Growth marketing vs demand generation - which strategy should you focus your efforts and resources on first?

To answer this question, you need to have a thorough understanding of each approach, its goals, and how it aims to achieve them.

And that’s exactly what you’ll learn in this article, as we’ll:

• Break down both demand generation and growth marketing.
• Explain their key differences in detail.
• Help you figure out when to use one and when the other for best results.

What is growth marketing?

Growth marketing is a holistic and dynamic strategy that focuses on the entire customer journey - from acquisition to retention - with the ultimate goal of driving sustainable business growth. 

Unlike traditional marketing, which usually focuses on top-of-the-funnel activities such as brand awareness and lead generation, growth marketing addresses every stage of the customer lifecycle.

As a result, growth marketing has a few unique characteristics that make differentiating it from traditional approaches much easier, such as:

1. Reliance on experimentation - Growth marketers often employ A/B testing and other data-driven methods to determine the most effective strategies for optimizing user engagement and conversion rates. This experimental mindset lets marketers quickly identify what works and what doesn’t.
2. Continuous improvement - Instead of focusing all their efforts on a single, large-scale campaign, growth marketing is more intent on deploying smaller-scale strategies, which they constantly test and refine over time. 
3. Specific tactics - Growth marketing aims to cover all stages of the marketing funnel, from lead acquisition to nurturing and final conversion, which is why it uses a wider variety of techniques compared to traditional marketing, including:

• A/B testing, i.e., testing different variations of content, ads, landing pages, and more, to identify what drives the highest conversion rates.
• User acquisition strategies, which encompass developing targeted campaigns to attract new users, often leveraging channels such as social media, SEO, and paid advertising.
• Retention campaigns to keep existing customers engaged, such as personalized email marketing, loyalty programs, and in-app messaging.

The one thing that makes growth marketing an important strategy to include in your marketing arsenal is its impact on long-term customer growth and revenue.

By optimizing every touchpoint in the customer journey, growth marketers increase the efficiency of their marketing efforts and foster stronger customer relationships. 

Consequently, this leads to higher customer lifetime value (CLTV), improved retention rates, and more predictable and scalable revenue growth.

What is demand generation?

Unlike growth marketing, which encompasses the entire marketing funnel, demand generation is a strategy with a much narrower focus.

Demand generation aims to create awareness of your brand, nurture leads, and ultimately convert them into loyal customers. 

Therefore, at its core, demand generation focuses on building awareness first and foremost. 

The goal is to ensure your target audience knows who you are, what you offer, and why they should care. 

Beyond awareness, demand generation emphasizes nurturing leads, which is critical for turning initial interest into genuine intent to purchase. 

By providing valuable, relevant content and experiences that address specific pain points or needs, marketers can move prospects further down the funnel, fostering a stronger connection to the brand.

Finally, the end goal of demand generation is to convert prospects into customers. 

This requires a carefully thought-through approach that aligns marketing and sales across levels, ensuring that leads are captured and effectively guided toward making a purchase. 

Demand generation involves a mix of strategies that enable marketers to achieve these goals, such as:

• Content marketing - Creating and distributing high-quality content, such as blog posts, white papers, and videos, that educates your audience and drives engagement.
• Lead magnets - Offering valuable resources, like eBooks, templates, or checklists, in exchange for contact information, which helps capture leads for further nurturing.
• Social media engagement - As everyone’s on social media today, it’s an excellent place to drive brand visibility and build meaningful contact with potential customers.
• Webinars - Hosting educational or informational webinars that provide value to attendees while subtly positioning your products or services as solutions to their challenges.

Just like growth marketing, demand generation has a crucial role in your overall sales and marketing strategy.

Namely, demand generation helps keep your brand top-of-mind for potential customers by maintaining a steady flow of valuable content and engagement opportunities. 

This consistency ensures that when prospects become ready to make a purchase, your brand is one of the first they consider, increasing your chances of achieving conversions.

How do growth marketing and demand generation approaches differ?

Given their different goals, growth marketing and demand generation significantly differ in focus, overall approach, and outcomes.

Let’s look at each strategy a bit closer.

Growth marketing 

Growth marketing is proactive and experimental by nature.

As such, it is characterized by a fast-paced, data-driven approach where marketers constantly test and refine their strategies to achieve quick wins. 

The primary goal is short-term optimization, that is, maximizing conversions, boosting engagement, and improving customer acquisition metrics as quickly as possible.

As a result, growth marketing often centers on specific, measurable goals, such as increasing website traffic, improving click-through rates, or enhancing user retention.

So, to achieve these goals and ensure that the entire funnel is optimized for pushing prospects further down toward conversion, growth marketers run A/B tests, experiment with new channels, and tweak campaigns continuously to uncover what drives the best results.

In addition to testing and experimenting, growth marketing involves other tactics and approaches, such as:

1. Creating highly targeted campaigns for each customer segment, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.
2. Referral programs that enable you to create a strong lead acquisition pipeline using existing customers.
3. Improving user onboarding experiences to improve overall user experience and boost retention rates.
4. Email marketing to attract, engage, and nurture leads throughout the funnel.
5. Loyalty programs like special discounts or exclusive offers to long-term customers to improve customer retention.
6. Paid advertising and retargeting campaigns to engage and re-engage leads.

While this focus on short-term success makes growth marketing ideal for startups or businesses looking to scale rapidly, it could also lead to overlooking the wider picture - the importance of establishing a strong brand presence.

Demand generation

In contrast, demand generation takes a more nurturing and long-term focus. 

While growth marketing seeks to optimize every touchpoint quickly, demand generation is about laying the foundation for sustainable brand growth over time. 

It involves building awareness, nurturing long-term relationships, and guiding prospects through the buying journey to convert them into loyal customers. 

Therefore, the main goal of demand generation is to create consistent and enduring demand for the brand across markets, which requires a more strategic approach that focuses on the entire customer journey - including post-purchase engagement.

This is why demand generation efforts are typically slower to yield results.

At the same time, they are crucial for establishing a strong brand presence and nurturing leads that may need more time to be ready to convert.

Some of the most widely used techniques that help raise brand awareness and generate demand include:

1. Content marketing and SEO are the best combination for establishing thought leadership within the industry and gaining potential customers’ trust.
2. Webinars can also position you as an industry leader and let you directly engage and interact with leads.
3. Social media engagement adds a more personal note to how leads interact with your brand.
4. Customer testimonials to build trust by showcasing positive experiences other people have had with your brand.
5. PPC campaigns to display your brand in front of potential leads.

Which metrics matter in growth marketing vs demand generation?

To track the efficiency of demand generation and growth marketing, you need to keep a close eye on vital metrics and KPIs.

The difference between growth marketing and demand generation goals and focus translates into the metrics you need to track for each.

Namely, growth marketing is often more short-term, focusing on quick optimizations that can drive rapid business results. 

As a result, its key metrics can provide immediate feedback on how a certain strategy works, enabling marketers to quickly refine it.

On the other hand, demand generation has a longer-term focus, aiming to build a steady stream of qualified leads and ensure sustainable growth over time. 

Therefore, its metrics are critical for understanding the cumulative impact of marketing efforts on the sales pipeline and overall business growth.

Here’s a quick overview of the key metrics you must monitor for each strategy.

Growth marketing metrics

As mentioned above, growth marketing is typically focused on rapid experimentation and optimization, which requires tracking specific metrics that provide immediate insights into the effectiveness of various tactics.

Therefore, some of the most important metrics and KPIs include:

1. Customer lifetime value - CLV measures the total revenue a business can expect from a customer throughout their relationship with the company. In growth marketing, understanding CLV helps marketers identify the most valuable customer segments and tailor their strategies to maximize ROI from these segments.
2. Customer acquisition cost - CAC calculates the cost of acquiring a new customer. Growth marketers closely monitor CAC to ensure that their acquisition strategies are cost-effective and sustainable. A low CAC relative to CLV indicates a healthy growth strategy.
3. Conversion rates - Conversion rates track the percentage of users who take a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or downloading an app, converting from a prospect to a qualified lead or a paying customer. This metric is critical in growth marketing, where the goal is often to optimize specific touchpoints in the customer journey to increase conversions.

Demand generation metrics

Demand generation, on the other hand, emphasizes building brand awareness, nurturing leads, and driving long-term growth, which is why it prioritizes metrics that track the effectiveness of these activities over time. 

Key demand generation metrics include:

1. Marketing-Qualified Leads - MQLs are leads that have shown a sufficient level of interest or engagement to be passed on to the sales team. Tracking the number and quality of MQLs helps demand-generation teams understand the effectiveness of their lead nurturing efforts.
2. Lead-to-customer ratio - This metric measures the percentage of leads that ultimately convert into paying customers. A high lead-to-customer ratio indicates that demand generation efforts effectively nurture leads and guide them through the sales funnel.
3. Pipeline contribution—Pipeline contribution assesses the impact of marketing efforts on the overall sales pipeline, including the number of opportunities created and their revenue potential. This metric helps demand generation teams demonstrate the direct impact of their activities on the company’s bottom line.

How to choose between growth marketing and demand generation?

When deciding between growth marketing and demand generation, you should consider several key factors, including:

1. Company goals - If your primary objective is to scale quickly and gain market share, growth marketing may be the better choice due to its focus on rapid experimentation and optimization. Conversely, demand generation might be more appropriate if your goal is to build brand awareness and cultivate long-term customer relationships.
2. Customer lifecycle - Growth marketing focuses equally on acquisition and retention, meaning that it can be used throughout the customer lifecycle to ensure optimal results. Demand generation is more suitable for the top and middle stages, as it helps both raise brand awareness and create interest in your product.
3. Industry type - Fast-paced, highly competitive industries, such as tech startups or e-commerce, often benefit from the agility and speed of growth marketing. In contrast, industries with longer buying cycles, such as B2B services or high-value products, may require demand generation’s more deliberate and relationship-focused approach.
4. Sales cycle - Growth marketing is well-suited for shorter sales cycles where quick wins and rapid scaling are possible. Demand generation is ideal for longer, more complex sales cycles where building trust and nurturing leads over time is crucial to closing deals.

However, it’s important to understand that demand generation and growth marketing are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, a hybrid approach combining elements of growth marketing and demand generation can often be the most effective strategy. 

For example, a hybrid approach might involve using growth marketing tactics to quickly acquire new leads and then applying demand generation strategies to nurture those leads through the sales funnel. 

This lets you capitalize on quick wins while ensuring sustained growth over time.

Overall, when deciding on an approach, you must align your marketing strategy with your primary goals to ensure that your efforts will actually move you in the right direction.

What are some examples of successful growth marketing and demand generation campaigns?

Finally, the best way to understand demand generation and growth marketing is through practical examples of companies successfully deploying them as part of their overall sales and marketing strategies.

Growth marketing strategy: Airbnb

A few years back, Airbnb built one of the most successful growth marketing strategies, which enabled it to increase bookings by 25% in some markets.

The company achieved this by leveraging a tested and tried growth marketing approach - referral programs.

They incentivized existing users by offering them the possibility to earn up to $100 for every person they invited to the platform.

Source

But it didn’t end there. 

Airbnb also offered $25 off their first trip to new users who have been invited to encourage them to accept the invitation.

Moreover, Airbnb applied another growth marketing technique - A/B testing.

They experimented with different email copy and design, emphasizing different angles of the overall messaging to see which resonated better with existing and prospective users.

This approach resulted in a significant increase in new users and bookings made on Airbnb, making it a resounding success.

Demand generation strategy: StraightIn

StraightIn is a LinkedIn marketing agency that was looking to drive demand for its services by cutting through the noise of similar solutions.

The agency used several key demand generation tactics - email marketing, social media engagement, and paid ads - in an effort to drive traffic to its website, which was optimized for conversions.

However, although this multichannel approach yielded excellent results, with StraightIn’s website generating thousands of visitors per month, its team quickly realized its strategy had a flaw.

Namely, they were unable to capture most of the leads landing on their website, as not everyone was keen on filling out forms or downloading materials.

This is when they decided to implement Warmly into their system.

Warmly enabled them to identify the companies and individuals visiting StraightIn’s website, in addition to providing relevant B2B and intent data on each.

This way, StraightIn’s team was able to:

1. Identify website visitors and determine which of them fit their ICP the best.

1. Pinpoint and prioritize leads most likely to convert based on intent level and focus their nurturing efforts on them.

From that point, StraightIn’s approach evolved into a more hybrid strategy, as its team leveraged Warmly’s intent insights to segment users according to their interest level and add them to personalized outreach campaigns.

Thanks to Warmly’s Orchestrator, they put this process on autopilot, ensuring that no quality leads fall through the cracks.

The results?

1. An overall increase in email engagement rates.
2. A reduction in LinkedIn Ad spend.
3. Closing two deals worth $10k in total in under two weeks.

Next steps

Your primary business goals will be key in choosing between growth marketing and demand generation.

Both are efficient and useful in their own way, with one focusing on immediate results and the other on building long-term relationships.

In most cases, a hybrid approach might work the best, ensuring you won’t miss out on any opportunities.

Ultimately, you know your business best, and with all the info you picked up here, making the right choice won’t be as tough.

Remember, though, that your website is an essential part of all marketing strategies, so it's always a good idea to put effort into unlocking its optimal lead acquisition potential—and Warmly can help with that.

Want to find out how?

Sign up for Warmly’s free plan and start filling your pipeline with qualified leads within minutes.

Related reading:

• Demand Generations vs Account Based Marketing
• Demand Creation vs Demand Capture
• Demand Generation vs Demand Capture

Ever wondered which marketing strategy is right for your business: demand generation vs demand capture?

While both concepts drive sales, each focuses on different stages of the customer journey and uses unique tactics. 

Demand generation includes the things you do to create demand for your service or product among potential customers.

Conversely, demand capture is a marketing strategy that targets customers who are already in the market and ready to buy.

In this article, we'll explore the difference between demand generation vs capturing existing demand. We'll also share how they complement each other to improve your marketing results. 

Ready? Let's get started! 

What is demand generation?

Demand generation focuses on strategies you use to create interest in your product or service to convert potential customers into paying ones. 

It covers everything you do to capture the attention of audiences who are unfamiliar with your brand and its offerings. This approach involves identifying the pain points of your target customers and providing solutions.

The process involves building or increasing awareness and creating demand for a product or service. You can achieve this by providing valuable information that highlights the need for what you offer. 

So, what's the role of demand generation in creating market awareness?

How does demand generation target potential customers? 

Demand generation targets potential customers unaware of a product or service by creating awareness and interest through strategic marketing efforts. 

It involves selecting a target audience, understanding their needs, and using the information to create relevant content that will resonate with them.

This content is distributed through various channels like social media posts, blogs, and infographics to educate potential customers about the benefits and value of the offerings.

Additionally, demand generation uses tactics like SEO and influencer outreaches to increase visibility and attract new audiences.

This means you can create informative and engaging content to guide your potential customers through their buying journey and convert them into paying customers.

Here's an example to help you understand what demand generation does to create awareness about a product: 

When a SaaS company creates a new type of project management software, they often find ways to create a demand for the tool.

They can decide to launch a content marketing campaign and create a series of blog posts, eBooks, and webinars that highlight the challenges of managing remote teams. 

These resources educate potential customers on the advantages of using project management tools to improve workflow and team collaboration. This way, the company builds awareness and interest in their software, creating demand among businesses looking for solutions to improve their remote work efficiency. 

Now, what are the effective tactics you can use for demand generation?

What are demand generation tactics for targeting potential customers? 

If you want to reach your potential customers, build interest for a service or product they aren't aware of, and drive customer acquisition, try out these key tactics:

• Content marketing: This is a primary inbound marketing strategy in demand generation.

It deals with creating informative and valuable content like blogs, videos, infographics, and other content types to attract the attention of an audience and educate them about your offerings. With this strategy, you can establish your brand as a thought leader on the subject you're focused on and earn the trust of your target audience.

This method helps capture prospects' interest and stirs up the desire to learn more about your brand.

Hubspot offers free resources to its prospects. 

Surfer provides free SEO resources via blog posts.

• Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO puts you in the face of your potential customers. It's a lead generation strategy that focuses on optimizing content for search engines so your potential customers can easily find you.

This formula works by using relevant keywords and improving your website structure so you can increase your visibility on the search results pages and attract users who are already searching for solutions that are related to your products.

Mailchimp targeted the keyphrase “Content marketing” for demand generation. 

• Social media marketing: Another effective demand-generation method is social media marketing. You can use your social media platforms to reach a broader audience. You can achieve this by sharing engaging content and interacting with your followers and page visitors. This will enable you to build a community of loyal followers around your brand.

Also, social media lets you perform targeted advertising so you can effectively reach a specific demographic.

Sharing engaging and relevant content can help you generate demand. 

• Influencer outreach: In this strategy, you partner with influencers in your niche or industry to project your brand's message and reach.

These influencers can introduce and promote your brand as a solution to a specific problem (or problems) in your niche. This way, they will build interest in their followers and persuade them to subscribe to your service or buy your products.

This strategy works well because their followers can easily relate to them and trust their recommendations.

Examples of influencer marketing. 

What is demand capture? 

Demand capture deals with the actions you take to make prospects choose you over your competitors.

It's a marketing strategy focused on converting potential customers in your target market actively seeking what you offer.

The goal is to capitalize on existing demand and generate revenue from low-friction prospects ready to buy.

This method seeks to increase ROI by efficiently converting warm leads into short- to medium-term revenue.

Demand capture integrates seamlessly with the sales funnel by focusing on the later stages of the buyer's journey.

Here's how: 

In demand capture, you look for prospects that need what you have to offer. At this stage, you're not about to convince them to recognize a need. Instead, your goal is to make them choose you over your competitors. 

Unlike demand generation, demand capture is about converting existing demand into revenue by engaging with prospects actively exploring their options.

How do you find these ready-to-buy prospects?

This is where Warmly steals the show. Warmly enables you to identify and classify the individuals and companies that visit your website. The tool scouts different sources to provide you insights on potential leads who have shown interest but have not yet converted. This way, you can send them personalized follow-up messages, special offers, discounts, and other promotional deals.

What are the key tactics to adopt in demand capture?

• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising: PPC is lead conversion-focused and lets you target specific audiences based on locations, relevant keywords, and demographics.

This method ensures you target the audiences actively searching for what you offer, and this can increase your chances of converting them almost immediately.

Examples of PPC advertisements in Google search

• Retargeting: You can retarget prospects who have previously visited your website or engaged with your posts on social media. With retargeting, you'll repeatedly remind them of your offerings, encourage interaction, and increase your chances of converting them into customers.

This method works by displaying your ads to these audiences via different channels to remind them of their initial interest and persuade them to complete a purchase. 

Additionally, retargeting increases your brand visibility and keeps your business top of mind of your target audiences. This way, prospects are more likely to choose your brand when they are ready to buy.

An example of a Clickup ad on Youtube. 

• Conversion rate optimization (CRO): This involves optimizing various aspects of your website to enable you to convert a higher percentage of your visitors. You identify and eliminate things that can prevent conversations and tailor your website experience and offerings to meet the needs of your audience. 

For example, you can optimize your landing pages and call-to-action (CTA) strategies to increase your lead conversion. Furthermore, you can also experiment with other strategies and see how they perform in terms of lead conversion.

• Social media advertising: Social media marketing provides tools to monitor your engagement metrics, conversion rate, and overall campaign performance. This will help you learn how well your strategies are performing and point out the areas to make necessary adjustments to improve their performance.

Also, social media provides a channel for promoting special offers, discounts, and other promotional deals. You can create urgency through time-sensitive deals and motivate prospects to take immediate action.

Examples of social media posts that promote discount offers. 

What happens when you integrate both strategies? Let's find out.

How do demand generation and demand capture complement each other? 

Demand generation and demand capture are both effective marketing strategies that can significantly boost the effectiveness of your business's sales funnel.

