Importance of Demand Generation for B2B

You can’t close a deal that doesn’t trust you. And you can’t build trust if no one knows you exist. That’s where marketing comes in. The smartest companies aren’t asking “Should we invest in sales or marketing?” They know the answer: you need both. Sales is the hand that reaches out. Marketing is the door that opens the room. When companies treat marketing like an afterthought, they handicap their sales team. Because without brand awareness, clear positioning, and consistent messaging, every deal starts from zero. Marketing does the heavy lifting long before the discovery call. It earns the attention, builds the credibility, and nurtures the relationship. The result? Sales stops chasing cold leads and starts having real conversations with decision-makers who already believe in the value. The truth is, most sales problems are marketing problems in disguise. Here’s what smart companies do differently: ✅ They define their brand before pushing the pitch ✅ They educate before they sell ✅ They create demand instead of begging for it ✅ They align sales and marketing under one shared strategy You don’t need more sales reps calling strangers. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝘀 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁, 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝘀 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝘆𝗲𝗿. Build the brand. Warm the leads. Then let your sales team do what they do best: 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲. Because real growth doesn’t come from separation. It comes from synergy. #MarketingLeadership #SalesEnablement #DemandGeneration #GrowthStrategy #B2BMarketing

When you look at buyer research data like the 6sense report from last year, some very important 80/20 stories emerge. But it’s not the 80/20 we’re all familiar with. One such story is the method of entering a sales conversation, where about 80% of the time it’s initiated by the buyer via inbound. Which means, if marketing is trying to drive pipeline through lead gen and follow up, one of two things is true: You’re either paying heavily to pull people who were likely coming in anyway (best case pulling the event forward by a few weeks), or you’re placing your pipeline gen efforts all in that 20%. This story gets worse when you look at the second of the 80/20 scenarios. About 80% of the time, buyers will end up going with the brand who was on their day one list coming in-market. So, if you’re not dedicating marketing effort on brand and mental availability to get onto more day-one lists, then you’re trying to win with with the 20% who’ll entertain buying outside options. Brands without awareness have no option but to begin in these 20% groups, and when you’re small you can grow by fighting the hard fight to win here. But as you scale, the math just doesn’t work. The 80% is where most sustainable growth exists, but it requires a fundamental shift in how we often think about B2B marketing. It's not about better lead generation or sales enablement - it's about systematic brand building to ensure you're on those day-one consideration lists. That effort happens gradually alongside the 20% of activations, and is why brand and demand are the healthy balance for true growth.

45% increase in ARR quarter over quarter 67% increase in HIRO pipeline  23% decrease in customer acquisition cost All in 6 months. Together we built a highly effective demand motion from scratch, lowered CAC significantly, and quickly accelerated ARR growth. Shoutout to Sam Kuehnle and the whole Loxo team for leading such a powerful transformation. __ Driving enterprise pipeline and revenue in a dual-motion product-led / sales-led motion can be very challenging for B2B companies. The winning strategy is to CREATE DEMAND within enterprise accounts so the leaders of the company want to buy the product (demand gen), while most PLG companies spend egregious amounts of advertising dollars on performance marketing to get as many free trial sign ups as possible (lead gen). Whether you're running performance marketing for e-book downloads, free trial sign ups, or anything else, this strategy really breaks down in B2B and results in very poor ROI, high CAC, and low sales productivity. Whether your company thinks they’re doing PLG, “Demand Gen”, “ABM” or anything else, the real solution to all of these motions is to shift from lead gen to demand creation. Some of our most successful customers use this dual-motion product-led / sales-led, but to truly be successful and drive meaningful ROI requires a dramatic shift in mindset around the purpose, objectives, and metrics for enterprise marketing. Check out the full partnership story Loxo x Refine Labs here: https://lnkd.in/g_BpaweU #marketing #b2b #gtm #sales

We recently completed a survey of what matters most to B2B marketers. Their top strategic priority in 2024 is creating net new demand in the market. For the 2nd consecutive year, creating new demand was the highest priority – ahead of capturing demand and increasing brand awareness. We know that there isn’t an unlimited existing supply of demand that is just waiting to be captured. Years of generating leads and chasing MQL targets hasn’t resulted in sustainable revenue growth. But in a separate survey question, we asked how they allocate their spend. Respondents stated that they spend twice as much budget on capturing demand than they do on creating demand. Why a complete reversal between priorities and budget? The answer is simple – it comes down to what we can effectively measure. We know that running direct response marketing to capture demand isn’t moving the needle for our businesses. But it is simple to measure through attribution. This came across clearly as 71% of B2B marketing executives stated that they pursue tactics that they can measure more easily. It’s an admission that we execute marketing in a way that we know doesn’t drive more revenue and doesn’t make it easier for prospects to buy. Our complete reliance on attribution is holding us back from marketing more effectively. It sounds like we need a better way to measure B2B marketing.