How to drive growth for your company?
As a B2B startup founder, you are tasked with finding the right demand generation channels to drive growth for your company. With so many options available, it can be overwhelming to decide which channels to focus on.
In this article, we will explore six demand generation channels for B2B startups, and provide insights on how to choose the right ones for your business.
- Outbound
Outbound marketing involves reaching out to potential customers through channels such as cold calling, email campaigns, and direct mail. This approach is best suited for B2B products with high average contract values (ACV) and targeting large enterprises.
Outbound can also be used when you are building a new product category that requires educating the market first, or when you layer it on top of a product-led growth motion to target larger customers.
- ABM/ABS – Account-Based Marketing/Sales
Account-based marketing and sales is a strategic approach that targets high-value accounts with personalized campaigns. This approach is most effective for B2B products with high ACV and long sales cycles.
ABM/ABS allows you to focus on the accounts that are most likely to convert and aligns marketing and sales teams around common goals.
- Inbound
Inbound marketing involves creating valuable content that attracts potential customers to your website. This approach is best suited for audiences who love to do their own research, such as developers, marketers, and product managers.
While inbound marketing takes time to produce results, it is a channel worth investing in for its long-term scalability.
- Paid
Paid marketing involves using paid channels to drive traffic to your website. Search engine marketing (SEM) is usually a good place to start to harvest high-intent leads, followed by LinkedIn marketing, which has a large pool of business users. You can also target specialized platforms such as Reddit to reach developers.
Consumer paid social channels such as Facebook and Tiktok are rarely a good fit for B2B, unless you have a strong end-user to company adoption path.
- PLG – Product-Led Growth
Product-led growth is a strategy that focuses on using the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition and retention. This approach works best for companies with a strong product and user adoption path.
By offering a free product or freemium model, you can make other demand generation channels more efficient by lowering the hurdle from a visitor to a user/prospect.
- Partner
Partner marketing involves collaborating with other companies to drive mutual growth. This approach works best for technology and infrastructure products.
When you are bigger, you can set up a partner team to handle this, but when you start out, an easier place to start is the integrations/cloud marketplaces.
How to Choose the Right Demand Generation Channels
Now that we have explored the six demand generation channels for B2B startups, how do you choose the right ones for your business?
Demand Generation summary
- Consider your product and target market.
Outbound and ABM are best suited for B2B products with high ACV and targeting large enterprises. Inbound and Paid are the same channels you use for B2C, and work well with audiences who love to do their own research. PLG works best for companies with a strong product and user adoption path. Partner marketing works well for technology and infrastructure products.
- Assess your resources.
Some channels require more resources than others. Outbound and ABM require a sales team to handle outreach, while inbound and paid require content creation and advertising expertise. PLG requires a strong product and user experience team. Partner marketing requires collaboration with other companies.
- Experiment and iterate.
No single channel will work for every B2B startup. You should experiment with different channels and measure their performance to determine which ones are most effective for your business. It’s important to track metrics such as conversion rates, cost per lead, and customer acquisition cost to make data-driven decisions and adjust your strategy accordingly.
2023 Software trends by Rocketdash
Send download link to:
Demand generation channels don’t work in isolation.
Demand generation channels should be used in conjunction with each other to create a comprehensive marketing strategy.
For example, you can use outbound to target specific accounts while also investing in inbound to attract leads that may not have been on your radar. You can also use PLG to drive user adoption and referrals, while also partnering with other companies to expand your reach.
Choosing the right demand generation channels for your B2B startup requires careful consideration of your product, target market, and available resources. By experimenting with different channels and tracking their performance, you can create a comprehensive marketing strategy that drives growth for your business.