Demand generation has a sole aim– lead generation and demand capture focuses on lead conversion.

When combined, demand generation and demand capture provide a holistic marketing approach that addresses every stage of the customer journey. 

Let's explain further how they complement each other.

Engaging customers throughout the buying journey 

As stated earlier, demand generation seeks to build awareness, attract potential customers, and educate them about their needs and the solutions available to help.

This phase is crucial if you're looking to build or increase your brand recognition and establish trust.

For instance, you're adopting demand generation when you use content marketing, social media campaigns, and influencer outreach to create interest in audiences who are yet to recognize their need for your product or service.

On the other hand, demand capture targets prospects who are already aware of their problems and actively seeking solutions. This strategy uses tactics like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and retargeting to engage these high-intent individuals.

With these two strategies, you will engage with prospects at every stage of their journey, from initial interest to final purchase.

So, demand generation creates a steady flow of new leads, while demand capture ensures that those leads are effectively converted into sales.

Creating a sustainable pipeline

Demand generation helps you to build a pipeline of potential customers. As you constantly educate and nurture leads, you'll maintain a consistent flow of prospects who may turn into customers.

This long-term strategy will help you avoid stagnation, expand your market reach, and prepare you for future opportunities.

Conversely, demand capture deals with turning these leads into actual sales. When you target individuals who are already interested and ready to buy, you can make immediate sales needs and also benefit from the groundwork and effort of demand generation.

With both approaches, you'll gain sustainable growth by balancing the need for short-term revenue with the importance of building long-term customer relationships.

Maximizing marketing efficiency

Integrating demand generation and demand capture strategies will enable you to achieve a higher return on your marketing investments. 

Demand generation expands your audience reach via creating awareness and interest, while demand capture ensures that most of those interested prospects are converted. 

This way, you don't need to over-rely on one strategy but smoothly transition audiences from awareness to purchase decisions.

Balancing short-term and long-term goals

Demand capture often delivers quicker results by converting leads who are ready to make a purchase. This immediate revenue generation is vital for business sustainability.

But, relying solely on demand capture can lead to a narrow focus that neglects the need to nurture future customers. 

In contrast, demand generation emphasizes the need to build long-term relationships by constantly educating potential customers. With these sustained relationships with potential customers, you can ensure steady streams of leads over time.

A balanced approach that combines both strategies lets companies achieve immediate revenue while also investing in future growth. This balance is crucial to help you stay ahead and relevant in the market.

Sales funnel optimization

While demand generation fills the top of the funnel, demand capture converts the bottom of the funnel.

Demand generation ensures the top of your funnel remains consistently full. This strategy provides a steady inflow of prospects, and demand capture focuses on not letting interested prospects slip away without converting.

And if the top of your funnel is underperforming, demand generation helps boost visibility and lead generation.

Plus, if the middle or bottom of your funnel is where leads stall, demand capture optimizes conversion efforts through tailored campaigns to convert them.

Let's see an example of how they work together:

Let's say a retail software company, Xenia, uses demand generation strategies to publish how-to guides on optimizing multi-location staff scheduling, attracting interest from retail managers who will learn about the importance of staff scheduling software and become interested in trying out the software.

As these leads show intent, demand capture uses strategies like free trial offers or discounts to speed up their conversion process by letting them try out the software's features.

Examples of successful integration

Several businesses exemplify the successful integration of demand generation and demand capture:

• HubSpot: HubSpot effectively uses content marketing (demand generation) to educate potential customers through blogs, webinars, and e-books. 

Simultaneously, they use targeted PPC campaigns (demand capture) to convert leads who are actively searching for marketing solutions. This dual approach not only builds brand awareness but also drives conversions.

You can check out how Hubspot creates great ad copies. 

• Salesforce: Salesforce uses a comprehensive approach by providing valuable resources and tools that educate users about CRM solutions (demand generation). 

Salesforce offers educational materials to attract prospects. 

They also use targeted email marketing campaigns to engage leads who have shown intent to purchase (demand capture), this ensures that interested prospects receive the information they need to convert.

• Adobe: Adobe adopts an integrated strategy by offering extensive tutorials (demand generation) to attract users to their software. Once users are engaged, Adobe uses targeted ads and personalized follow-ups (demand capture) to convert these leads into paying customers.

Adobe offers free resources to attract users. 

When to focus on demand generation vs demand capture?

You'll need to know when to focus on demand generation vs demand capture to optimize your marketing strategies effectively. This is because each approach serves distinct purposes and is influenced by factors like business goals, marketing priorities, industry trends, and customer behavior. 

Below are some scenarios that will need you to focus on demand generation:

• When you launch a new product: When introducing a new product or service, you need demand generation strategies to create awareness and educate your potential customers about the product's benefits. This is primarily important if the product addresses a problem that your target audience is yet to identify.
• When expanding into new markets: If you plan to enter a new geographical area or demographic, you'll need to generate demand to build brand recognition and attract a new customer base that may not be familiar with the offerings and their benefits.
• When you aim to build a long-term brand image: If you want to establish your company as a thought leader in your industry, you should focus on demand generation. This includes creating valuable content that educates and engages potential customers and builds trust and loyalty.
• When you notice a change in customer behavior: If you notice a shift in your consumers' preferences or behaviors, you can adopt demand generation tactics to help you re-engage customers and inform them about new solutions that meet their current needs. 

Let's see the situations that will require you to focus on demand capture:

• High-intent prospects: When targeting individuals or businesses that have already shown interest in your products or services, you need to use demand capture strategies. This strategy focuses on converting leads already set to buy, thus shortening the sales cycle.
• Established products in competitive markets: If you sell well-known established products, especially in industries with many competitors, you can focus on demand capture to drive immediate sales. In such industries, customers are already actively looking for products or services similar to what your company offers.

With demand capturing efforts like running targeted ads, and optimizing landing pages, you can attract these ready-to-buy customers who are set to make purchase decisions and make faster conversions.

• Seasonal promotions or time-sensitive offers: Demand capture is highly effective at conversion during certain periods like holidays, seasonal events, or promotional campaigns (like Black Friday or a product launch). You can use highly targeted marketing campaigns like limited-time offers, discounts, or exclusive deals to capitalize on the urgency or heightened interest during these times.
• Post-engagement follow-ups: After you win the initial interest of your potential customers through demand generation efforts, you should pivot to demand capture to nurture these leads and convert them into customers. You can effectively follow-up your leads with tools like Warmly. Warmly automates outreach through various channels like Email, LinkedIn, and Chat. With this, you can engage with prospects across the channels they prefer. Plus Warmly can also help you send personalized messages and follow-ups automatically.

Demand generation vs demand capture: how to get started.

Choosing between demand generation vs demand capture depends largely on your business goals, industry, and customer behavior.

However, you need an integrated marketing strategy to strike a balance and avoid relying extensively on one approach as both strategies complement each other.

You can evaluate your current strategy to see if you need to make some adjustments.

If you're yet to figure out how to start the whole process, you can connect with companies like Warmly to help you get started with your demand generation and demand capture process.

Related Reading:

• Demand Generations vs Account Based Marketing
• Demand Creation vs Demand Capture

Meet Jack. 

‎Jack’s got a real big problem. The salesperson’s worst nightmare, in fact. 

→ He’s on track to miss quota.

→ And the CEO is breathing down his neck. 

His reps are looking to him for leadership, but he doesn’t know where those all-important KPIs will come from. 

He’s got all the tech, a super passionate team—and no idea. 

Although Jack’s problems are very real, Jack himself isn’t. 

Jack’s the star of Warmly’s brand-new feature film, Quota Crushers. 

But before we unveil the movie, a bit of background. (You’ve got time to get the popcorn going.) 

Why We Made the Warmly Movie

This is actually more of a two-parter. 

1. We wanted to explain Warmly's perspective on where we think modern B2B sales are going wrong (and how to change that). 
2. And bring the Warmly brand to new audiences in a new way.

We envisaged the movie as the story of Warmly, told with our trademark humor and a hefty dose of our expert GTM perspective.

See, B2B sales are only getting more complicated. Everyone’s building the next big thing and competing for shorter attention spans. 

Budgets have been tightened. Revenue expectations are the same (or, in many cases, higher.) 

And B2B buyers? They’re not making purchase decisions like they used to. Sales funnels have gotten more complex, and buying teams have expanded. 

Yet, sales teams still rely on outdated tactics primarily focused on volume over quality. 

Why? Because sales teams have repeatedly been told this is just how we do things.

But cold outreach doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to heat things up—by focusing on warm signals.

When your prospect spends a decent chunk of time looking at your pricing page, makes multiple visits to your product pages, or actively researches your competitors, they’re showing warm signals. 

Focusing on these intent signals will help your sales reps work smarter by prioritizing the leads most likely to buy from you.

We know signal-based selling works, too. Warmly has seen a 3x conversion rate with warm signals. 

But signal-based selling doesn’t work without visibility into who is on your website and the ability to conduct automated, personalized outreach based on intent signals. 

That’s the story of Warmly. And it’s a story we wanted more people to hear. 

How We Made Quote Crushers

Our Co-Founder and Head of Customers, Alan Zhao, has been a long-time movie fan. 

He saw an opportunity to tell the Warmly story in the most visible (and most Warmly) way possible: a feature movie starring the Warmly team. 

Our inspiration was Melissa Rosenthal, ex-CCO at ClickUp, who created some of the best B2B video campaigns with her in-house creative team. We wanted our media to prioritize humor, authenticity, and creativity in a uniquely Warmly way.

So, we flew the entire team to Mexico City for a company offsite and shot our movie with a local video crew as part of team bonding activities.

Image Source‎

We partitioned off a section of OpenHub, Mexico’s WeWork, for the set, auditioned team members, and chose roles based on energy and fit. 

So, the cast is 100% Warmly: from our Head of Sales, Jack (the Software Cowboy himself, Keegan Otter), to the hero of the hour, Rev Ops man Steve Murphy (Warmly Co-Founder and CEO, Maximus Greenwald). 

Image Source‎

The budget? $15,000. The deadline? One day to film it all.

But our genius exec producer, Connor Lewis, planned and pulled it off expertly, while Alan assisted with the script and directing. 

We flew home with all the footage ready for post-production edits, which we did ourselves.

Finally, for the music, we used Artlist and also contracted the rights to “Hitting the Phones” by Ding Zheng (Sales Rapper) (an amazing song; look up the full version.) 

Presenting Quota Crushers: The Warmly Movie

‎So, grab your popcorn—it’s the moment you’ve been waiting for 🍿

Presenting… Quota Crushers: The Warmly Movie. 

"In a world of outdated GTM tech and old-school spray and pray tactics, one forward-thinking RevOps leader takes it upon himself to change the way his team does prospecting... and crushes quota."

A huge thank you to the production team and cast who put their all into making this.

Starring: Keegan Otter, Katherine Barnes, Maximus Greenwald

Directed and Produced: Connor Lewis and Alan Zhao 

Music: Hitting the Phones - Ding Zheng (EventShark)

Cinematography: Juan Carlos Lelo de Larrea 

Are you struggling like Jack right now but don’t want to admit it? You can get started with Warmly for free in just a few clicks.

Want to speak to one of our star reps before they inevitably leave Warmly for the glittering lights of Hollywood? (Just joking.) Book a demo of Warmly.

Demand generation is one of the key areas SaaS companies must focus on to build a consistent sales pipeline.

Why?

Well, because SaaS demand generation ensures that you’ll:

• Create and perpetuate interest in your product offering.
• Build lasting relationships with potential leads by educating and nurturing them.
• Fill your funnel with qualified leads prepped up for sales to take over.

Sounds good, right?

However, building a strong SaaS demand generation strategy can be challenging, especially if you’ve never done it before.

In this detailed guide, we’ll explain all the SaaS demand generation essentials, helping you understand what you need to do—and how—to craft an efficient and resilient SaaS demand generation strategy.

What is SaaS demand generation?

So, what is SaaS demand generation in the first place?

Demand generation for SaaS is the process of creating awareness, interest, and desire for a software product throughout the buyer's journey. 

Therefore, this strategy focuses on:

• Driving interest among your target audience.
• Nurturing them over time.
• Getting them to a point where they are ready to convert into paying customers. 

Also, due to the subscription-based nature of SaaS offerings, SaaS demand generation often emphasizes ongoing engagement, as the need to build strong and lasting relationships is more prominent than with traditional product sales.

This point underscores the importance of having a well-structured demand generation strategy if you’re a SaaS company. Namely, generating sustainable interest and demand for your product is critical to long-term business growth and customer acquisition. 

And since SaaS businesses rely heavily on scalability, creating consistent demand is essential for staying competitive and continuing to grow.

That’s exactly what having a solid demand generation strategy enables SaaS companies to do, as it helps:

1. Attract quality leads.
2. Nurture them consistently and effectively, building trust and brand loyalty.
3. Increase the likelihood of conversion.
4. Retain customers more efficiently.

How demand generation differs from lead generation

The definition of SaaS demand generation might make you wonder how exactly it differs from lead generation, especially as the terms are often used interchangeably.

However, they actually serve significantly different purposes, making them distinct - yet complementary - marketing strategies in the SaaS space.

Demand generation encompasses creating awareness and nurturing potential customers through various stages of the sales funnel.

It's all about creating demand for a product, regardless of whether or not a direct lead is immediately generated. 

Lead generation, on the other hand, focuses specifically on capturing potential customers' contact information, usually after they’ve shown interest in the product. 

This typically occurs once demand has been generated and prospects have engaged with some form of content, like signing up for a webinar or downloading an eBook.

So, although they’re two entirely different marketing approaches, demand generation and lead generation are closely related, as one helps boost the efficiency of the other.

Demand generation helps create a strong foundation of awareness and interest, making it easier to convert leads later, whereas lead generation focuses on harnessing the interest created by demand generation, aiming to turn engaged prospects into actionable leads ready for the sales team.

B2B SaaS demand generation vs. B2C

It’s important to note that SaaS demand generation strategies and approaches differ depending on whether you have a B2B or a B2C business model.

In B2B SaaS, the sales cycle is typically much longer and more complex, as B2B purchasing decisions often involve multiple stakeholders, all of which must be convinced of the product’s value. 

As a result, demand generation in this space focuses heavily on personalized and educational content that informs and guides these stakeholders through the decision-making process. 

Therefore, common tools for nurturing B2B prospects over time include whitepapers, case studies, in-depth product demos, webinars, and ABM.

On the other hand, B2C SaaS demand generation has a much shorter sales cycle, as decisions are usually made by individual consumers or small teams, which means that B2C demand generation must capture attention and build trust quickly. 

Consequently, B2C demand generation content is often more streamlined, focusing on product benefits, convenience, ease of use, or entertainment and highlighting how the product improves the consumer’s personal life. 

Tactics like freemium models, limited-time offers, tutorial videos, social proof, and social media engagement are usually most effective in moving consumers quickly from awareness to purchase.

Why is demand generation crucial for SaaS companies?

In case you’re still wondering whether you should invest in demand generation, here are some of the key reasons why you should most definitely include demand generation in your sales and marketing efforts.

For SaaS companies, demand generation goes beyond simply filling the sales funnel with leads.

It focuses on building awareness, trust, and authority within the target audience, which is essential in a highly competitive digital market. 

Namely, in the SaaS business model, which often relies on subscription renewals and upsells, retaining existing customers is as crucial as acquiring new ones, if not more so.

This means that customers need to be continually reminded of the value they are receiving, which is exactly what demand generation enables you to do.

On the one hand, demand generation helps you differentiate yourself from the competition and position yourself as indispensable to your audience by:

• Educating potential customers about your product’s benefits.
• Addressing their pain points.
• Highlighting your software’s unique value proposition.

On the other, it helps with driving loyalty and reducing the risk of churn by:

• Maintaining continuous communication with customers through personalized content and social media engagement.
• Providing how-to videos, product tutorials, rich resource centers, and customer success content that helps users get the most out of the product.

Finally, demand generation helps you keep leads and customers satisfied and engaged throughout the buying cycle. 

As a result, it makes it more likely for customers to become brand advocates and refer your product to their peers, which can lead to additional organic growth.

Key components of a SaaS demand generation strategy

A successful SaaS demand generation strategy integrates various marketing techniques to create awareness, generate interest, and guide prospects through the sales funnel, including the following:

1. Content marketing

No demand generation strategy can be complete without content marketing, and the same goes for SaaS.

SaaS products often solve complex problems - such as accounting automation or financial risk assessment - and customers need to be educated on how the software can benefit them. 

A well-executed content marketing strategy involves creating informative, valuable content that addresses pain points, demonstrates product value, and nurtures prospects throughout their buyer’s journey.

Types of content that are highly effective in SaaS demand generation include:

• Blog posts to drive organic traffic through SEO and educate prospects.

• Whitepapers and eBooks to offer in-depth solutions and capture leads.
• Case studies that showcase customer success stories.
• Webinars and video tutorials that explain product features and use cases.

For best results, each piece of content should align with different sales funnel stages and provide value that leads prospects one step closer to conversion.

2. SEO 

SEO is essential for driving organic traffic to a SaaS website. 

SaaS buyers usually begin their journey with a search engine query, so it's crucial to ensure that your content ranks highly for relevant keywords. 

Therefore, efficient SaaS demand generation requires:

• Keyword research to identify high-value search terms related to your product and industry.
• Optimizing website pages, blogs, and other content for short and long-tail keywords.
• Implementing on-page SEO best practices, such as optimizing meta tags, headers, and content structure.
• Building backlinks through partnerships, guest blogging, and high-authority publications.

Moreover, consistent SEO efforts can save you money, as you won’t have to rely as heavily on paid advertising to get a steady stream of qualified prospects.

Pro tip: Use a website visitor identification tool like Warmly to capitalize on both organic and paid website traffic.

This way, you’ll know exactly who’s visiting your website, how they interact with it, and how interested they are in your product.

3. Paid advertising and PPC

While organic search is important, paid advertising can speed up your demand generation efforts by providing immediate visibility.

PPC campaigns on platforms like Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook enable SaaS companies to target specific audiences based on intent, demographics, and behaviors. 

Some of the best ways to use paid advertising for optimal results include:

• Creating targeted ads based on buyer personas.
• Running retargeting campaigns to engage visitors who have interacted with your site but haven't yet converted.
• A/B testing ads and landing pages to optimize conversion rates.

4. Social media engagement

Social media offers SaaS companies an opportunity to build brand awareness, engage with prospects, and drive traffic. 

Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook provide channels for distributing content, connecting with industry influencers, and interacting with potential customers. 

To engage your prospects on social media, focus on:

• Sharing thought leadership content that positions your brand as an industry expert.
• Engaging with followers through polls, Q&A sessions, and discussions.
• Leveraging paid social ads to target specific demographics and interest groups.

5. Email marketing

Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to nurture leads and guide them toward conversion, and SaaS is no different.

In a SaaS demand generation strategy, email campaigns should be highly personalized and segmented based on prospects' stages of the buyer’s journey. 

Effective email marketing includes:

• Drip campaigns that gradually educate and build trust with potential customers.
• Product announcements to highlight new features or updates.
• Personalized offers and discounts based on user behavior and engagement.
• Onboarding emails that guide new customers through product setup and early usage.

6. Account-based marketing 

ABM focuses on creating highly personalized marketing and sales strategies for specific companies or decision-makers, making it essential for doing SaaS demand generation right.

Key elements of ABM include:

• Developing customized content that addresses the unique needs of each target account.
• Coordinating efforts between marketing and sales to create a seamless approach.
• Using personalized outreach, such as tailored email campaigns, direct mail, or customized product demos.

Moreover, ABM enables you to focus resources on accounts with the highest potential for long-term value, helping you save time and money otherwise wasted on low-value accounts.

How to create a high-converting SaaS demand generation funnel?

Having a well-structured demand generation funnel helps SaaS businesses attract qualified prospects, nurture them with valuable content, and ultimately convert them into paying customers. 

