generation SaaS Guide To Generating Customers

As we enter the era of customer-led marketing strategies, SaaS demand generation can sometimes get a bad wrap. But just because we need to be looking at the traditional funnel in a more holistic way doesn’t mean the TOFU tactics of demand gen don’t still have value.

To be clear, when we say TOFU we mean Top of Funnel campaigns that Demand Generation strategies often focus on. Lead generation, on other hand, may focus more on the bottom of the funnel, or BOFU.

For the purposes of this post we’ll be focusing on Demand Gen strategies that fall under the below definition of the B2B marketing practice.

As we showed you in the graphic, Demand Generation is the focus of targeted marketing programs to drive awareness and interest in a company’s products and/or services.

Especially in a highly technical and equally saturated market like SaaS, not everyone knows what you’re selling. With the countless different software solutions being offered today – each for unique solutions to specific pain points – you need to make sure that your audience is aware of their need for your brand.

This is where Demand Generation strategies drive their value – creating the awareness, visibility, and need for your SaaS brand.

Given that the SaaS industry focuses on a tech savvy, digitally-versed market, it’s no surprise that digital demand gen marketing comes with such appeal. However, what most demand gen marketers fail to account for when partnering with SaaS clients is the unique buyer’s cycle that comes with their advanced clientele.

As opposed to more traditional buying cycles like the eCommerce example above, the B2B buyer’s journey can be a bit more complex. Even though they’re both digitally heavy marketing verticals, SaaS and eCommerce marketers have radically differing approaches.

With all the different touch points in the vastly complex buyer’s journey of a given SaaS campaign, there’s no wonder things can get a little muddled. And this is where most demand gen strategies fall short.

In order to (attempt to) attribute value to all these different cost-per-X campaigns, demand gen strategies created the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) to mark a successfully engaged prospect within this overlapping marketing funnel. And for years, SaaS marketers have been chasing the MQL trying to scale their business.

But here’s the thing. MQLs don’t actually translate into revenue. SQLs and customers do.

This is the primary issue that plagues all Demand Generation strategies – disparate, misaligned campaigns that fail to deliver on the promise of generating actual revenue. Instead, demand generation often results in campaigns that generate strong engagement and lead gen metrics without growing the bottom line.

Customer Generation – as the name implies – is a marketing methodology that delivers on the promise that Demand Gen forgot about. While demand generation strategies prioritize MQLs and then have you cross your fingers for an increase in revenue, Customer Generation aligns your marketing and sales, your NSMs, and your strategies towards what really matters: customers.

After all, your lead list doesn’t pay the light bills. Your customers do.

If you’re wondering why exactly you should even know what Demand Generation is, you need look no further than Gartner:

“A strong Demand Gen strategy builds brand awareness and authority, and produces thoughtful, engaging content that drives interest and cultivates leads.”

– Gartner

As we mentioned earlier, it’s vital that you can drive awareness for your client’s need for your product. It doesn’t matter what pain point you solving and how well you’re solving it if none of your audience is aware of the problem to begin with.

This is where some demand gen agencies tend to overcorrect. It’s important to drive awareness and authority for your brand, yes. But it’s also important to be realistic about who you’re trying to reach. As opposed to what most agencies will tell you, your product/software isn’t for everyone online.

Knowing what makes your ideal end buyer truly your ideal will help you better tailor your messaging and offer to what they’re really looking for at the end of the day. And the better you know who you’re actually trying to convince to buy, the better you’ll be able to customize your marketing strategies to their unique pain points.

This means that instead of dumping all the paid media and organic leads you can possibly collect into your marketing funnel and crossing your fingers will no longer work.

It may be a rough look in the mirror, but developing an actual TAM list (total addressable market) of your ideal accounts will guarantee that each penny spent is dedicated to a potential prospect.

Customer-led alignments such as these are what can make all the difference in your SaaS demand generation strategies. If you don’t believe us, just take a look at the performance difference in the example below.

Because Demand Generation is still a vital practice within the greater marketing methodology of Customer Generation, we want to keep you informed with traditional strategies that still run the test of time.

Keep in mind, however, that these strategies only work when properly aligned towards SQLs and customers. Needlessly chasing MQLs simply doesn’t solve the issues of traditional Demand Generation.

So why are each of these strategies uniquely important to SaaS marketing? Because with the non-physical nature of software, your end customers have a unique window into comparison shopping that product-based transactions don’t offer.

SaaS buyer’s have an incredibly extended B2B sales cycle because their consideration phase is so nuanced and complex – filled with different POCs within the same account and different value props for each.