10 B2B Demand Generation Examples to Inspire You

Myth: Demand generation is all playbooks-based. It’s purely based on experiments. 

There are several companies who've been conducting these demand gen experiments and witnessing the rise in ROI with these campaigns. Curious to take inspiration from these SaaS companies?

In this article, we have listed demand gen examples from different brands that you can use and accelerate your marketing efforts.

Let's roll in. 👯

What is Demand Generation in B2B?

Demand generation is the process of generating interest for a product or service in the market through a series of marketing activities executed via email, social media, web or other online or offline channels. 

Demand generation is different from lead generation in the sense that demand gen focuses on building awareness about your product or service while lead generation activities are focused on driving sign-ups from your existing marketing channels. 

Think of demand gen as a funnel where you have to attract the audience from the search market, social media, communities, and email. They are then filtered to enter the lead generation funnel where we can capture their information. These leads are then qualified by marketers and sent to the sales rep’s pipeline. 

Regarding the content you have to make to generate demand, it has to cater to audiences who are in the different levels of buyer awareness: 

The next question is naturally:

"How do I create a successful demand generation strategy?"

"What demand generation tactics can I use to drive the audience to the lead gen funnel?"

10 Examples of Demand Generation To Take Inspiration From 

We’ve curated a list of 10 B2B demand generation examples that will inspire your current marketing efforts. Using these demand gen campaigns, you’ll be able to pick the brains of these brands—what they did, the results they achieved and why using the particular strategy led to demand gen success.

Video Series

Creating video series and educating your target audience about their challenges, answering their questions and showcasing the value of your product works even better.

• AMA series where you bring in an existing customer and give them a solution to their problem.
• Interview series where you interview your existing customers about their challenges, their journey and how your product helped them.
• Helpful tips series where you share one tip at a time about a specific topic in each episode.

Below we have shared two examples of video series—one, a YouTube video series, and another, a LinkedIn video series.

Example #1: Wynter’s ‘Do You Even Resonate’ Youtube Video Series

‍Wynter’s Youtube channel runs a video series called ‘Do You Even Resonate’ where Peep Laja, CEO of Wynter conducts actual messaging tests on websites to check the conversion quality of the copy. He gives a comprehensive analysis of:

• Tagline
• Headline
• Sub-headline
• Other elements of the website

All in all, he talks about the good, the bad, and the improvements the website needs in order to get more visitors to convert.

In his 7-minute 36 seconds video, Laja picks up one website in each episode and checks how the messaging resonates with its audience, where it lacks, and suggests improvements for the brand to execute and revamp its website for better conversions. Also, he showcases how he could analyze the website’s messaging via Wynter.

‍Impact: The LinkedIn post that Laja shared with the same video garnered 129 likes, 41 comments and 1 social share.

Why Do We Like This?

• It creates FOMO in the viewer’s mind about the right messaging and shows them how Wynter’s solution can provide detailed analysis.

• Laja creates interactive video content and distributes it on his social channels (primarily, LinkedIn) which garners community engagement and helps get more eyeballs on Wynter’s website.

Example #2: HockeyStack’s ‘Can You Dashboard It’ LinkedIn Video Series

‍HockeyStack runs a series called Can You Dashboard It—it is a fun way to show the different features and their implementation. The series features: 

• Emir Atli, the CMO and Co-founder of HockeyStack 
• Courtney Murray, HockeyStack's Lead Customer Success Manager

It is a solo series where Courtney and Emir each demonstrate the specific features of HockeyStack. Obaid Durrani, HockeyStack’s Head of Content shares how he came up with the idea.  

"I came up with the idea for ‘Can You Dashboard It’ while Emir, the Co-founder, showed me how HockeyStack works during our first call."

 That’s how this HockeyStack’s demand generation campaign came into existence. 

While ideating the campaign, Obaid considered two elements—middle-out content and product association. Next, he came up with the structure and format of each episode. Their Lead Designer focused on post-production and created the final episodes. 

Impact: The series received great feedback on communities and social media.

Why Do We Like This?

• It creates a positive interaction in the customer journey creating a memorable experience for the viewers.

• Because many people might not know about all HockeyStack features, this campaign educates the target audience on those lines and showcases how powerful their product is (while keeping this byte-sized demo series fun and entertaining!).

Also Read: An Expert Guide To Customer Journey Analytics 

LinkedIn Campaigns

LinkedIn campaigns are known for their ROI-driven aspect for a reason. There are two ways LinkedIn can help you execute a demand gen campaign—either through organic campaigns or paid ones. The reason LinkedIn campaigns work well when compared to other platforms is because:

1. LinkedIn works well for B2B companies (that’s you!).
2. LinkedIn uses highly targeted filters, which you can customize based on your target audience persona to connect with your ideal customers.