Let’s explore some of the key tactics to apply in each funnel stage:

1. Top-of-Funnel (TOFU): Building awareness

At the top of the funnel, the goal is to attract a broad audience and create awareness of your SaaS product. 

The top-of-funnel stage is all about attracting visitors, creating awareness of your SaaS product, and piquing your audience’s interest to set up the foundation for further engagement.

To achieve this, focus on educating potential customers about their challenges and explaining how your product can help solve them. 

Several tactics work best in this stage, including:

• Content marketing - Publish blog posts, how-to guides, and explainer videos that address common pain points in your industry. 
• SEO - Ensure that your content ranks for relevant keywords to increase visibility in search engines.
• Paid ads and PPC - Use Google Ads, LinkedIn, and Facebook to target specific personas likely to be interested in your product.
• Free trials and freemiums - Offer a free trial or a freemium version of your product to allow prospects to experience the value of your SaaS firsthand.

2. Middle-of-Funnel (MOFU): Nurturing leads

The middle of the funnel is about building relationships and positioning your SaaS product as the ideal solution.

Namely, once prospects know about your product, the middle of the funnel focuses on nurturing those leads and guiding them closer to a purchasing decision. 

At this stage, prospects evaluate your product’s features and compare it to competitors. 

So, the key is to provide deeper, more detailed content that builds trust and educates leads on why your SaaS solution best fits their needs. 

Effective MOFU tactics include:

• Webinars and case studies - Offer in-depth webinars, product demos, and case studies that showcase real-world use cases and customer success stories.
• Email campaigns - Use automated email sequences to deliver personalized content to leads based on their behavior and interests. 
• Product comparisons and whitepapers - Provide detailed whitepapers and product comparison guides to help leads understand how your solution compares to alternatives.
• Interactive demos - Offer prospects the chance to see your product in action through personalized, interactive demos, allowing them to experience key features firsthand.

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3. Bottom-of-Funnel (BOFU): Driving conversion

The bottom of the funnel is where decisions are made, so it’s essential to remove any barriers to conversion and clearly demonstrate the value of your SaaS product.

At this stage, leads are nearing a decision, so the focus shifts to encouraging them to take action and convert into paying customers by providing the right incentives and demonstrating ROI. 

Key strategies for this stage include:

• Personalized demos and free consultations - Offer one-on-one product demos or consultations tailored to your prospect's specific needs. This lets you address their unique challenges and highlight the most relevant features of your SaaS product.
• Limited-time offers and discounts - Provide exclusive deals, discounts, or extended trial periods to create a sense of urgency and incentivize immediate action.
• Customer testimonials and reviews - Showcase customer testimonials, success stories, and third-party reviews to build credibility and trust. Seeing how your SaaS product has benefited others can help prospects feel confident in their decision.

• Clear and simple onboarding - Ensure that potential customers will receive seamless onboarding support to get up and running quickly. A strong onboarding process minimizes friction and enhances the likelihood of conversion.

4. Retention and upsell: Post-purchase engagement

When it comes to SaaS companies, the funnel doesn’t end after conversion. 

Retaining customers and expanding their usage over time is key to maximizing customer lifetime value (CLV). 

Therefore, post-purchase engagement focuses on ensuring customer satisfaction, reducing churn, and creating opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. 

Effective retention tactics include:

• Customer success programs - Provide ongoing customer support and resources to help users get the most out of your product. Proactively engage with customers to address their needs and concerns.
• Regular product updates and feature announcements - Keep customers engaged by introducing new features, updates, and improvements to the product.
• Upsell and cross-sell opportunities - As customers become more familiar with your product, offer them additional features or higher-tier plans that can enhance their experience.

What are the best practices for SaaS demand generation in 2024?

As the SaaS market continues to grow and evolve, demand generation strategies must adapt to new trends and technologies to stay ahead of the curve, which will only get steeper.

This means that companies will have to stay dedicated to constantly refining and optimizing their strategies.

We'll share a few of the best SaaS demand generation practices to help you ensure that your demand generation approach stays as efficient as possible in 2024 and beyond.

1. Customer-centric approach is the way to go

The era we live in is all about providing highly personalized brand experiences fitted to each customer.

SaaS buyers expect tailored experiences that cater to their unique needs, pain points, and interests. Thus, generic messaging and one-size-fits-all content have become big no-nos.

Instead, SaaS companies need to:

• Develop detailed buyer personas to ensure messaging and content resonate with specific audience segments.
• Use behavioral data to deliver personalized content, emails, and offers at the right stage of the buyer’s journey.
• Incorporate dynamic content into marketing efforts, such as personalized landing pages and targeted email campaigns that adjust based on user behavior.

This way, SaaS businesses can create deeper connections with prospects, increasing the chances of conversion.

2. Don’t shy away from AI and machine learning 

AI and machine learning have already transformed almost every industry, and SaaS is no exception. 

Namely, AI and ML enable SaaS companies to make data-driven decisions and, as a result, create more precise and effective marketing campaigns across levels.

For instance, AI engines can help:

• Automate personalized content recommendations based on customer behavior and preferences.
• Predict customer intent by analyzing user data, allowing marketers to proactively target the right prospects at the right time.
• Optimize ad campaigns and budgets, using machine learning algorithms to determine which channels and messages yield the best results.
• Improve lead scoring by analyzing a wider ranga of data attributes, ensuring that sales teams focus on the highest-quality leads.
• Make chatbots smarter and better at engaging and qualifying leads.

3. Test and improve strategies over time

The digital landscape has become so fast-paced that what works perfectly well today may fail miserably tomorrow.

That’s why continuous optimization and testing are critical to maintaining a successful demand generation strategy. 

Therefore, modern SaaS companies need to:

• Conduct A/B testing on email campaigns, landing pages, and ads regularly to identify what resonates most with their audience.
• Use data and analytics to monitor campaign performance, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven adjustments.
• Focus on customer feedback to understand what aspects of the demand generation process are working well and where potential gaps might exist.

Common mistakes to avoid in SaaS demand generation

To get demand generation right, it’s crucial to understand some of the most frequently made mistakes that can slow you down and compromise the efficiency of your strategies.

Let’s list the most common mistakes SaaS companies make when crafting and executing demand generation strategies so you can successfully avoid them.

1. Neglecting demand generation altogether

One of the biggest mistakes SaaS companies make is placing too much emphasis on lead generation and not enough on demand generation. 

While lead generation is important for capturing prospects, demand generation is a broader strategy intent on building awareness and interest over time. 

Therefore, companies focusing solely on gathering leads without nurturing them through the entire funnel often struggle to convert those leads into customers later.

2. Not investing enough in lead nurturing

For SaaS businesses, customer retention is as critical as customer acquisition. 

However, many SaaS companies seem to forget that and focus heavily on generating new leads while failing to implement strategies to retain existing customers. 

And as the SaaS model thrives on subscription renewals, neglecting customer retention can lead to high churn rates, ultimately hindering growth. 

3. Failing to use data and analytics

Data and analytics are essential to refining demand generation strategies, yet many SaaS companies fail to fully leverage them. 

Not monitoring KPIs or neglecting to analyze campaign effectiveness can result in wasted marketing dollars and missed opportunities for optimization. 

All SaaS businesses should constantly track metrics like customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, and MQLs to understand which tactics are working and where improvements must be made. 

4. Overcomplicating the buyer’s journey

Although you might be tempted to create an intricate buyer’s journey, doing so can make the overall experience overly complex and fragmented, confusing prospects and putting them off.

For instance, bombarding potential customers with too much information at once or creating unnecessary hurdles in the sign-up process can result in lost conversions. 

In this case, simpler is always better, as clear, frictionless, and easy-to-navigate pathways from awareness to conversion are key to successful demand generation. 

Examples of SaaS demand generation

Looking into other businesses’ yards to see how they’re handling demand generation can help you design your own strategy, especially when you’re looking up to companies that are absolutely rocking it.

Here are three examples of successful demand generation strategies you can use as inspiration when creating yours.

1. HockeyStack

First up is HockeyStack, a platform designed to help sales and marketing teams drive more revenue and secure a steady pipeline.

Given its specific offering and target audience, HoneyStack has an elaborate demand generation strategy that entails:

• Regularly posting on LinkedIn to drive prospect engagement and brand loyalty - Its posts include feature and upgrade announcements, success stories, tips and tricks for raising brand awareness and increasing conversions, etc. 

• Creating a repository of industry benchmarks, data insights, trends, etc. - HockeyStack Labs provides leads with a massive library of relevant trends, studies, reports, and more, all of which provide significant value. This helps raise brand awareness and build trust with leads.
• Investing in gamified content - HockeyStack’s Flow is marketed as “Netflix for B2B”, and it essentially comprises games, podcasts, and series dealing with important B2B marketing topics. This enables leads to mix learning with entertainment, allowing HockeyStack to drive loyalty and trust.

2. Arcade

Arcade is an interactive demo platform.

Given this industry's competitive market, investing in demand generation was a must for Arcade to cut through the noise.

This is why the company focused on:

• Publishing educational blogs - Arcade invests heavily in publishing SEO-optimized content, which helps raise brand awareness, improve SERP rankings and domain rating, and establish it as an industry leader.

• Sharing social proof—As an interactive demo platform, Arcade leverages its customers’ success stories and best-in-class demos to showcase its product. This strategy helps drive trust, as leads are likelier to believe other customers than traditional marketing approaches.
• Building a rich knowledge base - This helps make the entire onboarding and product adoption process much easier, improving overall customer satisfaction and boosting retention rates.

3. Arc

Arc is a FinTech company that helps modern startups better manage their idle cash.

As such, it has a highly specific target market, so it had to pay close attention to designing an adequate demand generation approach.

To create demand and capture it efficiently, Arc leveraged:

• Email outreach - To raise brand awareness and nurture trust, Arc used drip campaigns targeting ICPs.
• Multichannel campaigns - Arc made sure to stay top-of-mind by using social media, content, in-person and online events, SEO, and more.
• First-class customer support - To boost retention rates.

All those efforts combined resulted in Arc gaining significant traction online, but its team was unable to:

1. Handle attribution, as they had no way of knowing which of their strategies were working and to what extent.
2. Capture the demand they generated, as they couldn’t identify leads who ended up on their website.

To overcome these challenges, Arc implemented Warmly, which enabled it to:

• Identify companies and visitors landing on its website and gain insight into how they interact with it.

• Detect visitors with the highest levels of buying intent.
• Track visitors who’ve come through specific email campaigns, enabling them to understand which are performing well.
• Engage visitors through AI Chat and qualify them.

• Add high-value visitors to automated lead nurturing email and LinkedIn campaigns.

As a result, Arc experienced 200% ROI in just 6 months.

Wrapping up

Building an efficient SaaS demand generation strategy requires time, effort, and lots of planning.

However, the tips, best practices, and efficient SaaS demand generation examples we provided here will surely help you quickly grasp the concept.

And to ensure that you’ll be able to actually capture the demand you’ve successfully created, don’t forget to implement Warmly as part of your strategy.

The platform will enable you to identify website visitors and engage them while they’re still hot, boosting the likelihood of conversion.

Try it yourself - sign up for Warmly’s free plan and start capturing qualified leads within minutes.

An efficient and resilient demand generation strategy is crucial for cutting through the noise of today’s competitive market.

However, building one that works for your unique goals and needs isn’t that easy—which is what brought you here in the first place.

In this detailed guide, we’ll explain how to build a successful demand generation marketing strategy that will help you raise brand awareness, attract prospects, and drive them further down the sales funnel.

Let’s dive straight in!

What is demand generation?

It’s always best to begin by breaking down the basics, so here’s a quick reminder of what demand generation entails.

Demand gen is a specific marketing strategy that focuses on creating demand and interest in a product or service and nurturing them throughout the buyer's journey. 

To achieve this, demand generation aims to build long-term relationships by:

1. Educating potential customers on topics closely related to their interests and needs on the one hand and your product as the ideal solution on the other.
2. Addressing their pain points and showing that their well-being matters to you by distributing valuable content and resources focused on helping them solve these issues.
3. Guiding them through the sales funnel with a combination of nurturing efforts.

This unique approach sheds light on the key differences between demand generation and traditional marketing, which lie in their main objectives and methodologies.

When it comes to traditional marketing, it typically focuses on broad campaigns aimed at raising general customer awareness and driving short-term sales. 

In contrast, demand generation is more holistic, integrating various tactics such as content marketing, lead nurturing, and personalized outreach to create and maintain constant interest and engagement throughout the buyer’s journey.

Consequently, demand generation plays a crucial role in the sales funnel, as it helps prospects progress from mere brand awareness to becoming actionable leads. 

Namely, due to its focus on building trust and continuously engaging with prospects to move them closer to a purchasing decision, demand generation both:

1. Boosts overall efficiency of your sales and marketing teams.
2. Increases the quality of leads that move down the funnel, as they’ll already have an established relationship with your brand when they get to your sales team.

This means that demand generation essentially enables a seamless transition from sparking initial interest to closing sales deals, making it a key factor in driving long-term business growth.

Which brings us to the next question.

Why is having a demand generation strategy important?

Today’s digital landscape requires businesses to put in the extra effort to stay competitive, and that’s where demand generation strategies step in.

By focusing on targeted engagement throughout the buyer’s journey, demand generation improves the quality of leads entering the sales funnel and boosts conversion rates.

The reason is simple: high-quality leads nurtured through tailored content and personalized interactions are much more likely to convert into paying customers.

Running a demand generation campaign has another important benefit in improving your overall business success and performance - it helps align marketing and sales teams, driving close collaboration between the two departments.

Namely, to do demand generation right, marketing and sales need to work on reaching the same goals—attracting, identifying, and nurturing potential leads with the greatest potential to convert. 

As a result of this alignment, leads that move down the funnel will be qualified, warmed-up, and ready for sales, significantly reducing friction in the sales process and directly leading to more conversions. 

Finally, demand generation has a number of long-term benefits that go well beyond immediate sales. 

If you continuously nurture leads, increase brand awareness, and build trust, you’ll be able to create a robust pipeline of potential customers who are familiar with the brand and trust it, making them more likely to convert.

Moreover, this approach drives customer loyalty, meaning that you’ll also improve retention rates over time.

And all these combined lead to one massive benefit - consistent revenue growth.

That alone is reason enough to include demand generation in your general sales and marketing efforts immediately, if not now.

However, to create an efficient demand generation strategy, you must first know who you’re targeting.

How to identify your target audience?

There are a few key methods you can use to pinpoint who your ideal customers are, including:

• Surveys - These enable you to gather direct feedback from your current and potential customers, gaining firsthand insight into their preferences, challenges, and needs. 
• Analytics - You can use various tools to collect relevant data and extract data-driven insights, which can help you understand customer behavior, demographics, and purchasing patterns. 
• Website traffic tracking - Tools like Warmly enable you to track who visits your website and how they interact with it. This way, you’ll be able to identify the characteristics of your most engaged users.
• Competitor analysis - Studying your direct competitors' customer base can reveal who they are targeting and how they engage with their audience. This analysis can help you identify gaps in the market or opportunities to make your offering stand out from the crowd.

Finally, once you’ve gathered all these insights, you can use them to create detailed profiles of your ideal customers—i.e., buyer personas—that offer a clear picture of who you should target.

After you’ve identified your target audience, you should focus your efforts on segmenting it, that is, dividing it into smaller, more specific groups based on factors like demographics, behavior, or purchase history.

This kind of audience segmentation is crucial as it enables you to create highly targeted campaigns built to resonate with each segment’s unique needs, which will, in turn, improve both engagement and conversion rates.

What are the key components of a demand generation strategy?

When it comes to building a successful demand generation strategy, it’s important to know that it always consists of several key components, each playing a role in driving awareness, engagement, and conversions. 

Among these components, content marketing, SEO, social media, and paid ads stand out as fundamental pillars.

Let’s get a closer look at each.

Content marketing 

Content marketing is at the heart of demand generation, as it provides valuable, relevant, and consistent content that attracts and nurtures prospects throughout the buyer’s journey. 

You can use various kinds of content to establish your brand as a source of truth and guide potential customers toward choosing your product in the end, including:

• Blogs
• Whitepapers
• Case studies 
• Webinars
• Quizzes 
• Videos, etc.

The types of content you’ll include in your strategy depend only on your goals, vision, product, and resources you’re willing to invest, as they can all drive interest and build trust.

SEO

SEO ensures that your content and website are discoverable by optimizing them for search engines. 

By using relevant keywords, improving site structure, and earning backlinks, SEO increases the visibility of your content in search results, driving organic traffic to your website. 

This organic reach is crucial for attracting high-quality leads actively searching for solutions like yours.

Social media 

Social media networks help amplify your content's reach and drive direct engagement with your audience. 

Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook allow you to share content, interact with prospects, and build relationships in real-time. 

Moreover, social media offers valuable insights into audience behavior and preferences, helping you tailor your demand generation efforts more effectively.

Paid ads 

Paid ads complement your organic efforts by providing targeted exposure to specific audiences.

Using marketing channels like Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and social media advertising helps you reach prospects who might not have discovered your brand organically. 

These ads can be fine-tuned to target specific demographics, behaviors, or interests, ensuring your message reaches the right people at the right time.

Creating an integrated approach

Finally, once you’ve got these components figured out, it’s crucial to integrate them to maximize the effect of your demand generation strategy, as each plays a distinct role in it:

1. Content marketing raises brand awareness and builds trust.
2. SEO ensures that potential leads will find your content.
3. Social media enables you to nurture relationships through direct contact.
4. Paid ads fill in the gaps left by your organic efforts, ensuring your brand will be displayed to relevant audiences.

Therefore, when content marketing, SEO, social media, and paid ads work together, they create a robust, unified approach that:

• Attracts potential customers.
• Nurtures them throughout the entire sales funnel, ensuring that your brand stays top-of-mind all the time and increasing the likelihood of conversion.

How to create a content strategy for demand generation?

Since content is pretty much the cornerstone of each demand generation strategy, we’ll explain how exactly to leverage content to get the results you want.

Creating a content strategy for demand generation involves creating and distributing content that attracts potential customers and nurtures them through the buyer’s journey, making them more likely to purchase your product. 

To achieve this, it’s essential to focus on three things:

1. Choosing the right type of content to create demand
2. SEO
3. Align content with different stages of the buyer’s journey

Types of content that drive demand

Various types of content can be used to fuel demand generation efforts, each serving a unique purpose, such as:

1. Blogs - Blogs are ideal for attracting organic traffic and addressing common questions or challenges your audience faces. As such, they help build brand awareness and establish your brand as a thought leader. 
2. Whitepapers - They offer in-depth insights into specific topics, making them valuable for prospects in the consideration stage who need detailed information to make the right decision.
3. Webinars - Webinars provide an interactive platform for engaging with prospects, offering real-time value, and showcasing your expertise. They are particularly effective in the decision stage when prospects are evaluating their options and looking for deeper engagement and connection.

These are just a few examples of efficient content, as other types, such as testimonials, videos, and infographics, can all do the trick equally as well.

The role of SEO in creating content 

SEO plays a crucial role in ensuring that your content reaches the right audience. 

Namely, SEO helps boost content visibility in search engines by:

1. Optimizing it with keywords relevant to your audience and related to your product.
2. Improving on-page elements like meta descriptions and headers to make sure that your content meets all the search engine guidelines. 
3. Ensuring that it is readable. 

This increased visibility drives organic traffic to your content, making it easier for potential customers to discover your brand and engage with it in a meaningful way.

Mapping content to different stages of the buyer’s journey

To maximize the impact of your content strategy, it’s important to align your content with the different stages of the buyer’s journey. 

1. During the awareness stage, content should focus on educating prospects about their problems and potential solutions. Blog posts, infographics, and social media content are effective here. 
2. In the consideration stage, where prospects are evaluating different options, more in-depth content like whitepapers, case studies, and comparison guides can help them assess your offerings. 
3. Finally, in the decision stage, content such as webinars, product demos, and testimonials can provide the final push needed to convert prospects into customers.

