Founding a SaaS startup is a real challenge — you not only have to build your business, hire employees or develop your products, but also ensure that there are consistently enough users to buy your product. You must therefore continuously generate demand for your supply in order to reduce your costs in the long term and remain profitable.

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So having a good product is of little use to you if no one wants to buy it. In this blog post, we'll explain to you what demand generation — the fancy marketing term for demand generation — is all about and how you can achieve it as a B2B SaaS start-up.

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Demand Generation — What is it anyway?

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Demand generation is a process that focuses on generating interest and demand for a product or service among potential customers. This involves all marketing and sales activities aimed at making potential customers aware of the brand and its offers, informing them and convincing them to make a purchase decision.

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However, this process should not only arouse the interest of users, but ideally also encourage them to take specific actions — such as buying the product or signing up for the newsletter. A demand-gen strategy can include a variety of tactics, such as content marketing, SEO, social media advertising, email marketing, events, and many more that you'll learn more about later.

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Lead generation, which is already one step ahead, should be distinguished from demand generation: While demand gen is about fundamentally generating demand for a product or service and providing classic educational work through marketing, lead gen is about getting customers who are already willing to buy to close.

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Demand Gen is therefore moving ahead in the customer journey and strives to generate brand awareness and familiarity, which results in later (long-term) business relationships.

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Demand generation is therefore, in a sense, a form of lead management: Within the demand gen process, unqualified leads are transformed into qualified ones by initiating interactions between these leads and your brand.

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What role demand generation plays for B2B SaaS start-ups

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Demand generation is the process of creating interest and awareness for your product or service. It is therefore a central part of every company, but in particular for start-ups that are trying to establish themselves in a competitive market.

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The aim of Demand Gen is to drive users to your website, convert leads into actual customers and ultimately increase sales. It is therefore essential, especially for start-ups, in order to be able to survive on the market in the long term.

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However, in order to convert your leads into customers, you need to determine for yourself what a qualified lead actually constitutes. For this purpose, it is recommended to define personas and an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), in which these characteristics are precisely defined. This also makes it easier for you to tailor your future marketing messages more precisely later on in order to address these ICPs in a targeted manner.

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To make your demand gen process as effective as possible, efficient data management is also essential. This allows you to reliably predict future lead developments, for example, which makes it easier to plan your marketing activities.

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It also allows you to further optimize these activities using analytics dashboards. There are now numerous automated solutions for this, such as from Hubspot or Eloqua, that make this work easier for you.

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Overall, Demand Generation offers you a number of benefits for your business:

• You develop a sustainable and predictable sales pipeline
• Your marketing can be more targeted and therefore more effective
• You increase your ROI
• Marketing and sales work together more efficiently

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Demand generation strategies

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There are various strategies that B2B SaaS startups can use to increase demand for their products. Here is an overview of some of the most important instruments that generate demand for your supply.

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Content marketing

One of the most effective methods is content marketing. Content marketing is about creating valuable, informative, and engaging content that aims to attract and retain a specific target group. This can include blog posts, videos, podcasts, e-books, white papers, case studies, webinars, social media posts, and more.

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By providing your target group with useful information and thus creating added value for them, you can establish yourself as an expert in your industry and build trust with potential customers.

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Tip: When it comes to content marketing, it is also advisable to set aside some budget for promoting the content: Use tools such as Social Ads or Google Ads to increase the reach of your content and get more qualified leads.

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SEO

Another demand generation strategy is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO involves optimizing your website and content to appear higher up in search engine results pages (SERPs).

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By targeting relevant keywords and topics, you can increase your visibility to potential customers who are actively looking for solutions in your industry. The higher up you appear in the search results, the more relevant your offer becomes for users who search for the respective keywords.

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Social media

Social media can also be a powerful tool for B2B SaaS startups that want to generate demand. By creating a strong presence on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, you can interact with your target audience and share valuable content with them.

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Social media can also be used for targeted advertising campaigns, with which you can generate new target groups and thus potentially leads. With the help of social media ads, for example, you can target a specific section of your users and generate demand.

It is important to also adapt the landing page of your company website to these social ads in order to achieve the best effects. How do you your Optimize your website for social ads, we have summarized this for you in a guest post for Advertace.

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email marketing

Email marketing is another effective demand generation strategy: By building an email list of users who have shown interest in your product or service, you can inform them about news, promotions, and new content. Email marketing is a great way to nurture leads and guide them through the buyer process.

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Important: In order to make the customer relationship as effective as possible via email marketing, it is important to offer your customers added value. What can they learn and how can they benefit from your product or services? Be sure to focus on this in email as well as in content marketing to best attract your users.

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Events and webinars

After all, events and webinars can also be a good way to increase demand for your product. By hosting or participating in (online) events and webinars in your industry, you can get in touch with potential customers and establish your brand.

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The positive side effect: Especially if you host webinars yourself, you offer your users added value that has a positive effect on customer loyalty in the long term.

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How do I know if my demand gen strategy is working?

You can plan your demand gen strategy carefully and for as long as you like — of course, it won't do you any good if you don't know whether it's working. To do this, it makes sense to keep an eye on a few important KPIs to understand whether your demand generation strategy is successful. These include in particular:

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Cost per Acquisition (CPA)

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The Cost per Acquisition KPI describes the average costs of acquiring a customer. The long-term goal of your demand gen strategy should be to lower the CPA value, as by generating demand through your measures, less budget must be spent to turn users into customers.

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If this figure falls due to your demand gen activity, it means that enough demand could be generated to pick up users and draw attention to your offer.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

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Customer lifetime value is the value that a user brings in their time as a customer of your company. In a sense, this is linked to the CPA: Lower customer acquisition costs mean that CLV is increasing at the same time, as effective demand gen has laid the foundation for a long-term business relationship.

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The more sustainable business relationships are, the higher the value that these customers bring to you in the long term.

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Length of the demand generation cycle

The demand gen cycle describes the period from identifying a lead to converting it into a customer. The goal of an effective demand gen strategy should be to shorten this cycle as much as possible.

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In practice, this means that the time between lead and conversion is as short as possible, meaning that your users are converted into customers within a short period of time. In this case, enough demand has been generated that your users need little or no additional information to become customers.

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In summary, demand generation is a crucial factor for the success of a B2B SaaS startup. By creating valuable content, search engine optimization of your website, using social media, using email marketing, and the events and webinars, you can generate interest in your product, attract new customers, and ultimately establish your brand.

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