Below we have shared an example of how Postindustria leveraged an organic LinkedIn campaign to engage with its customers on LinkedIn and land collaborations.

Example #3: Postindustria’s LinkedIn Campaign 

Postindustria used LinkedIn to leverage thought leadership and social selling for their products as most companies in their space were doubling down on paid ads and cold outreach.

Further, they turned this LinkedIn campaign into an ABM campaign which helped Postindustria build an ABM campaign, which led them to create expert industry report with Open X and positioned them as experts.

Also Read: 5 Different Strategies For Lead Nurturing in 2023

‍Impact: 9 enterprise-qualified sales opportunities and 3 new contracts with 10X annual contract value (ACV). 

Why Do We Like This?

• Postindustria’s banked on community-building, and personalized conversations with target accounts to spread the word, nurture them and ultimately convert. 

Podcast

Just like blog posts and video series, podcasts let you build awareness about your products and services in an audio format. You could host these podcasts in various styles such as, AMA, interview or solo style. When you host a solo podcast, you can deliver information about the topics you want to talk about. With interview-style podcasts, you can bring in prospective customers, existing customers, or internal team members who would talk about their challenges, and their journey and subtly mention your products and services.

Remember, the end goal with podcasts is to provide value.

Below we’ve shared how Refine Labs leveraged not just one but three podcasts to generate demand for their products and services.

Example #4: Refine Labs’s Podcast

The demand and revenue drivers of Refine Labs are their podcasts and employees' personal brand. The company runs three podcasts:

1. Stacking Growth: It breaks down how B2B companies dominate their categories and unlocks growth. 
2. Revenue Vitals: It talks about building a high-revenue company like Refine Labs did.
3. Talent Destination: It talks about building a people-first company

Both the podcasts, Stacking Growth and Talent Destination feature Refine Labs' employees and external experts who share their insights on specific topics. 

When internal experts from the company participate in the show, it’s obvious they focus on providing insane value to the listener. At times, this involves talking about their company and showcasing how they as a company executed certain strategies.

Also, Refine Lab’s CEO, Chris Walker runs the podcast called Revenue Vitals where he discusses demand generation and revenue growth. 

Here, he uses different podcast formats like interviews, AMAs, and invite-only events where he collaborates with external experts from B2B companies like Salesforce and Proposify to share knowledge with his listeners on specific topics.

Here, his goal is not revenue-oriented. Instead, it’s about educating the listeners through his topics of specialization and building trust with them. 

In one of the episodes of Refine Lab’s podcast, Walker shares, “I'm never measuring the podcast and the amount of revenue that it generates. That's not how to measure it. I can have anecdotal feedback of a message that says your podcast is great. I can have a sales conversation that starts with — I was listening to your podcast… I can have all those things, which are qualitative. But regardless of that, I'm doing [the podcast] anyway because I know I have 500 people listening to it and I know that it fuels everything underneath it, which is even more valuable.”

The interesting part is that neither Chris nor his team members pitch to the podcast guests. Once Chris has collaborated with the podcast guest for an episode, the guest’s team members reach out to him later to work together. This happens because of the conversation Chris and the guest have on the podcast, and because Chris delivers remarkable insights and immense value on certain topics. Along with the guest. Who wouldn’t want to work with you when you’re giving out your expertise for free, right?  

Impact: Out of 25 prospects (from the recent Book a Strategy call form analysis), 5 said they found out about the company via their podcast and 12 via LinkedIn posts.

Why Do We Like This?

• Refine Lab focuses on giving away their knowledge for free and educating the listeners through different forms of content like podcast and LinkedIn posts. It’s because of this free value they provide that people trust them and get interested in their services.  

Listicle Blogs

Listicle blogs are a great way to educate your customers—talk about their problems and give them best practices to reach an ideal solution. When you focus on your ideal customer persona and then write these blog posts, it will resonate with your ICPs. When you provide them immense value with your listicle content, they’re likely to land on your website to find out if they could get more value. 

Below we have shared how Monitask used gated listicle content to generate demand for its product.

Example #5: Monitask's Gated Listicle Guide

Monitask created a demand generation campaign focusing on target accounts i.e., software companies with remote teams. To execute a personalized campaign for these target accounts, they created a listicle content asset called ‘Productivity Unleashed: A Guide to Remote Work Success.’

The campaign's objective was to educate and engage remote software businesses on the importance of effective time-tracking and productivity tools.

To execute this campaign, their demand generation team created a gated ebook that was promoted through various channels, including: 

• Social media advertising
• Google Adwords
• Targeted email marketing

They also partnered with industry influencers and remote work platforms to share the ebook with their audiences. 