How to leverage data and analytics in demand generation?

First off, why is data important?

Given today’s fast-paced market, it’s essential to optimize your campaigns on the go, and having quality data helps you understand what needs improvement and what works well.

This is why investing in tools that can help track essential demand generation metrics is never a bad idea.

For instance, tools like Warmly can help you identify anonymous website visitors and track how they interact with your website content in real-time.

As a result, you’ll be able to:

• Determine whether the companies and individuals visiting your website actually fit your ICP. If they don’t, it means that the other segments of your demand generation efforts are failing to target the right audience or that your buyer persona needs to be updated.
• Understand how engaging your website content is by gaining insight into drop-off points, high-converting areas, etc., allowing you to review and improve underperforming parts.

In addition to using Warmly and similar tools, you can test the effectiveness of various parts of your demand generation strategy by applying A/B testing.

By testing different variations of your campaigns - such as email subject lines, landing page designs, or call-to-action buttons - you can determine which elements resonate best with your audience and make necessary improvements. 

How to implement marketing automation in demand generation?

Thanks to its ability to streamline processes and boost efficiencies across levels, automation has become virtually omnipresent in all business areas, including sales and marketing.

This is why implementing marketing automation in demand generation is always a good idea, as it can significantly enhance the overall success of your campaigns due to several key benefits:

1. Streamlining repetitive tasks such as email marketing, social media posting, and lead nurturing. As a result, your team can focus on strategic initiatives while ensuring that every lead receives timely and personalized communication.
2. Enabling more efficient segmentation, which allows you to deliver highly targeted messages that resonate with different buyer personas. 
3. Allowing for more precise lead scoring and qualification, as many of these tools can be configured to automatically recognize criteria you specified as relevant and qualify leads accordingly.

The best way to understand the value of marketing automation is through a practical example, so let’s look at Behavioral Signals - a textbook example of successfully deployed marketing automation.

Namely, Behavioral Signals had a carefully designed demand generation strategy that included targeted email campaigns and content, all of which resulted in a high website traffic volume.

However, without knowing who their visitors are and without a way to engage them, Behavioral Signals couldn’t respond to the thousands of leads that landed on their website each month.

This is when its team decided to implement Warmly to automate a part of its demand generation efforts, and this is how they did it:

1. Warmly’s website visitor identification feature would reveal who’s visiting their website.
2. The platform’s enrichment option provided detailed B2B and intent data on each identified visitor, allowing the team to easily identify the hottest leads among them.

3. Automated Slack notifications would alert sales reps when a high-value or high-intent lead landed on the website, enabling them to immediately engage them.

4. Warmly’s Orchestrator was used to engage visitors who’ve taken certain high-intent actions (visited the pricing page or frequently returned to features overview, etc.) by adding them to automated LinkedIn and email sequences tailored to each individual lead.

Moreover, Behavioral Signals’ reps made sure to use the insights and intent data Warmly provided for each identified visitor when designing their approach, making sure that it was perfectly tailored to every lead they contacted.

As a result, Behavioral Signals sourced $7M in the enterprise pipeline within several months of using Warmly.

How to measure the success of your demand generation strategy?

So, you’ve created a killer demand generation strategy and applied it, but your work doesn’t end there.

You have to keep a close eye on how your strategy is performing to understand whether it’s effective so you’ll know which steps to take next.

To do so, you need to track certain KPIs and metrics, including:

1. Marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), which measure the number of leads that meet specific criteria indicating they are ready for sales engagement. 
2. Conversion rates are another critical metric, reflecting the percentage of leads that progress from one stage of the sales funnel to the next. 
3. Cost per lead and overall ROI help assess the financial efficiency of your campaigns, indicating how much you’re spending to acquire leads and the overall profitability of your demand generation strategy. 

However, gathering data is only the first step, as the real value comes from actually using these insights to refine your demand generation strategy. 

Regularly reviewing your KPIs and analyzing trends enables you to identify what’s working and what isn’t. 

For example, if you notice a drop in conversion rates, you can investigate potential causes, such as ineffective lead nurturing tactics or content that doesn’t align well with your audience, and adjust your approach accordingly. 

Wrapping up

Hopefully, you’ll feel much more confident about building your own demand generation strategy by now.

It takes time to get everything right, but the end results are definitely worth it.

And if you’d like to see results faster, Warmly can help.

With it, you’ll be able to make the most of all the website traffic you generate as a result of other demand generation tactics, as you’ll:

• Know who’s visiting your website.
• Identify the hottest leads right now.
• Automatically engage them.
• Reach out precisely when they’re most likely to convert.

Intrigued to see if Warmly can help with all this?

Sign up for its free plan and find out firsthand.

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Technology may have made B2B selling more manageable, but that doesn't mean it's made it easier.

SDRs are overworked and striving to achieve more (just 16% of SDRs get above 90% of their sales deals quota), while the B2B sales environment has only gotten more challenging (75% of buyers say they’d prefer a rep-free experience).

In an increasingly competitive B2B market, closing a deal matters more than ever, especially as the average win rate for B2B is just 21%.

Today, sales reps need to respond quickly to prospects and be equipped with the tools to close deals instantly.

How can sellers do that? By integrating chat features directly into a company's website, enabling reps to have real-time conversations with prospects.

So, how does this work? Let's explore with some genuine examples from Warmly’s Live Video Chat.

B2B deal killers in 2024

Buyers want a streamlined purchasing journey just as much as your sales rep wants an efficient sales funnel.

As Gartner reports, the top reason B2B buyers disqualify a solution is because of contradictory price expectations.

However, the second-most popular reason, reported by 36% of buyers, is receiving confusing or contradictory information during the sales process. A low-quality sales presentation can also reduce the likelihood of a prospect signing.

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Sales objections like these typically occur early on in the sales funnel, when a buyer is still scoping out your product versus another company's. When objections do arise, a sales rep who can handle them successfully and minimize the buyer's worry is far more likely to successfully close.

According to one survey, top sales performers are 843% more likely to overcome objections than average sellers. But that's not all—they're also 366% more likely to close an opportunity at the 'Discovery' stage of the funnel.

Sell in real-time, instantly close

Generally, a buyer arrives at a meeting with your sales rep already knowing enough to make a decision. They're aware of your website (in fact, they've probably made multiple visits), your competitors, your product's features, your social presence.

At this point, you need to convince them, not necessarily sell to them. The Gartner survey above shows that a hard sell only makes it more likely that they will choose a competitor (35% of buyers drop a vendor because of aggressive sales tactics).

So, what's a sales rep to do?

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Crucially, B2B buyers are 1.8 times more likely to sign deals when interacting with supplier-provided digital tools alongside sales reps. Buyers don't want sales rep hand-holding all the way through the sales process—they want you to meet them where they are.

And how do you know where they are? By using website de-anonymization tools along with warm signals that tell you which leads are in your ICP and ready to buy.

Once you know a prospect is on your website, real-time chat enables your sellers to interact with them instantly. With a comprehensive overview of your prospect, a good seller can even anticipate their objections.

So, for example, if you know a prospect has spent quite a bit of time on your pricing page across multiple visits, chances are they're mulling over cost concerns.

Maybe they're trying hard to crunch the numbers or persuade the CFO that it's worth the investment.

Next time that prospect is on your pricing page, your sales rep could join a website chatbot instantly and talk through the concerns they have.

Bingo—the lead feels more comfortable about buying, and your seller has closed a hell of a lot quicker than average. Win-win.

How to close deals earlier with Warmly’s Live Video Chat

Recently, Keegan, our Head of Revenue & RevOps, went through a similar scenario.

Context: it was the last day of the month, but there was still just enough time to close one more deal. Really.

He got a real-time Slack notification via Warmly (our signal-based revenue orchestration platform), telling him a CEO was browsing our Cacheflow proposal page.

It was time to put the intelligent Warmly sales strategy in motion. Keegan jumped straight into Warmly's chatbot to ask if the CEO had any questions.

As well as typing messages in the chat box, Keegan appeared in a live video feed, assuring the CEO that it was, in fact, an actual human talking to him.

Over chat, Keegan was able to answer the CEO's questions about Warmly instantly, assuring them of their purchase decision without any icky hard selling.

Within just a few minutes, Keegan had sent over the Warmly contract and witnessed the CEO leaving the Warmly website and opening DocuSign in real-time.

Spoiler alert: he signed with Warmly.

Selling smarter with Warmly's AI Prospector and Live Video Chat

We built Warmly to solve today's biggest challenges for sales reps—prioritizing leads and closing faster.

Sellers want you to meet them where they're at, but how are you meant to predict that?

Warmly de-anonymizes visitors to your website and uses best-in-class intent data to tell you which prospects are showing intent to buy, automating personalized outreach to them.

‎So, you can use Warmly to separate the leads landing on your website into segments, track how long they’re spending on your website, and then engage with the best prospects in real time using our chatbot and live video chat, just like Keegan did.

With cooler leads, free up your sales reps to work on more critical accounts by using Warmly's inbound chat workflows and intelligent, contextually-aware AI Chat.

Here’s how it works from start to finish.

Lead segmentation  

Set up segments in your Warmly account to filter your website visitors based on data points like your ICP, level of buyer intent demonstrated, or engagement activities on your website.

Warmly deanonymizes 15% of contacts and 65% of companies that visit your website, using data from various sources so you can have confidence that we’re identifying the right people.

The segments you set up form the basis for the rest of your sales engagement activities on Warmly. Once they’re up and running, you can run almost everything autonomously if you wish.

Instant visitor notifications

When a high-intent lead lands on your website, Warmly sends your sales reps a Slack notification with the relevant data that will help inform their sales strategy.  

You can manually decide which reps get notifications for which prospects, or you can route alerts to different Slack groups based on demographic and personal information like job title, location, or company size.  

The alert will let you know which page your prospect is currently browsing your site so you can meet them where they’re at. Literally and metaphorically.

Contextually-aware chatbot

This is where the magic happens.

Once your sales rep has received an alert about a lead, they can open up Warmly and track which pages they’re on. Then, your rep can conduct a real-time sales conversation with the prospect via Warmly’s chatbot.

Has your prospect got a question that would be better answered in a call? Instantly switch from chat to live video calling directly within Warmly. 

Your rep will be armed with all the info they need to close the deal, including search intent and previous prospect inquiries, making closing a breeze. 

Warmly: The Signal-Based Revenue Orchestration Platform

Warmly is designed to help small and medium-sized companies accomplish more by working hand-in-hand with your talented sales reps. Far from a basic sales engagement platform, we call Warmly a signal-based revenue orchestration platform.  

Thanks to our clever lead scoring, we only loop in your sales reps when someone is ready to buy. Then, you can swoop in and use our instant chat features to close the deal instantly. 

Not only can we help you close, but also reduce churn. Research shows that a rep-assisted digital purchasing path ‎cuts B2B buyer regret by half.

And it’s not just Keegan who closes deals with Warmly. Within the first 8 minutes of turning on AI Chat, Kandji was able to book two qualified meetings. Find out more here.

Try Warmly for free right now and start converting high-value leads that land on your website.

‎Gmail might have just changed the entire game for SDRs. And it’s all to do with the innocuous email tracking pixel.

But first, let’s go back to the beginning.

Cold email has always been a sales staple. 

Fire out 100 (...or more) emails to people you think are probably in your ideal audience, and wait for that one person to respond. 

Open rate tracking is a massive part of this process. Marketers and salespeople need to know that their emails are actually being opened, not just thrown in the trash. 

And so, the advent of the email tracking pixel. A tiny pixel image in the body of your email that, when downloaded by your recipient, sends a notification back to you saying your email has been opened. 

It’s foolproof, right? Not anymore. 

The Gmail tracking pixel: what’s changed?

Toward the end of August 2024, we heard anecdotal tales of significant changes happening in Gmail related to their ongoing anti-spam campaign.

Google has been clamping down on spam emails for a while, but blocking open rate tracking hasn’t explicitly been a part of that campaign.

Until now.

GTM and sales experts started talking about a new Gmail update showing a warning banner on emails containing “suspicious images.” Credit to Brendan Kazanjian on LinkedIn and Matt Jesuele on X for these screenshots.

The warning makes it abundantly clear to recipients that the sender is using email open tracking through a tracking pixel. And in one click, your recipients can report the email as spam, likely leading to any further emails going straight to junk. 

The banner doesn’t just show on prospecting emails, though. It appears on every single email you send. 

In one fell swoop, Gmail killed email open rate tracking and left thousands of SDRs wondering: what am I going to do now?

How important is email open tracking?

If you’re using an email service provider (ESP) like Outreach, SalesLoft, HubSpot, or Apollo for your email marketing, chances are that open rate data has been a critical KPI for your sales team. 

A high open rate means you’re doing something right with your marketing copy: piquing your audience’s interest with a snappy subject line. It can also indicate that you’ve targeted the right people with your email campaign. 

In addition to open rates, there are other email marketing KPIs to take note of. As Brendan Kazanjian notes above, reply rates can be equally valuable for your sales team if you’re actively prospecting. 

However, there is a danger in overanalyzing your email campaign KPIs—especially if you’re not connecting these to your overall growth campaign. 

In short, email marketing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. 

When you fire off an outbound email to a new prospect, that email should be just one part of an overarching sales and marketing campaign—your revenue orchestration efforts.

Sure, losing open rate tracking might seem like a huge deal to an email marketing professional who works almost entirely independently of the rest of your sales growth team.

And, according to research from Litmus, just 30% of marketers say their ESP is “highly integrated” or “very highly integrated” into other marketing channels.

However, if you’re running a tight revenue orchestration ship, losing this one KPI compared to all the other data points you’re tracking won’t seem like the end of the world.

How SDRs can adapt

At Warmly, outbound email is a core part of our sales strategy. Did our sales team panic when they heard that open rate tracking is no more? Nope. 

So, when we heard about the Gmail tracking link changes, we went ahead and turned off open rate tracking on all our outreach[.]io emails. And it didn’t make a difference to our outbound strategy. 

Why? Because email outbound is just one part of a coordinated, integrated sales strategy that drives prospects exactly where we want them: our website. 

Thanks to Warmly’s website visitor deanonymization tools, we can tell exactly who has arrived on our website from email, socials, or search, see what pages they’re looking at, and engage with them directly on the website. 

We call it signal-based revenue orchestration. 

The email tracking solution: Warmly

Warmly unifies all your sales and marketing tools in one intuitive platform, enabling you to deanonymize website visitors, evaluate buyer intent, and conduct personalized outreach (via email and LinkedIn) from one place. 

With Warmly, you don’t need email open rates (or reply rates or click-through rates) to see which prospects are interested. In fact, open rates are hardly as valuable as knowing which prospects are visiting your core brand home, your website. 

Warmly deanonymizes 15% of contacts and 65% of the companies visiting your website and seamlessly syncs this information with your CRM. 

You can see which pages your leads are viewing, how long they spend on your site, and even get instantly notified when they view a high-intent page.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if you don't know who is reading your emails when you can see exactly who is on your website at any given moment. With Warmly, email prospecting is just one tool in your belt. 

Integrated email prospecting

After you’ve learned which prospects are visiting your website, you can use Warmly’s AI Prospector tool to send personalized (and 100% automated, if you so wish) outreach to only the most relevant audience segments.

💡 See exactly how this works in our outbound playbooks.

But that's not all—when your SDR gets that Slack notification that tells them that a high-value lead is on your site, you can jump straight into a web chatbot with them. 

Want to make even more of an impression? Use our instant live video chat to jump on a video sales call with the prospect. 

💡 Read how Kandji booked 2 qualified meetings in 8 minutes with Warmly’s AI Chat

🤠 Hear directly from our Head of Revenue & Ops, Keegan, about how Warmly solves the Gmail tracking pixel problem

The future of email marketing

Now, we don’t mean to scare SDRs, but this change could be just the beginning. Outbound is changing faster than most people can keep up with. 

Cold calling is already dead. Cold emailing is going the same way now, too. 

The future of outbound is going to be hyper-personalized, data-driven selling. And to do that, you need a platform that combines best-in-class data with the tools that will enable your sales teams to reach out to prospects instantly.

No more studying email open rates. No more endlessly waiting for prospects to reply (and getting mad at your salespeople when prospects don’t.)

See who's visiting your website → get notified when they're online → chat and video call instantly → close deals.

Want to see Warmly in action? Here's how Keegan, our Head of Revenue & Ops, closed a CEO using live video chat in minutes.

Warmly: smarter outbound 

Speed to lead is a problem for almost all sales teams, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses. Cold email outreach can be cheap at scale, but it’s also time-consuming and not to mention demoralizing for your sales team.

So, help your sales team work smarter—not harder—with Warmly.

• Deanonymize website visitors.
• Use buyer intent insights to score leads. 
• Route inbound leads to the right sales rep.
• Engage with prospects directly from your website.
• Personalize email and LinkedIn outreach based on lead segmentation.

You can get started with Warmly for free today. Or, book a demo to see it in action.

So, you are faced with the ultimate choice - account-based marketing vs demand generation.

Yet, you cannot decide which strategy is best for driving business growth in your particular case.

While both marketing approaches yield results, they work differently regarding primary goals, techniques, and target audiences, meaning you have to go for the one that aligns with your needs and objectives.

In this article, we’ll dive deep into the key differences between account-based marketing and demand generation, helping you understand which strategy is more suitable for you.

What is account-based marketing (ABM)?

Let’s start with the basics!

Account-based marketing is a strategic marketing approach that focuses on targeting and engaging specific, high-value accounts rather than casting a wide net across a broad audience. 

Unlike traditional marketing strategies, which aim to reach as many potential customers as possible, ABM is highly selective. 

Namely, it concentrates efforts and resources only on nurturing relationships with key accounts - that is, accounts most likely to generate significant revenue.

As such, ABM has two main objectives:

1. Increase engagement with targeted accounts and build meaningful relationships with them.
2. Drive higher conversion rates by nurturing those accounts and guiding them down the marketing funnel.

To achieve these goals, you’ll need to have perfect alignment between your sales and marketing teams to ensure that they’re working on:

• Identifying accounts that best match your ICP.
• Developing strategies fit to attract, delight, and convert them.

Common ABM tactics for attracting and nurturing key accounts often involve a mix of personalized campaigns and direct engagement. 

For example, marketers might create customized content, such as personalized emails, landing pages, or case studies, that speaks directly to the target account's unique challenges to raise brand awareness and build trust and rapport.

On the other hand, they can also launch advertising or cold call campaigns that directly engage high-value accounts, aiming to demonstrate your product’s value and build relationships that might lead to successful conversions.

What is demand generation?

The very name demand generation already implies what this marketing approach is all about.

Demand generation is a holistic marketing strategy that aims to raise awareness and generate interest in your products or services, building a steady pipeline of leads. 

Essentially, its core focus is to let potential customers know that your brand exists and that it’s actually the best solution for their key issues and needs, driving interest and demand for your product.

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To achieve this, you need to engage and educate prospects, which is why demand generation mainly consists of tactics aimed at doing exactly that, such as content marketing, SEO, social media campaigns, etc.

Consequently, it’s fair to say that the key difference between demand generation and ABM lies in their targeting approach.

ABM is highly targeted and concentrates on specific high-value accounts - the accounts most likely to benefit from your product and generate the highest ROI.

Demand generation, on the other hand, is about creating widespread awareness and attracting a large pool of leads, from which the most qualified can later be nurtured through more targeted efforts.

As such, demand generation targets a much broader audience, aiming to raise brand awareness by reaching as many potential customers as possible.

Let’s get a closer look at these differences.

How do targeting approaches between ABM and demand generation differ? 

As mentioned above, ABM is characterized by its highly specific targeting, where marketing efforts are focused on a select group of high-value accounts. 

