Bring your A-game to demand generation

With the cost of customer acquisition skyrocketing, it’s more essential than ever to have a clear demand generation strategy flanked by solid marketing and growth plans.Wildfire has built a ‘triple AAA’ demand gen effort, which also benefits partners, prospects, and clients. And although AAA is more usually associated with tourist ratings or batteries, our strategy is fuelled by a level of team energy that would make an army of Duracell Bunnies blush.Nailing this approach is not only good for your target audience, but a real morale booster for your internal teams too.It’s time to bring your A-game to demand gen.

1. Aspirational

Wildfire champions the use of creativity in B2B marketing.Rational reasons to buy will only take you so far down the consideration list. Using creativity and humour are two of the best ways of establishing an emotional connection and breaking through some of those B2B buyer barriers.Because beyond product specifications, features, and benefits, target audiences want to ‘feel’ and experience the brand.Wildfire’s own #b2bold campaign communicates the message that ‘B2B marketing is boring’, using a creative ‘ASMR-sleep-inducing-video’ activation, which was different and fun.The media coverage and social media response was amazing. We captured the imagination of our influencers and our target audience, which led to inbound sales enquiries and loads of genuine goodwill from the industry.We’ve delivered similarly creative activations for B2B clients — such as Bango, Kollective and IS Decisions — which have all boosted brand awareness and led to new business opportunities.Start by creating an authentic platform from which you can share your messages and stories. It will show key audiences that you’ve built something aspirational that they’ll be drawn to of their own free will.

2. Accessible

There is only so much you can do via LinkedIn, email, and other digital channels to demonstrate how it feels to be part of your brand.What you really need is to spend time physically with your target audience.Organise some events. Get in a room with your prospects. Order good food. Look each other in the face and talk – that’s where the real magic happens.It moves the focus from digitally representing how it feels to work with you through screens and physical barriers, to delivering ‘all of the feels’ through a shared, in-person life experience.

3. Affordable

People most often think about affordability in monetary terms. And while this is a consideration, there is another element to think about. Risk!Although many B2B brands don’t have box office budgets for creative campaigns, affordability often isn’t about financial accessibility. It’s about whether the decision-maker is convinced that they can afford to take the risk of buying into your brand.The key to this is to develop the relationship with your target prospects to a point where they begin to question if they can truly afford not to choose you.Creating aspirational content and campaigns — being accessible and authentic — all build the trust that is needed to convince prospects that they’re making the right choice.It matters not a jot if you’re agency-side selling into a B2B tech brand or a tech brand selling into a B2B buyer. Just remember to always bring your A-game.If you’d like to chat with us about tech PR, B2B marketing, taking a demand-focused approach — or any combination of these services — drop me a line. I’d love to hear from you.For more information about, ‘Why we made the most boring ASMR video ever’, check out this blog from my colleague James Lambert.