Impact: The company saw a 47% increase in inbound leads within the first month and a 35% increase in free trial sign-ups. 

Why Do We Like This?

• They focused on the target audience’s pain point—lack of productivity in managing remote teams effectively. This guide is a hammer on the nail for people who are working remotely at the moment. 

Also Read: Solutions Selling vs Product Selling: What Makes Sense For Your B2B Business?

SEO Blogs

Imagine your ICP lands on a blog post (on Google) written on inbound sales when they searched for this particular keyword. No reader can land instantly on a blog post on Google. The reason being, Google is vast. And to break through the noise, you need to create SEO-driven content relevant to the keywords you’re targeting.

Below is an example of how Springly created SEO blog posts and increased their brand’s discoverability to attract interest from readers..

Example #6: Springly's SEO Blog Post

Springly doubled down on their content strategy—they moved from publishing 4 articles to 25 articles per week. They focused on publishing educational content along with a product dialog box on the side for readers to click on and find out more about Springly.

‍Impact: They saw a 1900% growth within 18 months.

Why Do We Like This?

 Springly uses a 14-day free trial dialog box on Springly's blog—which showcases each article the reader clicks on to read—driving in more new users.

It gives a positive trigger to Google’s algorithm as the website churns EEAT-worthy content, which improves the blog’s visibility and ultimately drives more traffic to the website.

Webinars

Webinars are the real-time version of the video series that you’d execute. And it’s more interactive than videos because you can listen to your target audience at that moment, they can ask you questions, you can share your insights, and make the engagement more personal. 

Doing this helps you build relationships with your ‘to-be customers’, and get to know about your ICPs’  problems. This enabled them to understand your products and services on a better level and generate their interest.

Below we have shared how PurpleFire used webinars to generate interest through webinars.

Example #7: Purple Fire's 'SaaS Power User' Webinar

‍PurpleFire launched the ‘SaaS Power User’ webinar series where it partnered with leading SaaS brands in the target market to co-host a series of webinars. Each webinar focused on:

• Addressing a common challenge faced by businesses

• Offering practical insights, tips, and solutions

Plus, they leveraged partners' networks to expand their reach and ensure the right audience attended the webinars. 

Impact: A 25% increase in our product trial sign-ups, a 15% improvement in lead quality, and a 10% uplift in our conversion rate. 

Why Do We Like This? 

• PurpleFire brainstormed on coming up with pain-point-oriented webinars which is an excellent way to create awareness in the minds of the least aware attendees. 

• They use partner relationships to reach a wider and more targeted audience.

Downloadable Templates

With downloadable templates and cheatsheets, you can share nail the hammer right on the target audience’s pain points. Folks who download templates are people who are looking for a specific solution they want the answers for. This means, they have spent endless hours looking for the solution but found no success. When you create temp[lates relevant to your industry and the one that resonates with your ICP’s pain points, they’re likely to implement the solution in their workflow enabling trust in your brand.

Here’s an example of how Lemlist got success with its downloadable templates and became a renowned name in the cold outreach niche.

Example #8: Lemlist's Cold Email Templates

Lemlist created a free template resource section on their website. Folks who want to take inspiration to write their own cold emails can use these free templates. 

‍Impact: Lemlist is the first name SDRs will suggest to anyone who wants to learn about cold outreach.

Why Do We Like This? 

• The search intent of people looking matches with the content asset when people are looking for cold email templates. People want email templates they can use and apply to improve their sales conversions. So when thousands of people search for cold email templates, Lemlist serves it to them. 

Also Read: 10 Best B2B Cold Email Templates To Land You a Demo in 2023 

Communities

Believe it or not, a community is the first place where you can talk about your ICPs’ pain points and your products and services, and then weed out folks who are interested in getting to know more about your product. Many bootstrapped SaaS businesses have seen success (for their first 100 users) solely with the power of community building.

Below is an example of how Superpath has leveraged its Slack community to build an impact and create awareness about its new product in the market.

Example #9: Superpath's Slack Community

Superpath uses its Slack community as a primary source to generate demand for its product, Help a B2B Writer. Their Slack community consists of 14K+ folks—writers and content marketers.

The community has channels like:

• #content-b2b
• #content-people-management
• #content-podcasting
• #content-collab

In the #content-collab channel, they embed Help a B2B Writer requests. When content marketers in the community check out these requests, they’ll click on the relevant question, which directs them to their product. 

‍Impact: Superpath is the name that stays on top of mind for folks in the content marketing space who look to join content marketing Slack communities. 

Why Do We Like This?

• They have very subtly tied the community channel and product together while helping their team members. This showcases how the product helps the community members instead of just selling. 