In ABM, the goal is to identify key accounts most likely to bring significant revenue to the business and create personalized campaigns tailored to their unique needs and pain points.

As such, this approach requires:

1. Deep research to identify high-value accounts and discern their interests and pain points.
2. Close collaboration between marketing and sales teams to ensure that every touchpoint with the target accounts is relevant, tailored, and impactful.

In contrast, demand generation employs a broad targeting strategy to reach a wide audience. 

Rather than focusing on a specific set of accounts, demand generation seeks to engage a broad range of prospects, gradually educating them about the company's offerings and nurturing them through the buyer's journey. 

The emphasis here is on building brand awareness and generating interest across a wide market, with the expectation that at least a part of this audience will eventually convert into qualified leads.

In turn, these differing targeting methods significantly impact lead nurturing and conversion rates. 

In ABM, the highly specific targeting allows for more personalized and direct engagement, leading to stronger relationships with key decision-makers and often resulting in higher conversion rates. 

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Moreover, since ABM efforts concentrate on a smaller number of high-value accounts, the resources invested in each account are typically pretty substantial, leading to deeper connections and a higher likelihood of successful conversion.

On the other hand, demand generation's broad targeting approach often results in a larger volume of leads but with varying levels of interest and qualification. 

While this approach can create a robust pipeline of potential customers, the challenge lies in effectively nurturing these leads and identifying those most likely to convert. 

As a result, demand generation may require more extensive lead scoring and nurturing efforts to filter out less qualified prospects and focus on those with a higher probability of conversion.

Here’s a cheat sheet of the key differences between demand generation and ABM to help you differentiate between the two at a glance. 👇

What are the goals of account-based marketing vs demand generation?

The primary goal of ABM is to nurture and convert key accounts - as simple as that.

ABM is all about quality over quantity, focusing on a select group of high-value prospects with the ultimate aim of guiding these accounts through the sales funnel while increasing the chances of conversion and long-term loyalty.

In contrast, demand generation is about building a strong brand presence and creating a steady flow of new leads that can be nurtured through more targeted marketing efforts. 

Therefore, the goal is to cast a wide net to attract a broad audience and generate as many leads as possible by educating potential customers about your brand and its value.

As a result, each of these strategies contributes differently to the overall sales pipeline. 

ABM drives high-value conversions by focusing intensely on specific accounts most likely to generate significant revenue. This makes ABM particularly effective for businesses targeting large enterprises or key clients with complex sales cycles. 

On the other hand, demand generation fills the top of the funnel with many leads, providing a broader base of potential customers to work with. This is essential for businesses looking to rapidly grow their customer base, increase brand visibility across a wide market, or expand to new markets.

What tactics are used in account-based marketing vs demand generation?

When it comes to ABM, this approach relies on highly personalized and targeted tactics that focus on building relationships with specific high-value accounts, such as:

1. Personalized emails - Email campaigns are a big part of ABM, as tailored emails are a tested and tried strategy for approaching and engaging high-value accounts. To ensure optimal results, don’t rely on basic personalization (personal name, company name, job role, etc.) but go beyond by addressing their individual interests, pain points, needs, etc., in the email copy.
2. Tailored content - Distribute customized case studies and whitepapers to key accounts, ensuring that they are relevant to the accounts’ needs and challenges. For instance, if a key account visits your website and spends most time on a page explaining a particular feature, you can send them a case study breaking down how a similar company achieved excellent results by leveraging that product feature.

3. Direct engagement - This includes activities designed to foster deep connections with key decision-makers through direct contact, such as calls, one-on-one meetings, exclusive webinars or workshops, etc. 

4. Account-specific marketing campaigns - They aim to engage multiple stakeholders within a single account through various touchpoints, including email, social media, direct engagement, and more, to create a holistic and tailored experience that will resonate with these accounts.

In contrast, demand generation uses strategies that aim to attract a large audience and generate a steady stream of leads, including:

1. Content marketing - Blogs, ebooks, how-to videos, webinars, and similar educational and valuable content are the cornerstone of demand generation, as they help raise brand awareness, establish thought leadership, and build trust with a wide range of potential customers.

2. SEO - SEO increases the visibility of your content (and website in general) in search engine results, helping drive organic traffic to your website.

3. Social media campaigns - These help reach a wider audience, create interest in your offering, and engage them enough to give your brand a second thought when they reach the consideration stage.

4. Paid ads - PPC and social media ads designed to capture attention and drive traffic to landing pages are also widely used.

Practical examples are the best way to understand how these strategies might look in real life.

ABM strategy

Salesloft’s partnership with Reachdesk is an example of a highly successful ABM strategy that involved directly engaging high-value accounts through personalized and relevant gifts.

For instance, in the earlier stages of the buyer’s journey, Salesloft would offer prospects a free coffee voucher to book a meeting. 

At later stages, account executives would send free lunch vouchers to prospects during a demo or as a follow-up after a demo meeting. 

As they gained more information about their prospects, Salesloft’s team became even more personal, gifting unique presents like pop culture memorabilia.

Although this approach may sound unconventional, the results speak for themselves—Salesloft got 60x more ROI than before leveraging this personalized strategy.

Demand generation strategy

Pump’s success story is an excellent example of how a good demand-generation strategy can lead to excellent results.

The startup invested heavily in various demand-generation tactics, such as social media campaigns, paid ads, content, etc. As a result, their website started gaining serious traction.

However, the company fell short of capturing the demand it generated, as its team could not identify the potential leads that landed on the website.

That’s when they implemented Warmly, a website traffic identifier that enabled them to capture potential leads successfully and identify those most likely to convert right now.

Ultimately, this holistic approach resulted in closing a $20k deal in the first week of using Warmly.

How do measurement and metrics differ between ABM and demand generation?

Knowing which metrics to track - and how - is crucial for accurately measuring the performance and efficiency of your ABM and demand gen campaigns.

When it comes to ABM, since the focus is on deeply engaging and converting specific high-value accounts, the metrics are centered around the quality and depth of interactions with those accounts.

Therefore, some key ABM metrics include:

1. Account engagement, which tracks how actively the target account is interacting with your content, website, emails, events, and other marketing efforts.
2. Deal progression, which measures how many of these high-value accounts moved through the sales funnel, going from initial engagement to closing the deal. 
3. Pipeline velocity, which is the speed at which accounts move through the pipeline, helps identify bottlenecks and especially efficient strategies.

On the other hand, demand generation is focused on attracting a broad audience and generating a large volume of leads, so its KPIs are more quantitative. 

Some common metrics include:

1. Lead generation rate, which tracks the number of new leads entering the pipeline.
2. Conversion rate, which measures how effectively these leads are being converted into customers. 
3. Brand impressions, which show how often people come across your brand in daily life.

These metrics reflect the fundamental differences in strategy: 

While ABM is about precision and depth with a few key accounts, demand generation is all about scale and reach across a wider market.

Which strategy is better for your business: ABM or demand generation?

There’s no simple answer to this question, as it depends on various factors, including your goals, target audience, business type, etc.

Yet, there are certain cases where one strategy is almost certainly a better choice than the other.

For example, businesses targeting smaller, defined sets of high-value accounts, such as enterprise-level B2B companies, often prefer ABM.

The reasoning is simple here: When your business success primarily relies on deep and lasting relationships with a few key clients, ABM’s personalized and narrowed-down approach is probably a smarter call.

On the other hand, demand generation might be more suitable if your company operates in a market where volume is crucial, such as B2C or SaaS businesses that target a broad audience.

So, go for demand generation if you’re looking to build brand awareness and generate a large volume of leads that can be nurtured over time.

However, sometimes, combining ABM and demand generation can yield the best results. 

For example, a business might use demand generation to build a broad pipeline of leads and then apply ABM tools and tactics to focus on converting the most promising ones. 

This hybrid approach allows companies to benefit from demand generation's wide-cast net while leveraging ABM's personalized engagement for high-value targets, resulting in more conversions and ROI across levels.

In the end, each strategy has its perks and limitations, so it’s important to consider both sides of the coin before deciding.

Can ABM and demand generation work together?

In short, yes.

ABM and demand generation can, in fact, excellently complement each other, filling out the gaps left by each and enabling you to reach your TAM from top to bottom.

Namely, demand generation casts a wide net to attract a broad audience, filling the top of the sales funnel with a large pool of potential leads. 

Once these leads are identified, ABM can be used to focus on the most promising prospects, providing personalized attention and tailored campaigns to nurture and convert them into paying customers.

This way, you’ll both establish and maintain a broad market presence while avoiding wasting resources on low-quality leads. Instead, you’ll ensure that no opportunities are missed, at the same time focusing on converting high-potential leads into loyal clients. 

Caddis Systems is an excellent example of where an integrated approach may take you.

The company used various demand generation tools and techniques, including content marketing, email campaigns, paid ads, and SEO, to increase brand awareness, attract leads, and ultimately drive traffic to its website.

To identify the potential leads who landed there and avoid missing any hot opportunities, Caddis Systems leveraged Warmly, which enabled them to:

1. Identify anonymous website visitors at both company and individual levels.

2. Pinpoint the accounts most likely to convert based on how well they fit into their ICP and buyer intent level.

Once its team knew who its hottest accounts were, they could focus their attention on them.

To engage those accounts further, they used:

1. Warmly’s Orchestrator, which added them to automated email and LinkedIn outreach sequences consisting of personalized emails and/or LinkedIn messages and connection requests.
2. Warmly’s AI Chat, which engaged leads in conversations through contextual messages, offered relevant content, answered questions, booked meetings, and more.

Finally, when the accounts were ripe for a meeting, Caddis Systems’ sales teams used insights Warmly revealed on each account to create tailored pitches that were more likely to resonate with them.

As a result, Caddis Systems experienced 5x the ROI in just a week.

Leverage Warmly and boost your demand gen & ABM efforts 

Now that you’re aware of the key differences between ABM and demand generation, their unique approaches, and the techniques they leverage to reach their objectives, you’ll be able to make the right call much more easily.

Both strategies are powerful - not to mention the hybrid approach that delivers the best of both worlds - meaning that your choice ultimately depends on what you aim to achieve.

Regardless of which approach you go for in the end, Warmly can help you ensure that you’ll:

• Capture leads who land on your website.
• Prioritize the hottest accounts.
• Reach accounts most likely to convert while they’re still hot.

Not sure if it’s the solution you need?

Subscribe to Warmly’s free forever plan and discover what it can do for you with no strings attached.

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Keeping up with marketing trends is crucial for businesses that aim to remain competitive.

However, the fast-paced digital landscape is prone to abrupt shifts and changes, keeping marketers on their toes at all times.

In this article, we’ll highlight some of the key lead generation statistics and trends you should be aware of in 2024, as they can help you:

• Optimize your strategy for success.
• Gain insight into the future of lead generation and marketing.
• Create resilient lead generation approaches.

Ready?

Let’s go!

General lead generation statistics
1. Lead generation is a top priority for 50% of marketers

You can’t do anything without efficient lead generation, as without it, you won’t have any potential customers to convert in the first place.

This is why half of all marketers focus on lead generation before working on other marketing processes.

2. 53% of marketers spend more than 50% of their budget on lead generation

These figures further emphasize the importance of lead generation - and its complexity.

Attracting, nurturing, and converting leads requires lots of resources, and this budget spend clearly illustrates that.

3. The average cost per lead is $198.44

The actual lead acquisition cost varies, as some businesses have to invest more resources in generating leads, but the average expense revolves around $200 per lead.

4. 42% of businesses say that sales and marketing alignment is crucial for accelerating the conversion process

Good communication and collaboration between sales and marketing teams are crucial for lead generation success. They enable you to provide a consistent brand experience throughout the funnel.

Moreover, if both sales and marketing are on the same page regarding their joined efforts, target audience, and objectives, they’re more likely to succeed in less time than it would take them if they worked in silos.

66% of business leaders cite establishing a clear and straightforward lead-qualifying and scoring method as the best way to achieve this.

5. Less than half of marketers are satisfied with the performance of their multi-channel lead gen strategies

Multichannel lead generation is a tricky area for many, as just 41% of marketers cite being completely satisfied with their strategies.

Conversely, 12% state that they are not satisfied at all, meaning they’re still working on finding a successful approach.

6. 84% of businesses claim that converting MQLs to SQLs is one of the most significant lead generation challenges

Capturing leads’ attention and engaging them with your marketing materials is just half the battle.

Pushing them further down the lead generation funnel and getting them ready to contact your sales team is the real pain, as many leads cool down at this stage.

However, investing in proper lead nurturing strategies could help overcome this challenge.

7. In 2024, most marketers face challenges with generating traffic and leads

15% of marketers report that lead generation is the biggest challenge they face in today’s market, alongside keeping up with all the emerging trends.

Source

14%, on the other hand, struggle with understanding leads and their primary needs and pain points.

8. Over 90% of marketers claim that personalization of their lead generation efforts drives business growth 

Personalization is a key contributing factor to lead generation and sales efficiency.

Namely, 96% of marketers say personalization leads to repeat business, and 94% say it increases sales.

Moreover, brands that leveraged personalized experiences were 215% more likely to say that their strategies successfully generated new leads and drove more sales.

9. Most of your leads are using mobile devices to surf the web

Almost 62% of all online users are accessing your website through their mobile devices, in contrast to 36% of desktop users.

Source

This means that your website - and all the content you publish on the web - must be optimized for mobile devices to attract and convert quality leads.

10. Finding quality leads is the number one challenge for 45% of marketers

Nearly half of marketers claim that finding and attracting quality leads is the main hurdle they face in their jobs.

High competition and rising customer standards and expectations make running efficient lead gen campaigns increasingly difficult.

Content marketing lead generation statistics
11. 70% of high-performing brands leverage interactive content

Interactive content is the future of lead generation and content marketing as it enables leads to actively engage with your product in a fun and educational way.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that 70% of the most successful digital brands use interactive tools to showcase their product compared to just 36% of businesses that report lower lead generation rates and overall ROI.

12. Brands that leverage blogging have 13 times more leads and ROI than those that don’t

Blogs are one of the most efficient tactics for generating leads. They can raise brand awareness and help establish your brand as an industry leader, building trust and loyalty.

Thus, it’s no surprise that businesses that focus on producing quality content experience higher lead generation rates and, in turn, ROI.

13. Posting 15 blogs per month can result in an average of 1,200 new leads per month

Brands that regularly publish blogs - at least 15 per month - can significantly increase lead generation rates.

Of course, the actual number of leads will depend on the quality of the content you deliver, so remember to prioritize quality over quantity.

14. 74% of companies claim that good content marketing significantly boosted their lead generation success rates

They say content is king for a reason.

It can help attract and nurture leads, enabling you to subtly promote your brand through helpful and educational content.

This is why 36% of businesses report spending between 10% and 29% of their budget on content marketing alone.

15. 84% of B2B businesses think that content marketing helped the most with raising brand awareness

A majority of businesses report that they have successfully increased brand awareness and established an industry presence thanks to content marketing strategies.

At the same time, 76% of businesses cite that content marketing boosted demand and lead generation across levels, whereas 63% report that lead nurturing was the key outcome of using content marketing.

16. Businesses that use content marketing as a lead generation channel get 6x the conversion rates compared to competitors that don’t

Companies that use content marketing to attract and nurture leads experience much higher conversion rates than those that neglect this strategy.

What’s more, personalized content performs even better, yielding 120x better results than generic content.

17. 87% of marketers say that using videos has helped them generate more leads

Visual content, such as videos and infographics, can often be more engaging than other content types, as not everyone is fond of reading through lengthy articles.

In fact, 44% of consumers say they prefer to learn about a product or a service through video content.

This makes videos a crucial part of the sales funnel, as they can be used for everything from raising brand awareness (90% of companies report that videos have had a positive impact in this area) to increasing sales (87%).

18. 57% of marketers find that creating the right content for their target audience is the biggest challenge they face

With so many innovations and constant disruptions in both the digital and physical spheres, marketers often find it difficult to adjust their strategies to their audience’s needs and preferences.

Moreover, the market has never been this overwhelmed with content, as businesses from almost every industry are leveraging it for lead generation, making cutting through the noise trickier than ever before.

Doing careful market research, determining your ICP, and continuously analyzing and refining your strategies based on emerging trends and relevant changes is key to success.

In fact, 79% of businesses believe that knowing their audience well is critical to efficient lead generation. 

19. Short-form content dominates in B2B marketing, with 94% of marketers using it the most in their strategies

In addition to short articles and posts, B2B businesses focus on videos (84%) and case studies or customer stories (78%).

Source

Long articles are up next (71%), illustrating that modern leads need educational and engaging content that delivers enough value to compel them.

Marketing automation tools and AI in lead generation 
20. Marketing automation software can increase the number of qualified leads by 451%

Leveraging automation tools can help you identify quality leads faster and more accurately than when done manually.

Moreover, many of these tools can automatically add leads to personalized campaigns, allowing you to put lead nurturing on autopilot.

21. 72% of marketers agree that AI and automation tools like chatbots help them personalize customer experience across levels

Chatbots and other AI tools can significantly improve your lead generation efforts.

They can be used for anything from engaging leads on relevant landing pages, offering contextual resources, answering questions, etc.

22. More marketers use generative than predictive AI

Generative AI is leveraged by as many as 64% of marketers for lead generation and other marketing processes, with 35% trialing it or planning to trial it within the next 18 months.

Source

Conversely, predictive AI is used by 54% of marketers, while 42% are currently piloting it or intending to in the next 18 months.

This illustrates that at the moment, more businesses feel at ease with using AI to generate content than relying on it for predictive analysis and forecasting.

23. 36% of marketers are currently using AI chatbots for handling their day-to-day marketing tasks

As mentioned above, chatbots can be useful for both lead generation and lead nurturing. With the rise of AI, they’ve become smarter and better at communicating with potential customers.

This is why a third of marketers are already using chatbots, and 58% plan to increase their investment in AI-powered chatbots and similar tools to boost lead generation and other marketing efforts.

Lead generation channels
24. 63% of leads say they rely on social proof more than the brand name when making a purchase decision

More than half of all potential customers in both B2B and B2C industries prefer to get information on a certain product from other users or industry experts.

This is why most of the best-performing companies invest in influencer marketing and partner with other relevant brands and subject matter experts as lead generation strategies.

25. Web traffic is the most efficient lead generation channel for generating MQLs

16% of MQLs are generated by organic and referral traffic, indicating that your website and content could be your most powerful tools for sourcing qualified leads.

Interestingly, the other two most efficient channels are third-party in-person events (11%) and paid social advertising (9%).

26. The top 3 results on Google get 75% of all traffic

This emphasizes the importance of producing quality content and investing in SEO, as three-quarters of all potential leads will get distributed between just the top three SERP results.

As a result, most leads won’t even find out about your product unless you can break through to the top.

In contrast, less than 1% of visitors will ever go to page 2 of Google search results. 

So, even if you can’t make it to the top 3, at least make sure you’re on the first page, or your lead generation efforts won’t yield positive results.

27. Most businesses focus their personalization efforts on emails and website content

Most marketers leverage personalized emails (84%) and websites (80%) to attract new customers.

However, even more marketers primarily invest in personalizing content aimed at existing customers, such as support (87%) and retention (85%) content.

28. 47% of brands report that micro-influencers helped them generate more leads

Counterintuitively, micro-influencers might be a better choice for raising brand awareness than influencers with large audiences.

Niche influencers are often more successful in driving loyalty and trust among their followers, making them more likely to choose your brand if the influencer promotes it.

In fact, in 2023, one in four consumers bought a product because an industry influencer recommended it.

29. 56% of B2B marketers consider in-person events to be the most successful lead generation channel

Despite the digital era we live in, face-to-face contact and interaction are still greatly valued.

This is especially true for B2B, as it involves higher-value contracts and multiple decision-makers, making building lasting relationships with leads a must.

Other top-performing channels include webinars (51%) and email (44%).

