HITTING THE BULLSEYE DESIGNING DEMAND GENERATION PROGRAMS TO MEET BUSINESS TARGETS

For example, to drive top of funnel awareness and demand generation, Gartner recommends content like blog posts, social posts, and even videos that can showcase your expertise and “lay the groundwork for important conversations about customer pain points and solutions the business can offer.”

Much like any demand generation strategy, one key component of developing valuable and relevant content is ensuring that both sales and marketing are aligned. These two teams are the first that a prospect interacts with, which means they need to be on the same page about their Ideal Client Profile (ICP), buyer personas, their pain points, and how to measure campaign effectiveness. As Tiffany Wakimoto, VP of Demand Generation at AffiniPay posits, “It has to go both ways; we’re in it together.”

True marketing and sales alignment requires shared language, tactics, and metrics from both departments about how to serve the client at each stage of the funnel. Yet according to Gartner, the alignment gap between teams on the definition of a “high-quality lead” is 36%.

“Both [marketing and sales] work closely together to make sure marketing efforts are focused on the accounts they care about most, and we do our part in marketing to make sure leads who are passed to sales are qualified,” says Sarah McConnell, VP of Demand Generation at Qualified. “This has helped a lot in making sure the teams are on the same page.”

For Brian Chung, VP of Global Demand Generation at LRN, there can sometimes be a disconnect between sales and marketing when it comes to selling language and positioning. “I think that sometimes marketing comes at client pain points from an aspirational perspective that isn’t necessarily how sales are speaking to customers.”

Jordan Backues, Demand Generation Manager at 6Sense, says that her revenue generation team — which includes marketing, sales, and customer success — are aligned around the same account in their ICP. “Alignment on objectives and engagement is based on historical opportunity data merged with AI predictions, allowing cross-functional collaboration and strategy.”

With a shared vision, KPIs, transparency, and regular communication between sales and marketing, your demand generation strategies are more likely to accurately identify your clients’ pain points, fueling your messaging and moving prospects further down the funnel.

While increasing market awareness of your solution is integral to generating demand and more pipeline, it’s crucial that your lead generation and prospecting efforts are as focused as possible. Converting leads into prospects using an effective lead qualification process is key to your success. In fact, in teams with strong lead qualification criteria and good sales and marketing alignment, over 60% of B2B sales reps are more likely to follow up on marketing-qualified leads (MQLs). Additionally, a Ebsta x Pavilion report showed that teams that implement a sales methodology are more ikely to close an opportunity and have higher win rates because they outline and follow through on their criteria for qualifying deals.

This helps to increase your chances of closing a deal with an account that’s a good fit while also preserving sales reps’ limited time by giving them qualified leads that are more likely to close. McConnell’s team qualifies leads through a combination of intent (“Do you have a need for a solution like ours?”) and ICP fit (“Are you the type of company we know will see ROI from our solution?”).

Chung’s team, on the other hand, uses a lead scoring model based on interactions with content (CTAs, form fills, downloads, email opens, and page visits).

Meanwhile, Backues doesn’t operate on an MQL model. “We are account-based, and as a result, [we] focus on 6QAs (6Sense Qualified Accounts). We use predictive analytics from our platform to tell us when accounts are in-market based on buying stage and intent.”

Your lead nurture and follow-up tactics should also reflect your overall business goals and consider the needs of your leads, as well as external influencing factors like the state of the economy and current trends.

Backues’ team, for example, follows a process based on the account type, segment, and predictive analytics related to the buying stage. “Through activity tracking and intent, we are able to follow up and engage qualified accounts at the right time using the right channel and the right message. As an example, when an account is qualified as a 6QA, our BDR teams get alerted to begin outreach into that account. Our BDRs are required to multithread and engage at least three contacts within a certain time frame if the account is qualified.”

For Chung, too, the follow-up plan depends on the type of lead, but “a typical MQL is followed up on from BDRs after qualification from the lead scoring model.”

