The main B2B marketer demand generation goal is to build long-term customer relationships through activities like responding to customers’ questions on Twitter, promoting blog posts on Facebook or Instagram, and running email marketing campaigns.

Building long-term customer relationships is a difficult process, as the process involves research to figure out how demand generation works, and how to efficiently market without being too sales-heavy in marketing materials.

Read on for a complete and concise outline of essential tips for B2B marketers to improve their demand generation.

Match Marketing Programs to the Right Audiences

There are 3 components within the revenue funnel:

1. TOFU is the top-of-the-funnel
2. MOFU is the middle-of-the-funnel
3. BOFU is the bottom-of-the-funnel.

TOFU (Top-of-the-Funnel)

Top-of-the-Funnel programs help attract large audiences who know little or nothing about your company. For example, our blog post entitled “Marketing ROI Primer for Beginners” can be classified as a TOFU program. This blog post covers a topic that applies to every marketer, even if they’re not intending on using our services.

Our blog posts like “Marketing ROI Primer for Beginners” and “How Social Media Platforms Optimize Content: Spotlight on Instagram” are intended to attract the attention a wide range of people that might not already be in our list of contacts.

MOFU (Middle-of-the-Funnel)

Mid-stage marketing programs are designed for individuals already in your database who are aware of your company, product, or brand. The further you move down the tunnel; the more personalized programs should become.

Programs become more personalized because moving down the funnel allows you to gain valuable information on your audiences. To determine which leads are marketing qualified leads (MQLs), you should use your audience’s demographics and behaviors to score them in your marketing automation platform.

Once a lead becomes an MQL, it is up to the salespeople to determine if this specific lead should be followed up via phone or email. Salespeople try to figure out the best method to use for each MQL by making sure the channel is a good fit based on the interest shown in the product or service.

If the lead is a good fit, the lead becomes a sales qualified lead (SQL). However, if a salesperson decides to reject or recycle the lead, the MQL will be sent back to marketing for further nurturing.

BOFU (Bottom-of-the-Funnel)

Once a lead reaches the Bottom-of-the-Funnel, the closer the lead is to convert prospects to customers. Salespeople are responsible for determining if the MQL is a good fit to become an SQL, and closing the deal.

However, marketers can help in the process. Marketers can improve the process by sending an accelerator email that includes product-focused content or by inviting potential customers to an upcoming event to further their interest.

Don’t be alarmed if the size of your audience diminishes as you move down the funnel. Audience size decreases at the BOFU stage of the funnel because programs become more personalized and interactions increase.

These efforts are meant to be focused on audiences that are familiar with your company and have an interest in the products or services you offer, which is why you see the audience size shrink.

Moving through different stages of the funnel should provide a better, general understanding of the content and the various marketing programs that are the best fit for your audience at each stage.

Once you’re able to understand and identify the best programs for each stage, the next step is to ensure you’re running an assortment of all different programs at any given time, and coordinate programs across multiple channels.

Selecting the Right Metrics for Each Program

Metrics serve different purposes for different programs, which is important to recognize when first starting to work with demand generation.

There are countless varieties of programs, but based on what stage of the revenue funnel you’re at, you can recognize what type of audience you have and what you’re trying to achieve with that particular audience.

Whether it’s raising awareness in the knowledge of your company, familiarity with your product/service, or interest in speaking with sales and making a purchase. Based on the behavioral goals of each stage, you can start to weed out the metrics that best fit each program.

Early and Late Stage Metrics

For physical or virtual events, the metrics will be the number of people who registered and attended. Out of those who attended, you can figure out how many are new names in the database and how many attendees are returning customers.

These metrics help identify how successful a program is at face value; however, these metrics do not determine the long-term outcome of a program.

Late stage metrics are a better indicator of the long-term success of a program by measuring values such as the return on investment (ROI) from each program, the revenue earned, and the number of sales opportunities created.

Although early stage metrics can seem important if you get a high number of responses from your audience, long-term metrics are ultimately what marketers should focus. Marketers should generally focus on late stage metrics because they are better indicators of quality and audience responses.

First and Multi-Touch Metrics

Multi-touch metrics correlate to each program that produces a successful marketing collaboration with a lead; like a lead that is already in your database and interacts with your program. Multi-touch metrics are recognized in your program as a segment of their total worth that is established through how other program’s leads engage the buyer.

If the goal is to create a program that will satisfy the TOFU stage by creating a new name generator, the focus should be on creating strong FT metrics as opposed to developing a program focusing on MT metrics to target prospects in the later stages of people already in your database.

All programs vary in the time needed to become successful. TOFU events, like sponsored webinars, can take up to a year or longer to generate a strong channel.

Whereas late stage programs, like emails, can produce a successful outcome in a few months. When evaluating the success of a program, recognize that timetables and metrics work differently for each, depending on who’s engaging with the program.

To effectively evaluate and move forward with the programs that best fit your goals, it is important to understand how programs work differently, what kind of metrics indicate long-term success, and which programs are improving your ROI.

Moving Forward

The next step you should take involves building programs, testing, and optimizing each program to ensure the results satisfy your business objectives.

Even if a program is specific to one category, you can create multi-channel and cohesive experiences for prospects and customers already in your database.

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