Lead nurturing and conversion
30. 40% of companies state that one of the biggest lead nurturing challenges is identifying anonymous website visitors

Regardless of how many leads your website generates, you won’t be able to do much about it.

Using website traffic tracking tools like Warmly can help reveal quality leads who land on your while enriching them with detailed B2B and intent data.

That way, you’ll know exactly who to contact and when for optimal results.

31. 49% of brands cite leveraging intent data to improve lead generation and nurturing techniques

Intent data is crucial for a number of reasons.

It can help you identify leads who are most likely to convert right now, as well as enable you to create a highly personalized approach based on the insights you have on them.

Source

Social media for lead generation
32. Facebook is the most popular platform for running paid ads

Social media, in general, is emerging as one of the most powerful lead generation channels.

However, some platforms seem to be performing better than others.

For instance, 94% of B2B and B2C marketers prefer Facebook for social selling, thanks to its advanced ad targeting options.

At the same time, Instagram is also growing in popularity. Over 200 million users visit at least one business profile every day, creating a rich lead pool that should not be missed out on.

33. LinkedIn is B2B marketers’ favorite

94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for their sales and lead generation efforts.

So, it’s no surprise that LinkedIn accounts for 80% of all B2B leads generated through social media.

34. Most businesses prefer organic to paid social media for lead generation

73% of businesses rely on organic social media to distribute content and reach and engage with their audience.

This number illustrates that you don’t always have to pay big money for paid ad campaigns - quality content and regular lead engagement can often speak for themselves.

Email lead generation
35. 50% of businesses feel that email has the most impact on the success of their multichannel lead generation strategies

Email marketing is most certainly not dead, and for a good reason.

Email is an excellent channel for distributing content, following up with potential leads and existing customers, and other lead generation activities, making it one of the most versatile channels.

Moreover, 60% of leads cite that they prefer that brands contact them via email rather than any other channel, which smart markets will surely leverage to their own benefit.

36. Segmenting email lists can lead to higher open and engagement rates according to 65% of marketers

The whole point of email campaigns is to get your leads to actually open emails and click through your CTAs.

To increase the chance of that happening, you need to tailor email copy and your offers to each lead, and the best way to do that is to segment your target audience.

Once that’s done, you can create separate email campaigns, each optimized for a specific segment. The results will not disappoint.

37. Best-performing lead generation emails have no more than 1-2 CTAs

73% of marketers report using one or two highly engaging and compelling CTAs.

The fewer CTAs you include, the more likely leads will click through and advance down the funnel.

38. Sending too many emails can lead to significant lead churn

69% of leads say they unsubscribe from newsletters and other email content because they’re getting spammed with too many emails.

So, although there’s nothing wrong with follow-ups, try not to overdo it and limit your efforts to three follow-up emails at most.

Additionally, 56% claim that they will lose interest in a brand if their email content becomes irrelevant.

To avoid losing leads and customers, make sure that the emails you send deliver enough value for leads to be interested in engaging with your brand further.

39. Emails with special offers and promotions have the highest open rates

Leads love getting personalized offers and discounts so much that they make one of the most efficient ways to get them to open your email and click through.

31% of marketers say that emails featuring exclusive offers and promotions have the highest open rates, followed by emails announcing new features and products (30%).

40. Dynamic email content personalization can lead to a 44% increase in generated leads and closed deals

AI-powered personalized recommendations, location-specific information, and images tailored to the specific stage of the customer journey are just some of the ways brands leverage dynamic content.

This advanced type of personalization is sure to delight leads, and in some cases, it can increase conversions by 52%.

Start generating more leads today

These figures can help you better understand the state of marketing and lead generation today, enabling you to adjust your strategies accordingly.

And if you need an extra hand with capturing and converting leads visiting your website, Warmly can help.

The platform can identify both companies and individual stakeholders surfing your website and enrich them with in-depth intent data, enabling you to:

• Identify who your hottest leads are right now.
• Tailor your approach to each lead, enhancing the chance for successful conversion.

But why take our word for it?

Sign up for Warmly’s free plan and discover how easy it is to fill your pipeline with qualified leads within minutes.

The digital era has transformed virtually every aspect of life and work, including B2B lead generation.

The introduction of new tools and technology on the one hand, and increased customer expectations and market competitiveness on the other, have spawned new ways of conducting B2B lead generation.

What does this mean for B2B companies?

Well, any B2B business looking to stay competitive in 2024 and beyond should ensure that its B2B lead generation funnel is properly designed and optimized to:

• Continuously attract and convert new quality leads.
• Deliver a steady revenue stream.
• Enable targeted growth and better scalability.

This is exactly why this article is here: to help you master the art of B2B lead generation and teach you how to build a high-converting B2B lead generation funnel step-by-step.

We’ll begin by drilling down into the basics.

What is B2B lead generation?

B2B lead generation is the process of identifying and attracting potential business customers - i.e., leads - who could benefit from your company’s products or services.

Unlike B2C lead generation, which targets individual consumers, B2B focuses on creating relationships with other businesses. 

As a result, this process involves using various marketing and sales tactics to engage decision-makers within target companies and guide them through the buyer's journey, with the goal of converting them into long-term clients.

This would be a good place to break down other key differences between B2B and B2C lead generation for easier navigation and a better understanding of the two concepts.

Namely, although both approaches aim to generate more quality leads, they differ in terms of:

1. Target audience - This is the main difference, as B2B lead generation targets businesses, typically dealing with multiple decision-makers and longer sales cycles. In contrast, B2C lead generation focuses on individual consumers, often with shorter buying cycles.
2. Content and messaging - B2B marketing emphasizes expertise, ROI, and long-term value, often using in-depth content like whitepapers, case studies, and webinars. B2C marketing, however, focuses more on emotional appeals, brand experience, and immediate needs, often through simpler and visually driven content.
3. Sales process - B2B sales involve a more complex decision-making process consisting of multiple touchpoints and stakeholders, which requires personalized communication and long-term relationship building. B2C sales are generally more straightforward, with a focus on quick conversions and individual customer satisfaction.

Consequently, B2B lead generation funnels function differently than B2C ones, although they include the same stages. 

Let’s get a closer look at a typical B2B sales funnel.

B2B sales funnel overview

The whole point of a sales funnel is to let you control a lead’s buyer journey, guiding them from awareness to consideration and, finally, decision.

The same goes for B2B sales funnels, with each stage including specific tactics designed to attract, delight, and convert business leads:

1. Awareness - At this stage, potential leads become aware of a problem they need to solve or an opportunity they wish to explore further. B2B marketers use tactics like SEO, content marketing, and social media to make their target audience (stakeholders of ICP-matching companies) aware of their solutions.
2. Consideration - Once a lead is aware of their need, they move into the consideration stage, where they research and compare different solutions. Here, B2B companies provide detailed information through expert resources such as webinars, case studies, and product demos to position themselves as the best choice.
3. Decision - The focus here is on reinforcing the value proposition, addressing any remaining objections, and guiding the lead toward a final purchase. Sales teams often play a crucial role in this stage by providing personalized offers, negotiations, and customer testimonials.

When guiding leads down the funnel, one key component to focus on throughout the customer journey is lead nurturing.

Namely, given the longer and more complex buying cycles in B2B, nurturing helps keep leads engaged and informed, ensuring they remain aligned with your solution as they progress through their decision-making process.

Effective lead nurturing strategies could include a variety of tactics, such as:

• Personalized email campaigns tailored to specific lead segments (i.e., businesses that match your ICP, companies that have already expressed interest in your solution by attending your webinars, etc.).
• Targeted content creation, with a focus on resources that bring clear value and are highly industry-relevant, such as detailed whitepapers, checklists, guides, etc.

• Consistent follow-ups to address the lead’s specific needs or concerns. 

All these efforts can pay big time by enabling you to increase conversion rates, shorten sales cycles, and ultimately build stronger and lasting customer relationships.

So, neglecting to invest in proper lead nurturing is a no-go if you want your lead generation funnel to yield actual results.

Why is B2B lead generation important in 2024?

The answer to this question is pretty straightforward.

If you don’t design and apply B2B lead generation strategies tailored to your business, objectives, and target audience, your business will go under before you know it.

Without quality leads, you can forget about successful conversions, regardless of how good your product actually is.

So, you must ensure that you’ve promoted your business through approaches carefully designed to reach, attract, and convert your ICPs.

However, as businesses become more digital and global, traditional methods of reaching and converting leads don’t really work anymore. This is urging companies to switch to new strategies and refine existing ones if they want to stay in the game.

The new, more dynamic landscape creates a mix of both new challenges and opportunities to generate more quality leads and conversions, including:

• Increased competition - As more companies invest in high-converting strategies like digital marketing, the competition for high-quality leads has intensified. To stand out in a hyper-crowded market, businesses must leverage unique value propositions, innovative content, and exceptional customer experiences.
• Changes in buyer behavior - Today's B2B buyers are more informed and have higher expectations. They conduct extensive research before engaging with sales and marketing teams, often preferring self-service options and peer reviews. This shift requires businesses to provide valuable, easily accessible information throughout the buyer's journey (e.g., comprehensive documentation and help centers, ample social proof, interactive demos, etc.).
• Technological advancements - While technology offers opportunities for automation and optimization, it also presents challenges in terms of integration and staying updated with the latest sales tools, or they risk falling behind. Businesses must continuously evaluate and adopt new technologies to remain competitive in lead generation.

Despite these challenges, the current market also offers opportunities for agile and innovative businesses. 

By leveraging tech innovations, such as AI-powered tools, automation, and advanced analytics, you can:

• Run more efficient and highly targeted lead-generation campaigns.
• Streamline critical sales and marketing processes.
• Gain deeper insights into customer needs and preferences, allowing you to tailor your lead generation efforts more effectively.

The role of data in B2B lead generation in 2024

Data also plays a critical role in successful lead generation today for leads and businesses alike.

On the one hand, leads have more easily accessible information at their fingertips than ever before, enabling them to carefully research your solution and the alternatives. As a result, delighting them is much more difficult than before the rise of the internet.

On the other hand, you can make data one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal, as it can help you:

• Improve targeting - You can identify the most promising leads based on behavioral data, past interactions, and predictive analytics. For instance, tools like Warmly can identify your website visitors and reveal valuable B2B and intent data, helping you understand which leads are most likely to convert right now.
• Enhance personalization - Tailor marketing messages and content to the specific needs and preferences of individual leads or segments. Again, using the intent and B2B data Warmly unearthed, sales teams can create highly personalized, contextual messages bound to resonate with leads.
• Optimize campaigns - You can continuously monitor and refine campaigns based on real-time data, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently and effectively. Various analytics tools can help you understand which of your campaigns are working well, identify bottlenecks, and pinpoint what resonates best with leads.

This way, you’ll show your leads exactly what they want to see and hear, enabling you to position your product as the best solution for their pain points and needs.

Key strategies for effective B2B lead generation

When it comes to the most efficient strategies for successful B2B lead generation, it’s important to differentiate between outbound and inbound marketing strategies you can leverage.

Typical inbound strategies include:

• Content marketing and SEO
• Social selling
• Lead magnets and landing pages

• Nurturing email campaigns (i.e., emails sent to newsletter subscribers, leads who downloaded an ebook, etc.)

Outbound, on the other hand, focuses on:

• Cold calls
• Cold email campaigns
• Networking events

• Advertising

Each approach has its own pros and cons, so it’s best to combine them to maximize your reach.

Namely, inbound is generally focused on long-term relationship building that takes more time, whereas outbound lead generation provides more immediate results but loses something on engagement levels.

And now, without further ado, here’s our pick of the best B2B lead generation strategies - both inbound and outbound - that you can implement throughout the sales funnel for optimal results.

1. Developing a strong value proposition

This is the first step to creating a high-converting B2B lead generation strategy, as it enables you to set your brand apart from the competition and position it as the ideal answer to your leads’ needs.

Therefore, a compelling value proposition should clearly communicate your business's unique benefits and solutions while addressing the specific pain points of your target audience. 

When developing a strong value proposition, you should focus on showcasing:

1. How your tool helps solve your leads’ problems and needs - For instance, if you have a marketing automation tool, you should highlight points like increased productivity and efficiency across levels, better results than when handling tasks manually, etc.
2. What makes your tool different from all the other similar platforms - This can include factors like price, unique features, convenience, a solid free plan, etc.

Once that’s completed, ensure that your value proposition is prominently featured in all marketing materials, including your:

• Website

• Social media profiles
• Content
• Email campaigns, etc.

2. Optimize your website

Your website is another critical part of any B2B lead generation strategy because it introduces your brand to potential leads and can be used as a powerful tool for nurturing and converting them.

For optimal results, your website needs to check several boxes:

• It has to follow SEO guidelines - Its structure (title tags, meta tags, etc.) and technical aspects (loading speed, mobile optimization) should meet SEO requirements in order to rank higher on SERPs and drive more organic traffic to it.
• It has to be easy to navigate - All the crucial bits, such as your blog page, help center, pricing, features, etc., must be easy to find. If you make leads waste too much time finding what they need, they’ll simply switch to the competition.

• It has to convey your value proposition clearly - As mentioned above, your website is one of the key places to position your value proposition. That way, new leads will know what to expect from the get-go.
• It needs to include CTAs - Implement CTAs that urge leads to take action that will lead them further the sales funnel (convert into an MQL, SQL, or paying customer). Ensure that the CTAs are contextual and relevant to the landing page they’re on to increase the chance of leads clicking through.

Once all this is done, a question remains:

How to capture all the leads who’ve landed on your website.

You could use lead-capturing forms and magnets, but not all leads will be compelled enough to fill them out or download these resources, meaning many will go to waste.

This is why you need a website visitor identification tool like Warmly. 

The platform can identify both companies and actual stakeholders visiting your website in real-time, at the same time uncovering relevant data on each identified lead, including:

• Essential contact data (name, email address, phone number).
• Detailed B2B data (firmographics, technographics, etc.).
• Intent data (insights into leads’ interactions with your website and their entire digital buyer’s journey that help you pinpoint which leads are at the brink of conversion right now).

By leveraging solutions like Warmly, you’ll be able to kill several birds with one stone:

1. You can assess how well your website attracts your target audience. If most of your visitors don’t match your ICP, it’s a clear sign that something is off.
2. You’ll tap into a rich lead pool of companies that have already shown interest in your product by surfing your website.
3. You’ll be able to pinpoint the hottest leads and focus on them from the get-go.

3. Leverage content marketing

Content marketing remains one of the most powerful strategies for lead generation in general, including B2B. 

Namely, by creating and sharing valuable, relevant content, businesses can attract, engage, and nurture leads throughout the buyer's journey. 

Additionally, positioning your brand as a thought leader in your industry can build trust and credibility, making it a crucial part of lead nurturing and helping you convert leads into customers more easily.

The content you should focus on can include:

• Blog posts - Just make sure that the blogs you publish are relevant to your audience, i.e., that they help them find a solution to their problems, answers to their questions, etc., while at the same time adequate for subtly pushing your product as the best solution.

• Whitepapers and case studies - B2B audiences are much more demanding than B2C ones, as you have to impress and hook other industry experts and stakeholders. This means you need to focus on expert content, such as whitepapers and case studies, that position you as a thought leader and provide potential customers with significant value.
• Educational videos and podcasts - Going beyond the typical content used in B2B can help you cut through the noise more efficiently. Engaging videos and podcasts that break down relevant topics can also help you reach more leads, create trust, and build brand authority.

4. Use social media platforms

Social media platforms can be particularly useful for building relationships with potential leads and nurturing them over time. 

Namely, you can use social media to share valuable content, engage in conversations, and provide insights that address the needs of your target audience.

LinkedIn is probably the most famous social media platform used for B2B sales and lead generation and for a good reason - it gathers together professionals across industries and borders, providing B2B companies with a rich lead pool.

To efficiently use LinkedIn for B2B sales and lead gen, there are several steps to take:

• Optimize your profile - Make sure that your company profile stays true to your overall messaging and value proposition while at the same time introducing your brand to potential leads in a clear and compelling way.
• Invest in LinkedIn Sales Navigator - This is virtually a must if you want to run LinkedIn lead generation campaigns, as it enables you to apply more advanced search filters, get lead suggestions based on your previous searches, etc.
• Post regularly - Make a habit of sharing compelling and relevant posts. These can include your views on current industry trends, valuable tips for practitioners in your target vertical, links to interesting articles, useful infographics, and more.

• Engage with leads - No point in being on social media if you don’t interact with your network. Like, reshare, and comment on other people’s posts, join groups and relevant discussions, and more, to build meaningful relationships and show leads you can be trusted.
• Urge leads to action - Using interactive content like polls or simply asking for your leads’ opinions, questions, or comments in your posts can get you a long way. Getting them to actively participate will make leads feel more valued and see you as more of a friend or a thought leader than someone trying to sell at all costs.

5. Focus on email campaigns

If you think cold email is dead, think again.

Email campaigns remain one of the most effective and reliable strategies for B2B lead generation, as they provide direct, personal, and measurable ways to reach potential leads and nurture them through the sales funnel. 

However, to get the results you want, there are several key areas to focus on:

• Build targeted email lists - Rather than sending generic emails to a broad audience, focus on building lead segments based on criteria such as industry, job title, company size, or past interactions. This allows you to tailor your messaging, making your emails more relevant and increasing the likelihood of engagement.
• Personalize everything - When it comes to personalization, it’s important to know that it extends beyond just personalized greetings. It can include things like customized product recommendations, content suggestions, and offers based on the recipient's behavior or preferences.
• Use attention-grabbing subject lines - The subject line is often the first—and sometimes only—thing a recipient sees, making it crucial for sparking their interest. Subject lines should be concise, clear, and relevant, enticing the recipient to open the email. 
• Don’t forget to include a CTA - Once opened, the email’s content should have a clear and strong CTA that guides the recipient toward the desired next step, whether it’s downloading a resource, signing up for a webinar, or contacting your sales team.

6. Implement marketing automation and AI tools

Marketing automation and AI tools can help you scale B2B lead generation efforts while maintaining a personalized approach. 

Automation tools can streamline email marketing, lead nurturing, and customer segmentation, allowing your team to focus on higher-level strategies.

Email drip campaigns are the one marketing process that’s most commonly automated, as putting it on autopilot can help you reach more qualified leads in less time.

Get a tool that can:

• Automatically add leads who match predefined criteria in email cadences.
• Ensure that each email is personalized (based on the lead’s interests, interactions with your website, downloaded content, etc.).
• Send emails and follow-ups in specified frequencies.

AI-powered tools, on the other hand, can predict lead behavior, pull relevant information based on predefined criteria, and personalize messaging thanks to their ability to analyze large datasets and detect patterns.

This makes them perfect for:

• Lead enrichment.
• Lead scoring and qualification.
• Powering smart chatbots.

7. Host and attend networking events

In-person, virtual, and hybrid events can also be leveraged as a solid B2B lead gen strategy, enabling you to:

• Connect with key stakeholders from companies fitting your ICP and build rapport.
• Position your brand as an industry leader.

Both hosting and attending these events can help you generate leads, each in their own way.

When it comes to hosting events, you should focus on:

• Choosing the right format - Depending on your target audience and goals, decide whether a virtual, hybrid, or in-person event is most suitable. Webinars, roundtable discussions, and industry conferences are all effective formats for B2B networking.
• Curating valuable content - Content is king, even in networking events. Aim to deliver high-value content that addresses your target audience's key pain points and interests. This could include expert panels, keynote speeches, and interactive workshops that not only engage attendees but also showcase your expertise.

• Engage attendees - Encourage your audience to participate actively by implementing things like Q&A sessions, live polls, or breakout discussions. This interaction not only enhances the attendee experience but also provides valuable insights into their needs and challenges, which can improve your follow-up strategies.
• Collect leads - This is the key advantage of choosing to host your own event, as you can use registration forms, surveys, and interactive tools like polls to gather information on attendees. 