McConnell has distinct tactics for online and offline lead qualification. “If you are on our website and showing intent, we can strike up a real-time conversation and get a meeting on the books, leaving less time for traditional follow-up. However, if a lead converts when our sales team is offline, we have dashboards in Salesforce, and reps start their morning emailing those leads and driving them back to our site for the conversation and meeting booking.”

Companies that don’t effectively qualify or properly nurture leads will find it hard to move prospects down the pipeline. But once you’ve determined fit, you can use account intelligence and marketing technology to close and win more business.

Technology is integral to all successful demand generation strategies. However, it is equally important to maintain a slimmer tech stack. While an overabundance of tools can waste budget and ultimately inhibit productivity, a lean tech stack with software that integrates well with other tools is essential to driving the productivity needed to accelerate pipeline.

Striking the right balance can empower desired outcomes, save teams time, and empower teams with data-driven insights. Common tools include CRMs, ad programs, marketing automation software, and lead data tools.

McConnell’s team leans heavily on their own tool, Qualified. “We use Qualified Conversations, Qualified Signals, and Qualified Meetings every single day. Besides that, Salesforce CRM, Pardot, 6Sense, Metadata, Outreach, and Sendoso all play a big role in our demand generation process.”

Likewise, for Chung’s team, “HubSpot is our Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) and SFDC is our CRM for client data.” They also use Google ads, Linkedin ads, Semrush, ON24 for webinars, and Optimizely for conversion.

At Affinipay, Wakimoto’s team uses many of the same tools as Chung’s and McConnell’s teams. They also use “G2 intent data, and Hotjar/Gong for customer insight. For demand gen, Marketo [a marketing automation tool] is the biggest one, Intercom for chat, SEO tools, and Lotame for targeting.”

The more focused your demand and lead gen efforts, the better your chances of converting prospects that are a good fit and most importantly, retaining and increasing their business over time. According to McKinsey, not only do 71% of clients expect personalization, but faster-growing companies drive 40% more revenue than slower-growing companies due to personalization. This is why it’s so crucial to understand your prospect’s pain points and ways your solution can help them achieve their goals.

It’s also why you need to closely monitor account data and buyer intelligence. Knowing which prospects are most interested in your offer allows you to focus your efforts on closing business that you are more likely to win. As Backues says, “Intent data is a core strength throughout the entire buyer’s journey and is how we capitalize on revenue moments to convert and deliver the right message.”

McConnell’s team uses account data to determine user intent, the right time for sales intervention, and the most impactful messaging. “It starts with marketing running programs and activities focused on these target accounts. All these activities drive to our website, where we have ungated content to help prospects self-educate. As they continue to educate themselves, it drives up their intent score in our product, Qualified Signals. Once they reach a threshold of intent, that is where our sales team jumps in with personalized outbound messaging that brings in the intent topics or web visits for personalization.”

According to McConnell, this strategy not only works to drive more pipeline, but to also alleviate some tension between sales and marketing on ‘who drove pipeline.’ “Both teams are aligned, so it all works together to drive the best quality pipeline for the business. And most importantly, it creates a much better, more personalized journey for our prospects as they start to discover who we are and what we do.”

Regardless of how successful these efforts are, it’s imperative that you continue to measure your performance to see if the data is leading you in the right direction. The data you track and depend on will be business-specific and aligned with your goals, but should also include Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Lifetime Value (LTV).

“The main outcomes we measure are our pipeline (both sourced and influenced) and pipeline conversion (stage 1 > stage 2, then stage 2 > closed won),” says McConnell. Backues’ team also looks at sourced and influenced pipeline, as well as “anything that impacts pipeline acceleration and deal velocity, such as new accounts engaged, new personas engaged, opportunity rates, and win rates.”

Like Backues and McConnell, Chung’s team pays attention to pipeline sourced. Additionally, they use “MQL volume, CAC to LTV, and conversion rate (lead to MQL).”

Using your tech tools, account data, and metrics in tandem can show you who to reach out to, what messaging will be most effective, and what efforts have the biggest impact in helping you drive pipeline and meeting your team goals.