• Superpath has invested time in building its Slack community first, which is the sole revenue driver for them. It brings them trustworthy folks who convert without much effort.

Interactive Product Demos

Many people miss out on product demos but guess what, interactive product demos are another powerful strategy to educate your customers about their challenges and give them a sneak peek about how your product solves the problem for them. Even better, show your prospects how a specific feature can solve their problem rather than *just* telling them about it.

This helps the prospects move down the demand gen funnel and turn them into users who may end up taking a free trial of your product or using your feemium plan.

Below is an example of how Punchh used personalized product demos for different customer segments.

Example #10: Punchh’s Personalized Product Demos

‍Punchh created product demos (with Storylane) for different target audience personas to open up to new industries such as convenience stores and grocery chains. 

The company could customize its product demos based on the restaurant and industry type. Later, the marketing team embedded these product demos on the website (after tweaking its messaging) which led to customers viewing the demo everytime the company made a new product announcement. 

Impact: Punchh entered into the grocery chains segment and shortened its sales cycle.

Why Do We Like This?

• Because Punchh could personalize the product demos for each customer segment, the messaging resonated with each customer leading to a personalized demo experience for customers, and ultimately better conversions.

Also Read: How Storylane Helped Punchh’s Expansion to Niche Industries

B2B Demand Generation Marketing: Best Practices

Demand gen campaigns take up time, effort, resources, and a whole lot of experimenting. To save you some time and give you a peek into the lessons from the people who have run different content marketing campaigns, we spoke to 5 demand gen marketers who have generated thousands of organic traffic and sign-ups.

Tip #1: Focus on three elements—audience, message, and channel

 Noel Griffith, CMO at Supply Gem says, “You need to know who you want to reach. You can't just run a generic campaign and hope it sticks. If you're targeting decision-makers at large corporations, for example, then obviously you need to be using LinkedIn and other professional social networks. If you're targeting millennials with disposable income, then Facebook is probably your best bet.”

He adds, “Then there's your message: what do you want to tell them? This is where it's important to understand who you're talking to. Knowing what they care about and what they'll respond to will help guide your messaging strategy. And finally, there's the channel—where are these people hanging out? What are they reading? What are they watching? This is where things get really interesting because while some channels might seem obvious (LinkedIn), others might not be as intuitive (Snapchat). So make sure that if there's an emerging platform that aligns with your target audience/message/purpose you don't ignore it!”

Tip #2: Adopt a Customer-Centric Approach 

‍ “You can gain invaluable insights into their needs, preferences, and decision-making processes by conducting thorough customer research, including interviews, surveys, and data analysis. This knowledge will enable you to craft compelling messaging that directly addresses their concerns and positions your product or service as the ideal solution. Furthermore, leveraging personalized and targeted marketing tactics will enhance engagement and increase the likelihood of converting prospects into loyal customers.”

— Roman Borisov, CEO, SEOBRO.Agency

Tip #3: Launch a Pilot Program on a Small Scope

"Not only is it easier to launch, but you also won’t lose the trust of other team members if you make mistakes. When you have a good process, you can scale it."

— Andrei Zinkevich, Co-founder, Fullfunnel.io

Tip #4: Focus on Providing Value to Target Audience

When developing a demand generation campaign, focus on providing genuine value to your target audience—whether it's through practical insights, exclusive resources, or expert opinions. This approach will not only build trust and rapport with potential customers but also increase the likelihood of generating high-quality leads and conversions.

— Daniel Chabert, CEO and Founder, PurpleFire

Tip #5: Avoid relying solely on a single platform 

‍By identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP) and selecting the appropriate platforms, you can ensure that even if one platform underperforms, there are others in place to support and sustain your demand generation pipeline. This approach allows your campaign to operate like a well-oiled machine, consistently driving leads and opportunities. Additionally, keeping a close eye on the customer acquisition cost (CAC) for each platform is essential to ensure cost-effectiveness and optimize your strategies accordingly.” 

— Nischal Chadaga, Performance Marketer and SEO Specialist, HackerEarth

Wrapping Up

A demand generation campaign intends to educate the prospect and prove your product's value to them.

And Storylane provides you with an impactful tool to be able to achieve these goals: interactive product demos.

All you have to do is choose the type of product demo you want to create: a guided product tour or a video product demo. 

To create a guided product tour, you'll:

👉Capture your product's screen

👉Open the Storylane Editor and add guided steps 

👉Customize the steps (change the background color, backdrop, size, alignment, etc.)

👉Add advanced workflows and personalization 

👉Publish the product demo and track analytics

To create a video product demo, simply capture your product screen and start recording it. 

And voila, you're done. 

It's time for you to make the processes for your marketing teams and sales teams easy. Are you ready for it? Book a demo!