B2B Demand Generation Strategy: Become famous in your niche and watch your pipeline grow

Tycho Luijten, Founder of B2B Growth Agency, Dapper, unpacks how they effectively used a demand generation strategy to grow the scale-up’s pipeline of qualified leads by over 300% (from 50 per month to 170) in as little as six months.

Introduction

B2B marketing is hard:

– Marketing and sales cycles are long
– Propositions are complex and rarely glamorous
– Measuring what works is hard
– Audiences are often super niche

But that’s precisely what I love about B2B marketing. I like the need for strategic thinking and long-term vision. That’s why I started an agency five years ago that primarily focuses on helping B2B scale-ups grow.

This case is about a FinTech, OPP, that our agency helped triple their qualified leads in a little less than six months.

A Fintech scale-up with a scaling challenge

In May 2023, the new CMO of Online Payment Platform (OPP), Reza, reached out to me via LinkedIn. He was looking for an agency to improve OPP’s marketing efforts.

Online Payment Platform is a Dutch FinTech scale-up that offers payment solutions specifically designed for marketplaces. Their solution makes buying and selling on marketplaces simpler, faster, and more secure. 

When I met Reza, OPP already had a strong client base in The Netherlands. They served some of the country’s largest marketplaces. OPP clearly had momentum. 

However, OPP wanted to expand beyond The Netherlands into Germany, France, the UK, and Belgium, with plans to eventually reach the rest of Europe.

This was easier said than done, given the fierce competition in the market. OPP was up against much larger competitors with much deeper pockets. The challenge was to stand out with marketing budgets that were tiny in comparison to the giants they were going up against.

“We have a billboard.”

I asked the team at OPP about their current marketing efforts. The Founder mentioned that he had purchased a large billboard on top of the old apartment building where he used to live (see picture below).

He admitted that the billboard might not be the most effective way to reach their ideal customers.

Beyond the billboard, their marketing and sales approach was quite traditional. Most of their clients came through old-school sales tactics and the Founder’s personal network.

However, the new CMO, Reza, had a strong vision for demand generation that aligned perfectly with our agency’s approach to B2B marketing.

Let’s simplify B2B Marketing

My approach to B2B marketing is straightforward. I might even oversimplify it, but I prefer to avoid complex funnels that don’t reflect what happens in the real world. I believe in the school of thought that B2B marketing can be divided into two main categories:

1. Demand Capture

When a prospect is actively looking for your solution, your goal is to capture that demand as effectively as possible. How can you do this? Some key strategies include:

– SEA and SEO for high-intent keywords
– A well-optimized website designed for conversion
– A strong presence on comparison websites
– Direct outreach
– Etc.

The challenge is that most of your prospects (about 97% of them) aren’t actively searching for your solution right at this very moment. Plus, most of your competitors are also focusing efforts on capturing the existing demand in the market, so this is always a very competitive space, regardless of your industry.

2. Demand Generation

Demand Generation, on the other hand, is about reaching prospects who aren’t currently searching for your solution but might be in the future – whether that’s in a month or a year from now.

The goal is to stay visible to these potential future customers so that when they do need your solution, they’ll think of you first. Demand Generation is about building mental availability and getting on the shortlist of your future customers when they need what you are selling.

This is commonly referred to as “becoming famous in your niche.” When your niche thinks of your category, you want them to think of you!

The formula for Demand Generation in its most basic form is simple:

1. Create content that demonstrates how you solve your prospect’s problem.

2. Consistently and frequently share that content with your ideal customers.

This could include:

– Short-form content on LinkedIn
– Podcasts
– A newsletter
– And more…

Making OPP famous in their niche

Reza and I agreed that the primary focus of our marketing should be on Demand Generation. We knew we couldn’t outspend the big competitors on Google Ads, but we could outcompete them by giving OPP a face.

Our goal was clear: every marketplace should have OPP top of mind.

Here’s how we set up Demand Generation for OPP:

1. We defined the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Their ideal customer was straightforward: marketplaces of all sizes. For larger companies, we targeted product owners who were in charge of payments. For smaller companies, we focused on Founders or CEOs.

2. We defined what we wanted to become famous for

We decided to create content that showcased OPP’s expertise in payments for marketplaces and their deep understanding of their challenges and needs.

The content needed to be high quality, educational, and, most importantly, valuable to their ICP.

Additionally, we wanted to humanize the brand by showing the faces behind the company, unlike the faceless big competitors. We decided to hero the Founder and other key players in the content. The so-called ‘Subject Matter Experts’.

3. We defined content formats and systems 

We chose video content as our primary format. We often see that video content is the most effective format to build recognition and trust. In this case especially, because we featured real people from OPP.

We started organizing video shoots with the Subject Matter Experts on a regular basis. We know that for Demand Generation to be effective, we needed to be visible constantly and consistently.

Content would be the fuel driving our approach. So, instead of just planning one video shoot, we created a system for ongoing content production and refinement.

4. We defined the content distribution

The next step was to get the content in front of the eyes of their prospects. All video content was shared organically on the personal LinkedIn profiles of those featured in the videos.

For paid advertising, LinkedIn was our most effective channel. We uploaded the hitlist from the sales teams to secure visibility on their ideal clients’ timelines. We ran ads on the company’s LinkedIn account, and we ran thought-leader ads from the personal accounts of those featured in the videos.

– – –

For those unfamiliar with thought-leader ads, this is a type of advert where you use a personal profile to advertise from. People are more receptive to ads from individuals than from companies, making this approach very effective.

– – –

In addition to LinkedIn, we also retargeted website visitors on YouTube with the same video content to ensure OPP stayed top of mind when prospects were considering their options.

The distribution goal was simple: we wanted to be in front of the ICP as often as possible.

300% qualified lead growth in 6 months

The first results were soft signals, and hard to quantify in numbers. The sales reps featured in the content started getting positive responses from the prospects on their videos.

This might sound like it doesn’t mean a lot, but usually, when we see companies invest in Demand Generation as an approach, the first positive signal is that their prospects actually like and refer to their content. 

Not too long after, the sales department noticed a slight increase in inbound calls from prospects. The prospects on the phone would tell them that they saw OPP on LinkedIn. 

The significant impact on qualified pipeline came faster than we anticipated. We began working with OPP in August and launched our first campaigns in September. Just four months later, the number of qualified leads per month had more than tripled. At the same time, the quality was also noticeably better. The ideal customer came knocking on the door.

Attributing the growth

In closing, it’s important to mention that not necessarily all of this growth can be attributed to demand generation initiatives alone. At the same time that we launched the campaigns, they also went live with a new brand identity and website.

As mentioned at the beginning: B2B marketing is complex. Unfortunately, it almost  never happens that a prospect clicks on a single LinkedIn advert and buys your solution directly from the landing page – we are not selling sneakers here.

The average B2B prospect hits about a 100 touchpoints across numerous channels before even considering buying from you.  

Therefore it doesn’t make much sense to judge the performance of a single ad, campaign or even one whole channel in isolation. We look at the marketing machine from a helicopter perspective: Is everything we’re doing leading to a positive ROI and business growth?

In this case of OPP, it was very clear, that everything together, were doing a very good job.

Maybe B2B marketing isn’t so hard after all?

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