At the same time, attending industry-relevant events can also help you generate more quality leads, as you can:

• Focus on connecting with key attendees - Research the attendee list beforehand and pinpoint the prospects who might be the best match for your product and service so you’ll know who to prioritize and how to approach them.
• Maximize booth engagement - When it comes to industry conferences and trade shows, you should ensure that your booth or exhibit (if you have one) is visually appealing and staffed with knowledgeable representatives who can engage attendees. Offer incentives like free trials, exclusive content, or giveaways to attract visitors and capture their contact information.
• Leverage speaking opportunities - If possible, secure a speaking slot at the event. Presenting at an event gives you a platform to showcase your expertise to a large audience, positioning your company as a leader in the industry and attracting potential leads.

How to build an efficient B2B lead generation funnel step-by-step

Finally, once you’ve explored all these strategies and narrowed down on the ones you’d like to implement first, it’s time to design your very own B2B lead generation funnel.

Here are the key steps you should follow to ensure that each funnel stage performs the best it possibly can:

1. Define your target audience, ICP, and unique value proposition - This step precedes actual funnel building because you can’t do much unless you know who you’re supposed to target with it. Determining who your target audience is, defining ICP attributes, and crafting a compelling value proposition enables you to create a funnel optimized for companies most likely to convert.
2. Leverage software tools that can help you maximize conversions - Data enrichment platforms, website traffic identification solutions, chatbots, sales automation, and various marketing tools can all be used to strengthen and improve your funnel.
3. Attract leads with TOFU content - At the awareness stage, you must attract and capture leads’ attention by providing educational and informative content that helps them understand their challenges and potential solutions. Key strategies include content marketing and Search Engine Optimization, as well as lead magnets.
4. Nurture them by leveraging MOFU content - In the consideration stage, you need to deliver deeper insights into how your product or service can solve leads’ specific problems while at the same time building trust and meaningful relationships. Effective strategies at this stage include email campaigns, case studies and testimonials, product demos, and webinars.
5. Convert them with BOFU content and strategies - At the decision-making stage, your goal is to convince leads that your solution is ideal for their needs by removing any remaining doubts and objections and urging them to take action. Strategies include free trials, personalized meetings, special offers, etc.
6. Focus on retaining customers - The relationship doesn’t end at conversion. Post-conversion follow-up is crucial for building long-term relationships and encouraging repeat purchases. The best way to achieve this is to provide excellent onboarding and overall user experience, continuously engage with customers through check-ins and personalized offers, have good customer support, etc.

The best way to grasp what an efficient B2B lead generation funnel looks like is through a practical example using Warmly as our lead generation tool of choice:

1. Design a compelling company website - Follow the guidelines explained above and optimize your website for your target audience and SEO requirements. Make sure to include all the relevant sections that can help raise brand awareness, such as a blog page, feature breakdown, etc.
2. Implement website visitor identification tools - Use solutions like Warmly to detect website visitors and narrow down those who are most likely to convert.

3. Engage high-intent sales leads - Use Warmly’s AI Chat function to engage and further qualify leads. The chatbot can be trained to engage only leads who show high buying intent or all website visitors by:

• Sending personalized, contextual messages based on info such as the lead’s name, company, the page they were surfing, etc.
• Offer additional resources based on the content the lead was consuming (e.g., send a case study detailing how a product feature they were exploring helped another company overcome a specific problem).
• Ask questions to urge them to interact with your brand and qualify them (questions like “What brings you here?” or “How can I help you today?”).

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• Book meetings.

4. Nurture them through personalized LinkedIn and email campaigns - Warmly’s Orchestrator can automatically add leads who match specified criteria (e.g., engaged with the chatbot, visited the pricing page, came back to your website several times, etc.) in nurturing campaigns by:

• Sending a personalized LinkedIn request or DM.
• Sending a personalized email that can include special resources leads may find useful (free checklists or templates), exclusive offers, customer testimonials, etc.

5. Convert them by leveraging the insights Warmly provided - Ensure that your sales reps nail every sales meeting by providing them with actionable insights on each lead, including their buyer intent level, interests, pain points, etc. That way, they’ll be able to tailor their approach to every individual lead, improving the chance of successful conversion.

How to measure the success of your B2B lead generation funnel

Once you’ve designed and applied your B2B lead generation funnel, monitoring it to ensure it’s performing as intended is crucial. 

There are several key metrics you should track to understand how effective your B2B lead gen funnel is:

1. Conversion rates show the percentage of leads who progressed from one funnel stage to the next. There are several to keep an eye on:

• Visitor-to-Lead - The percentage of website visitors who provide their contact information in exchange for a resource or lead magnet or exhibit high-intent behavior.
• Lead-to-Marketing Qualified Lead - The percentage of leads that meet the criteria set by your marketing team to be considered qualified (e.g., attended a webinar).
• MQL-to-Sales Qualified Lead - The percentage of MQLs that are deemed ready for direct sales engagement (e.g., requested a demo).
• SQL-to-Customer - The percentage of SQLs that ultimately convert into paying customers.

2. Cost per lead, which measures the average amount of money you spend to acquire a single lead. To calculate it, divide your total lead generation costs by the total number of leads generated.

3. Customer lifetime value, which estimates the total revenue a business can expect from a customer over the entire duration of their relationship, helping you better understand overall customer acquisition costs. To calculate it, multiply the average purchase value by the purchase frequency and the average customer lifespan.

In addition to helping you figure out how your funnel is performing, these metrics are critical for one other thing - determining the ROI of your lead generation efforts.

To calculate it, use the following formula:

(Total Lead Gen Revenue - Total Lead Gen Costs) / Total Lead Gen Costs x 100

To accurately measure ROI this way, you’ll need to:

• Track all revenue generated by various lead-generation channels.
• Include all costs associated with lead generation, such as marketing spend, software subscriptions, and labor.
• Analyzing CLV in relation to CPL provides additional context, helping you understand the long-term profitability of your lead generation efforts.

Start generating more quality B2B leads today

Ready to fill your pipeline with quality leads?

All it takes is following our guidelines and tried-and-true practices to start successfully generating and converting hot new leads.

Warmly can help you optimize your lead generation efforts and reach your goals faster by:

• Detecting high-value leads on your website.
• Engaging and nurturing them via automated campaigns.
• Enabling reps to reach out to hot leads straight from your website.

Sign up for Warmly’s free plan and find out how it can help your business unlock its full lead generation potential.

Or book a live demo and test the waters first.

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Picking the right lead generation channel is one of the essential prerequisites for running successful lead generation campaigns.

However, given the wide range of online and offline lead generation strategies, finding the most efficient marketing channels to drive business growth takes a lot of work.

This is why, in this article, we'll explore the top 9 lead generation channels that businesses should focus on to:

• Increase their reach.
• Maximize lead acquisition.
• Improve their conversion rates across levels.

The importance of multi-channel lead generation

Before we begin, it’s important to emphasize that sticking to a single lead gen channel is no longer enough, regardless of your industry and target audience.

The market has never been as competitive as today due to various factors - e.g., more businesses migrating online and competing for leads’ attention, potential customers becoming much pickier thanks to being able to research potential solutions independently, etc. - meaning it’s wise to cover as many relevant touchpoints as possible to achieve optimal reach and engagement.

Multichannel lead generation can help you overcome many of these challenges and efficiently cut through the noise thanks to several advantages it provides, including:

Diversifying the risk

You know the saying that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket?

Well, the same goes for lead generation. Investing all your efforts and resources in a single channel can wreak havoc on your business if something unexpected happens in that particular avenue (e.g., your email automation tools stop working as intended, or your content doesn’t perform as expected).

Relying on multiple channels can help reduce the overall risk because if one channel fails, the others will keep going, helping you create a resilient and risk-proof strategy.

Increasing your reach and brand visibility

Using a single lead gen channel will limit your reach only to leads who can be reached via that channel and respond well to that particular strategy. 

At the same time, all other potential customers will go to waste, as different leads have different preferences for consuming content and engaging with brands.

Some leads (particularly younger generations) may prefer to interact with your brand on social media via innovative, interactive content, whereas B2B leads, for example, might best respond to email campaigns.

Therefore, multichannel strategies can help you:

• Reach the right target audience in the right place, increasing your chance of successful conversion.
• Display your brand in front of your Total Addressable Market.

Improving brand engagement 

Enabling your potential leads to come across your brand on various platforms helps establish your presence in their minds, making it more likely for them to consider your solution first when deciding to buy.

Moreover, by ensuring your messaging is tailored to each platform’s advantages, characteristics, and primary audience, you can build trust and credibility more easily, positioning your brand as an industry leader.

Boosting conversion rates

Finally, all these advantages combined result in the one outcome all businesses strive for - more conversions.

Covering various channels and engaging with potential leads in a way best suited to the platform and audience in question can make guiding prospects down the funnel faster and easier.

Successful multichannel lead generation campaign examples

If you need any extra proof of the efficiency of multichannel lead generation, it’s best to look at major brands, as they all use some variation of this approach.

Take Coca-Cola, for instance. 

The company has successfully integrated digital marketing, traditional advertising, and experiential marketing to create a cohesive brand experience. 

Their campaigns often span social media, TV, in-store promotions, and events, ensuring they reach consumers wherever they are.

Here’s a custom example of a multichannel lead gen campaign that you can implement today, using only your website and Warmly:

1. Add Warmly’s code snippet to your website and/or all the landing pages for which you want to track traffic.
2. Start capturing the companies and individuals visiting your website and getting detailed B2B and intent data on each so you can easily detect the hottest ones/those who best match your ICP.

3. Leverage Warmly’s AI Chat to get leads to engage with your brand by asking them contextual questions, offering valuable resources, answering their questions, etc.

4. Use Warmly’s Orchestrator to automatically add leads matching specified criteria (they visited a specific page, downloaded your whitepaper, etc.) to email and/or LinkedIn sequences to nurture and guide them further down the funnel.

5. Have sales reps use the insights Warmly unearthed on each lead to tailor their messaging and overall approach in meetings and calls to increase the chance of conversion.

By combining your website, LinkedIn and email outreach, and chatbot engagement to attract, engage, nurture, and delight leads, you’ll improve conversion rates throughout the sales funnel.

Expert tip for optimizing multichannel lead generation campaigns

To make the most of multichannel lead generation, there’s one thing you shouldn't neglect, and that’s the integration of online and offline channels into a single holistic strategy.

Although you might be tempted to rely on digital channels alone, as they can generally help you reach a global audience, offline channels can still find their place in optimized lead-gen campaigns for several reasons:

Not everyone can be reached via digital channels

As incredible as it may sound while you read this article from your computer or mobile device, approximately one-third of the global population doesn’t have internet access. 

Moreover, older generations often don’t navigate the digital landscape as easily, meaning they can only be reached via offline tactics. And as they account for 1B+ of the global population, you may be missing out on a lot if you stick to digital alone.

You can create more resilient lead-generation campaigns

Imagine the worst possible scenario - the Internet just stops working, or we start experiencing power outages.

If you rely only on online channels, imagine the impact this could have on your business.

We don’t have to go that far, as even a small hiccup in the lead gen platforms you use could negatively affect your ability to generate leads.

Therefore, having offline channels as a safety net is always a good idea.

In-person contact can often tip the scales in your favor

Humans love to interact with each other, meaning that you can be much more convincing and successful in building trust and driving sales through in-person contact.

This is why hosting and attending industry-relevant events and even cold calling can significantly boost your success rates, enabling your leads to put a friendly face to the brand.

Most importantly, this is an offline lead generation approach that you can apply even if you are conducting SaaS lead generation. In contrast, some others (e.g., brick-and-mortar stores, direct mail, etc.) may be impossible or unsuitable.

And now, let’s get a closer look at the best lead generation channels to focus on to generate and convert more quality leads.

1. Organic traffic

Organic traffic is one of the first things to focus on when handling lead generation, as it can be a rich source of high-quality leads.

However, to ensure that you’ll drive quality traffic, there are a few things to take care of first:

• Optimize your website for conversions - Your website needs to be created with your target audience in mind, meaning that the messaging and overall structure need to be tailored to your ICP’s needs, pain points, and expectations. Include a compelling value proposition and actionable and engaging CTAs, and ensure the website is easy to navigate.
• Invest in Search Engine Optimization - SEO can help your website rank higher on SERPs, increasing brand visibility and the chance that you’ll attract qualified website traffic. SEO is a wide concept, but when it comes to website SEO, there are several areas to cover:
• Technical SEO (loading speed, mobile optimization, etc.).
• On-site SEO (ensuring that titles, meta titles, images, and overall structure align with current SEO requirements).
• Keyword optimization (including keywords relevant to your product and target audience, making it easier for them to find you).

• Backlinks and internal linking - Backlinks can help improve your domain rating and brand reputation, whereas internal linking also helps with better navigation.

However, even attracting hundreds of thousands of website visitors each month will not do much good if most of them remain casual onlookers.

You need to capture the actual leads among them, which can be done in several ways:

• Leverage lead magnets - Offer valuable resources in exchange for leads’ contact information. The best-performing content usually includes templates, checklists, ebooks, etc.

• Implement lead capture forms - You can hook leads to provide you with their information by having them submit lead gen forms with info such as email address, name, etc., to subscribe to a newsletter or get a discount, a chance to participate in a contest, and more.
• Use website traffic tracking tools - Solutions like Warmly can identify website visitors and provide you with detailed data on each, including everything from basic contact info to B2B data (firmographics, technographics, etc.) and intent data that reveals their readiness to buy.

Pro tip: You can combine these lead acquisition methods for the best results.

Not all leads will submit forms or download lead magnets - a website visitor identification platform can ensure you’ve covered them as well.

2. Content marketing

Creating and distributing relevant, engaging, and valuable content is one of the most efficient lead generation channels that can be used by any business, regardless of their specific industry, target market, whether they’re B2B or B2C, etc.

When designing your content strategy, it’s important to note that understanding your audience's needs, pain points, and interests is the foundation of successful content marketing. 

Delivering content that addresses these aspects can help you attract the right prospects and guide them toward conversion. 

To ensure that your content will generate leads with maximum efficiency, focus on the following steps:

1. Research your audience - You have to get to know your audience and ICPs to understand what resonates the most with them, what challenges they’re facing, what problems they’re looking to solve, etc. Once you have an intimate knowledge of that, you’ll be able to create content that caters to their needs and preferences.
2. Make it educational and relevant - Content that addresses specific pain points or answers common questions is more likely to attract attention. For example, a blog post that offers actionable tips on solving a common industry problem can draw in leads searching for solutions, making this type of content perfect for the awareness and consideration stages of the funnel.
3. Be unique - Hyper-production of content means that lots of companies will be producing content similar to yours, making it more difficult to stand out. Aim to be original by using interactive content types (interactive demos, quizzes, assessments, etc.) or creating articles and other resources that bring value and stay true to your unique brand messaging.
4. Don’t forget SEO - Your content needs to follow SEO guidelines, just like your website. Include relevant keywords and make sure it’s well-structured.

There's no simple answer when it comes to the types of content you should leverage for lead generation. It all depends on your product, audience, and the resources you’re willing to allocate.

However, there are some best practices when it comes to choosing the type of content to produce.

For instance, expert resources such as whitepapers, case studies, and industry benchmark reports typically perform better with B2B leads who are more demanding and are led by reason and practicality more than by emotions.

Videos, quizzes, and customer testimonials that focus on compelling storytelling, on the other hand, usually resonate better with B2C leads.

Content such as blogs, simpler infographics, and even ebooks are equally useful for both lead types as they can provide relevant value to all.

Of course, these are not strict rules, meaning you’re free to choose whichever content type you prefer - and think your audience will respond the best to.

However, creating quality content is just half the battle, as you have to ensure it reaches the right audience.

In addition to leveraging SEO efforts and relying on organic traffic, you can distribute your content via email, social media, and more.

3. Podcasts

Podcasts have rapidly emerged as one of the best channels for lead generation, offering a unique way to connect with audiences through engaging, long-form content. 

‎Namely, not everyone enjoys reading lengthy articles, and podcasts have popped up as a nice way to overcome that challenge, providing education and entertainment simultaneously.

Podcasts are a useful lead generation channel for several reasons, including:

• Building trust and authority - Similarly to blogs and other relevant content types, podcasts let you establish authority and thought leadership within your industry by sharing insights, discussing trends, and offering valuable advice.
• Engaging leads - Podcasts' audio format allows for deeper engagement compared to other content types. Listeners often consume podcasts while commuting, exercising, or working, enabling them to engage with your brand while doing other things. 
• Amplifying reach through guest appearances - Hosting interesting experts not only adds value to your content but also expands your reach. When guests share their episode with their own audience, it introduces your brand to new potential leads who might not have discovered you otherwise.
• Promoting brand loyalty - If you produce an engaging and educational podcast, chances are you’ll build a loyal audience of listeners who will, in turn, be more likely to turn to your brand when they need a product or service you offer instead of going to your direct competitors.

To effectively use podcasts for capturing leads, you could either use gated content (e.g., offer additional resources relevant to a specific topic, such as a checklist) or leverage podcast notes where you add links to landing pages, downloadable resources, or special offers.

So, should you start a podcast to generate more leads?

While podcasts have a significant lead generation potential, their actual efficiency depends on a variety of factors, such as:

• Your industry and offering - Unless you can find enough relevant topics and industry experts to host, it’s better not to embark on this journey at all.
• Your target audience - Market research is key here as well, as you have to determine whether your audience would consume podcasts in the first place.

4. Paid advertising

Paid ads are one of the most commonly used lead generation channels that enable you to display your brand to highly targeted audiences.

However, since PPC advertising involves competing for relevant keywords and paying for each click, it can quickly lead to overspending unless you’ve optimized your PPC campaigns by:

• Doing extensive keyword research - Identify the search terms your target audience is using to find products or services like yours and bid on those keywords. Focus on a mix of high-intent keywords (e.g., “buy,” “compare,” etc.) and broader terms that can attract leads earlier in the buying process.
• Crafting compelling ad copy and CTAs - Ensure that your ad copy is concise, persuasive, and directly addresses your target audience's needs or pain points. Highlight your unique selling points and include a strong CTA encouraging users to click. 
• Optimizing the associated landing pages - Create landing pages relevant to the ad, ensure they load quickly, and have a clear, easy-to-follow structure.
• Using retargeting campaigns - Retargeting lets you re-engage users who have previously interacted with your website or ads but didn’t convert. By serving tailored ads to these prospects as they browse other sites or social media platforms, you can keep your brand top-of-mind and encourage them to return and complete their purchase.

5. Email campaigns

No lead generation channel list would be complete without email marketing, as emails remain one of the most widely used strategies for attracting and nurturing leads.

Leveraging email enables you to create more personal relationships with leads, as direct and personalized contact can significantly boost your success rates regarding building trust and rapport.

However, because everyone’s using email for lead generation, it’s expected that your leads’ inboxes will be overcrowded, meaning you’ll have to walk the extra mile to hook them in.

This includes paying attention to:

• Personalization from top to bottom, as no one will bother even opening, and much less reading a generic email.
• Having attention-grabbing subject lines and introductions, as you have only a few seconds to compel leads to actually give you a chance.
• Including relevant CTAs, as there’s no point in sending emails just for the sake of it. You’re aiming to urge leads to take an action that drives them down the sales funnel, so make sure you use the right CTA for their stage, email context, etc.

Pro tip: When running email campaigns on scale, it would be wise to use automation tools to help you reach more leads in less time.

Modern sales tools are often AI-powered, enabling them to take personalization one step further and ensuring that your leads feel valued and appreciated.

6. Social media channels

Nowadays, almost everyone is on social media, which makes it the ideal lead-generation channel for all kinds of businesses.

Platforms like LinkedIn, X, Instagram, TikTok, and others are great sources of relevant leads, provided you know how to harness their potential.

Just having a profile won’t do you much good if you don’t use social networks as intended - to communicate and engage with other users. 

In this case, the users in question include potential customers, meaning you have to design a social media outreach platform according to your target audience.

Regardless, there are some things you can do to increase your chances of generating more leads, including:

• Creating a compelling and informative profile that shows leads everything they need to know about your brand and offering.
• Sharing valuable content, such as articles, links to blogs, checklists, infographics, your views on industry trends, etc.

• Running contests and giveaways to boost engagement and popularity.
• Engaging with leads regularly by commenting on their posts, replying to their comments, joining groups, participating in discussions, etc.

7. Webinars 

Webinars have become another great lead generation channel. They can help you identify and capture qualified leads, position yourself as an industry leader, and engage leads more actively.

The best part about them is that they are hosted online, meaning you can easily reach audiences across continents without significant expenses.

To ensure that they successfully attract qualified leads, choose a compelling topic that resonates with your target audience and present it in an engaging way.

Moreover, to drive active participation, you can include live polls, Q&A sessions, and chat features, encouraging leads to ask questions, give their views on a specific topic, or share personal experiences and best practices.

By including your leads in your presentation, you’ll gain a closer look at their needs, pain points, and expectations while building rapport.

Finally, webinars are a sort of evergreen content, as you can use recordings of prior events to generate new leads over time. Make them available on demand, asking viewers to provide their email addresses to access them.

8. Conferences and trade shows

In-person events like conferences and trade shows can help you build lasting relationships faster and more easily than by relying on online methods alone.

Attending industry-relevant events provides you with a wonderful opportunity to showcase your brand and product while staying in complete control over your brand image and the way potential leads interact with you.

This is why you should ensure that your booth or exhibit is compelling and engaging enough to give leads all the information they may need on your product.

You can even consider incorporating multimedia displays, product demonstrations, or interactive elements that encourage participation. 

The more engaging your booth, the more likely attendees are to stop by and engage with your team, increasing your chances of capturing qualified leads.

9. Cold calling

Cold calling is one of the oldest lead generation channels that remains in use to this day.

In fact, it’s probably the most widely used offline channel for generating leads in both B2B and B2C.

Similarly to in-person events, it allows for direct engagement and interaction with potential leads, making it more personal than email campaigns.

Additionally, cold calling enables you to get immediate feedback, meaning you’ll know on the spot how well your approach is working, letting you improvise and adjust your offering on the go.

Cold calling can be used at various funnel stages, from building product awareness to following up on a previous interaction or closing a deal, making them one of the more versatile lead generation channels.

For best results, you should carefully prepare for each call - having sales call templates and scenarios crafted beforehand is a solid practice to adopt. 

Come equipped with all the relevant product info and lead data you can get your hands on to ensure you’ll overcome objections and be as convincing as possible.

Create a powerful multichannel lead generation strategy today

Ultimately, you’re the only one who can tell which of these channels fits the best with your overall approach, audience, and product offering.

You can combine them any way you want, just make sure to cover all the channels where your target audience primarily lives.

The one aspect you should never neglect, though, is your website. 

It’s the one piece of the puzzle you already have, so you should ensure you use its lead generation potential to the fullest—and Warmly can help with that.

Sign up for Warmly’s free plan and fill your pipeline with qualified leads in minutes.

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In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, businesses continuously search for effective ways to convert casual visitors into committed customers.

However, with tons of businesses competing to grab your ideal audience’s attention, how do you ensure success? 

Enter the lead generation funnel—an essential framework that translates marketing efforts into tangible results. 

Namely, a well-designed lead generation funnel can help:

• Raise brand awareness and attract potential prospects.
• Educate them on why your product is the best solution for their needs.
• Nurture them every step of their customer journey.
• Successfully convert them.

In this detailed step-by-step guide, we’ll explain the lead generation funnel and how it can help you convert interested leads into loyal customers and drive business growth across levels.

What is a lead generation funnel?

Let’s begin with the basics - by explaining what a sales lead funnel is.

The best way to understand a lead generation funnel is to think of it as a step-by-step process that guides prospects through several stages of the buyer journey - from initial awareness to final purchase -  while ensuring they’re provided with an optimal nurturing and engagement experience.

Unlike a traditional sales funnel, which focuses primarily on closing deals, a lead generation funnel also emphasizes the earlier stages of the customer journey. 

It starts with attracting potential leads through content marketing, social media, or other outreach methods. 

Once these leads are engaged, the funnel uses targeted strategies to guide them through a series of steps—such as lead magnets, nurturing emails, and personalized content—to build trust and move them closer to deciding to buy.

As a result, each funnel stage, including awareness, consideration, and decision, requires specific guidance.

This means you need to create tailored content and engagement strategies for every funnel stage to appeal to your prospects’ growing expectations and needs.

Here’s a practical example of a website-focused lead generation funnel to get a better grasp of the entire concept:

Your website is like a shop window - the first thing customers come in contact with regarding your brand. 

As such, it must be well-designed to drive traffic, raise brand awareness and educate potential leads on things essential for solving their problem or handling their needs. 

To ensure that your website is optimized for attracting your ICP, here’s a quick checklist:

1. Clear, concise, and to-the-point copy.
2. Relevant and actionable CTAs.
3. Lead magnets and lead capture forms positioned in strategic places.
4. SEO, including both website structure and technical aspects (mobile friendliness, loading speed, etc.).

Pro tip: To check whether your website is attracting your ideal audience and capture quality leads who landed on it so you can nurture and guide them further down the funnel, you’ll need a website visitor identification tool such as Warmly.

With it, you’ll reveal who’s visiting your website in real-time and how they interact with it. Moreover, based on intent data, you’ll be able to gauge which of them are most likely to convert into paying customers.

         

Once you’ve identified website visitors and detected those who best match your ICP or show high buying intent, you can nurture them to build trust and establish a lasting relationship.

You can do this by sending personalized emails, chatbot messages, etc., ensuring your communication is tailored to each lead.

         

Finally, once all this is done, your sales team will just have to handle sales meetings and close deals, leveraging the intent data Warmly revealed.

Why is a lead generation funnel important?

So, why should businesses care so much about lead funnels?

Simply put, implementing a lead generation funnel can positively impact your business's success by optimizing how leads are acquired and converted into customers. 

Several key benefits stem from using lead generation funnels, including:

• Improving lead conversion rates - The funnel effectively targets and nurtures leads by systematically guiding prospects through each journey stage while applying a tailored approach. This means that prospects receive relevant content and messaging fitting their needs and interests, increasing the likelihood of taking the desired action and becoming paying customers.
• Enhancing the overall customer journey - Leveraging personalized content and strategic engagement at each stage enables businesses to address their prospects' unique concerns and needs. This customized experience builds trust and credibility and keeps prospects engaged, making them more likely to move further down the funnel and ultimately purchase.
• Reducing customer acquisition cost - Businesses can allocate their marketing resources more efficiently by focusing on nurturing high-intent leads. This reduces budget waste on poor-quality leads, ensuring your efforts will be spent on qualified leads alone.

How to build a lead generation funnel: Step-by-step

And now, let’s explain step-by-step how to build an effective lead-generation funnel.

Step 1: Identify your target audience

To create an efficient lead generation funnel, you first need to know the audience you want to attract.

To do that, you need to research the market by:

• Identifying website visitors and tracking how they interact with the site can help you determine which companies and individuals are showing the most interest in your products or services.

         

• Analyze historical customer data to reveal their behavior patterns, overall customer satisfaction, and potential high-churn areas.
• Conduct surveys and analyze your competitors.

Once you do that, you can identify key traits your existing customers and prospects showing interest in your offering have in common and use them to define your ICP.

Those traits can include factors such as industry, company size, technographic data, common pain points, interests, etc.

Finally, you can use those buyer personas to guide content and messaging accordingly, making sure that it’s optimized to achieve certain goals, depending on the specific funnel stage, including:

• Attract and educate potential customers.
• Engage and nurture them.
• Successfully convert them.

Step 2: Create a high-converting lead magnet

Once you know your target audience and ICP, it’s time to create relevant content that can help attract them and establish your brand as a source of truth.

In addition to regular content, such as blogs, how-to-videos, etc., you can also leverage lead magnets.

Lead magnets should include the highest-quality resources you can offer - such as ebooks, templates, industry reports, checklists, etc. - which bring so much value to prospects that they’ll be willing to provide their contact information to access them.

         

For example, if your target audience consists of digital marketers, an ebook on “Advanced SEO Techniques” or a webinar on “Maximizing ROI with PPC Campaigns” could be highly appealing.

The key to success is to ensure that your lead magnet aligns with the interests and needs of your ICP, delivering content that is both relevant and useful.

In addition to creating lead magnets, you also need to ensure that all the relevant landing pages - including those that contain lead magnets, as well as pricing, demo, trial, and similar pages - are optimized for generating more conversions.

When designing landing pages, focus on several elements:

• Engaging copy - Use persuasive and concise copy throughout the landing page, keeping it relevant to the page type. For instance, if the focus is on a lead magnet, emphasize its benefits and explain how it solves the visitor’s problems. If it’s a landing page for leads who’ve come through a specific email campaign, match it to the email’s content and provide personalized offers.
• Social proof - Include reviews, testimonials, or case studies that illustrate the value and efficiency of your lead magnet or product in general, depending on the type of landing page.
• Use simple forms - Keep the lead capture form short, asking only for essential information such as name and email address. This significantly reduces friction, improving your chance of getting more form submissions.

Pro tip: Sometimes having a good website and landing pages can replace traditional lead magnets.

If your website is optimized for attracting your target audience - i.e., includes relevant copy, compelling visuals, social proof, etc. - you can use a website traffic tracking tool to identify website visitors and pull their contact info regardless of whether they filled out forms.

This way, you’ll ensure no quality lead falls through the cracks.

Step 3: Set up an email nurturing campaign

After getting leads’ email addresses, it’s time to move on to the next step and funnel stage: lead nurturing.

One of the best ways to do this is via email.

Namely, sending engaging follow-up emails at different funnel stages is crucial for nurturing leads further down the funnel.

For instance, you can send:

• Thank you emails to leads who signed up for your webinar, showing them that they matter to you.
• Bonus resources to leads who downloaded a relevant resource (e.g., a PPC optimization checklist to leads who downloaded an ebook on PPC advertising).
• Special offers to leads who’ve interacted with your website in a high-intent way (e.g., frequently visited your pricing page, etc.). 

         

Of course, to optimize email campaigns for success, you need to personalize each email for each lead based on their specific interests, backgrounds, previous brand interactions, etc., which will boost your open and response rates.

Firstly, adequately segment your email list to ensure that different lead groups receive emails tailored to their specific traits.

With Warmly, you can segment email lists and send customized emails on autopilot by using its Orchestrator feature,

The Orchestrator will automatically add website visitors who match the criteria you defined in personalized email campaigns, ensuring every lead gets an email that resonates with their interests and behavior.

The criteria you can specify includes:

• Trigger action (e.g., sending emails to all leads who visit your pricing or other high-intent page, engage with your chatbot, download a lead magnet, etc.).
• Type of company and persona you want to reach out to (based on filters like industry, size, employee count, job role, seniority, etc.).

After defining that, the Orchestrator will take care of the rest.

Step 4: Implement a strong CTA

Use compelling CTAs throughout the funnel, as they’re vital for converting visitors into leads (or leads into paying customers) by prompting them to take specific action. 

To ensure your CTA is effective and drives conversions, there are several key principles to follow:

• Use clear and attention-grabbing messaging -Your CTA should clearly state what action you want the visitor to take. Use precise language that leaves no room for ambiguity. Instead of a generic "Submit," opt for more descriptive CTAs like "Download Your Free eBook" or "Start Your Free Trial."
• Highlight benefits of taking a specific action - Emphasize the instant value the visitor will receive by clicking the CTA. For example, if you’re offering a free resource, your CTA might be "Get Instant Access to Expert Tips" to make the benefit straightforward.
• Make them visually compelling - Use contrasting colors to help the CTA stand out, place it where it’s visible without scrolling, and ensure it’s big enough to be easily clickable.
• Create a sense of urgency - This is especially useful for the later stages of the funnel when you aim to convert leads into customers. Phrases like "Limited Time Offer," "Act Now," or countdown timers can create a psychological push for visitors to act more quickly.

         

To pinpoint CTAs that resonate the best with your target audience, you should conduct A/B tests on various elements (e.g., wording, size, placement, etc.). This approach allows you to find the CTA that drives the most conversions.

Step 5: Monitor and optimize your funnel

Finally, once everything is set up, you’ll need to monitor the funnel’s performance to ensure efficiency.

To do so, you should:

• Track relevant metrics, such as conversion rates, lead quality, and cost per lead.
• Analyze key data to identify potential bottlenecks and determine how your leads engage with your content and CTAs.
• Use customer feedback by conducting surveys and interviews and analyzing customer reviews to understand what delights your customers and what puts them off.

Finally, you should regularly review funnel performance and refine your lead generation strategy based on insights.

This could involve anything from updating lead magnets and revising email copy to adjusting CTAs to better align with your audience’s evolving needs.

The stages of a lead generation funnel

Typically, lead generation funnels consist of 4 stages:

1. Awareness 
2. Consideration 
3. Decision 
4. Retention 

Let’s quickly break down these stages of the lead generation process to help you better understand what each entails and what strategies to deploy in each.

Awareness stage

The awareness stage is the first step in the lead generation funnel, where potential customers first encounter your brand. 

At this stage, you aim to capture their attention and introduce them to your offerings. 

Here are some techniques you should apply at this stage:

1. Create high-quality content - Focus on developing content that’s informative, relevant, and valuable content to your target audience. Depending on your vision, goals, and audience, this could include blog posts, articles, infographics, videos, and other content types. Just ensure the content addresses their pain points, answers their questions, or provides solutions.
2. Leverage SEO - Use relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and header tags to enhance search engine rankings and drive more organic traffic. This increases the chances of attracting potential leads who are actively searching for information related to your solution.
3. Use social proof - Customer testimonials, case studies, and reviews can help build trust and credibility. Showcasing positive experiences from existing customers can reassure new prospects of the value and effectiveness of your offerings.

         

1. Deploy paid advertising - This helps increase brand visibility further and reach a broader audience. Of course, you need to tailor your ads to align with this stage's overall content and messaging (e.g., promote webinars and ebooks instead of urging leads to buy).
2. Use lead magnets - Offering valuable resources is the perfect incentive for leads to provide their contact information in exchange for getting access to them.

Consideration stage

This is the stage where new leads who have already become aware of your brand evaluate their options and determine whether your solution is a good fit for their needs. 

As a result, at this stage, you should focus on providing deeper insights and building relationships to guide leads toward making a decision. 

Here’s how to effectively engage and nurture leads during this phase:

1. Offer valuable content - More advanced resources, such as detailed whitepapers, case studies, or expert webinars, can be used as lead magnets at this stage. These can help position you as an industry leader while providing in-depth information that builds credibility and showcases your expertise.
2. Use automated email campaigns to keep leads engaged - Ensure that leads get personalized and timely emails based on their interests, behavior, and interactions with your brand.
3. Provide free trials or demos - Free trials enable your leads to experience your product’s value firsthand, letting them try it out before paying. Personalized demos and walkthroughs can also help show leads how your product works and what benefits they might experience from using it. As a result, your leads will be more likely to choose your solution in the end.

         

Decision stage

At this stage, prospects are ready to buy, so your goal is to provide the final push needed to convert leads into customers. 

Here’s how to effectively influence their decision and close the deal:

1. Offer discounts, personalized proposals, and limited-time offers - Crafting personalized offers that align with your customers’ specific needs and pain points increases the likelihood of converting. Discounts and limited-time offers, on the other hand, provide a greater incentive for them to decide faster.
2. Use customer reviews and testimonials - This technique can be leveraged in this stage with equal success as in the awareness stage. At this stage, testimonials can help further establish your solution’s credibility and success in tackling specific pain points and requirements.
3. Implement strong CTAs to encourage decisive action - To urge users to convert, ensure your CTAs are clear and compelling enough. Use clear, actionable language, position them in prominent places on key decision-making pages, and make them visually attractive for optimal results.

         

Retention stage

Although some businesses think that the funnel ends with a successful conversion, one more stage ensures that one-time buyers will transform into loyal, long-term customers.

Here are a few best practices for engaging and retaining existing customers:

1. Use loyalty programs and rewards for recurring customers - A loyalty program that rewards customers for continuing to buy or subscribe (by providing tiered rewards, membership benefits, etc.) can further incentivize repeat buys. You can also offer special rewards for customers who refer others or make additional purchases (e.g., discounts, gifts, exclusive offers, etc.).

         

2. Provide exceptional customer support - Ensure that your customer support is responsive, helpful, and available through multiple channels, such as phone, email, and chat. You can also leverage chatbots that can answer simpler queries or route customers to adequate customer support reps. Quick damage control and problem resolution help maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.

3. Engage with customers post-purchase - Send personalized thank-you notes, follow-up emails, or satisfaction surveys to gather feedback to show that your customers matter to you to keep the relationship strong.

4. Leverage email marketing to upsell and cross-sell - Using targeted email campaigns to promote higher-class products, premium versions of your offering, or related products that complement what the customer has already bought can result in more purchases and higher ROI.

Best practices for optimizing your lead generation funnel

To ensure that your lead generation funnels work as intended - i.e., generate leads and high conversion rates - you can implement several of our tested and tried tips and best practices:

1. Focus on personalization - Providing personalized experiences is a must throughout the entire funnel, as it can help build lasting relationships with leads much faster. Therefore, ensure your content and offers are personalized based on lead behavior, preferences, and interactions. Personalized messaging is also necessary, meaning that every email and message you send must be tailored to each lead’s specific interests and needs.
2. Use marketing tools - Tools that help identify quality leads and automate engagement can streamline your sales and marketing operations, making them more efficient across levels.
3. Test and refine - Conduct A/B tests on various elements of your funnel, such as landing pages, CTAs, and email campaigns. Afterward, analyze the results to identify which variations perform the best and make necessary adjustments.
4. Continuously improve your techniques - Regularly review funnel performance and make improvements based on data insights and feedback. Don’t forget to keep an eye on market trends and lead behavior to ensure your lead funnel is always fine-tuned to your target audience.

Common mistakes to avoid when building a lead generation funnel

If you’re new to building lead generation funnels, it’s easy to fall into certain traps that can significantly damage your funnel’s efficiency.

Here’s a quick checklist of things to avoid at all costs:

• Failing to define your target audience - If you don’t know who you’re targeting, you can easily create generic funnels that won’t lead you anywhere.
• Overcomplicating the funnel - Adding too many stages or steps can confuse or overwhelm leads. Keep the funnel as simple as possible to ensure a smooth progression from one stage to the next.
• Using inadequate lead magnets - Make sure you offer lead magnets that are valuable and relevant enough to your target audience to compel them to share their contact information. Failing to do so will result in lower lead generation rates.
• Neglecting lead nurturing - Not having a structured lead nurturing and follow-up strategy can result in lost opportunities to engage and convert leads. Develop and implement follow-up and nurturing processes to build relationships and move leads further down the funnel.
• Ignoring data and analytics - Not tracking key metrics and performance data can prevent you from understanding how well your funnel performs, resulting in suffering losses across levels.

Generate more leads with Warmly

So, are you ready to build your first high-converting lead generation sales funnel?

Our actionable tips and best practices are sure to help you on your journey, ensuring that high-quality leads will start trickling down your sales pipeline in no time.

Warmly can further improve the process by:

• Identifying high-intent leads that land on your website.
• Engaging them via personalized chat messages and emails.
• Providing live, on-site engagement options that enable your reps to close more deals from the comfort of your website.

Want to give it a go?

Sign up for Warmly’s free plan and generate more quality leads within hours.

Or, book a live demo to see it in action first.