Top 6 Demand Generation Trends to Watch in 2022 and 2023

Author: Abhay Reddy.

While the 2021 demand trends in a COVID world continue to stay relevant, I wanted to highlight some new ones to watch out for in 2022 and 2023.

1. Increased Focus on Revenue/Closed-Won: Demand generation is no longer just about MQL (Marketing Qualified Leads) or pipeline/opportunity creation. It is essential to get all the way to revenue or closed-won — this is especially true given the long lead times involved in B2B transactions. Continued focus on buyer intent, additional nurture and sales collaboration has become imperative. An integrated approach with reproducible and aligned activities across teams such as marketing, BDR/SDR, sales and customer teams are required to meet a company’s revenue objective. 65% of buyers agreed that easy access to relevant content is the top factor that influences their buying experience [2021 Demand Gen Report].
2. Complete Alignment Between Marketing and Sales: Internal alignment between marketing and sales plays a pivotal role in demand generation. Demand generation is no longer about creating demand for sales to follow through on. The lines between the two organizations continue to blur for revenue generation. 42% of marketers consider the internal alignment between marketing and sales as the key to achieving demand generation objectives. [2022 Demand Gen Report].
3. Think and Plan Ahead: Demand generation is a long game, and very dependent on the lead times from initial lead generation to opportunity creation to eventual close. It is also dependent on the complexity of the product, number of approvers, and type of industry. ex: a consumable or product <$5k can have a short lead time to close, but larger products and services that run into $100K-$1M average between 100 and 300 days to close. Demand generation in such cases results in a progressive revenue creation (ex: 1% pipeline realized in the current quarter, followed by 5% in the next and so on and so forth). Plan on creating a large enough pipeline that helps achieve revenue target quarters away. Running marketing campaigns and expecting immediate results without factoring in the lead times and close rate will affect the overall performance of the demand engine.
4. Self-Actualization: COVID-19 has significantly shifted the buyer’s journey away from an in-person type sale to one that is pre-dominantly self-service oriented even for large order values. Customers now prefer to research, explore, and purchase on their own terms. As of 2022, 55% of tech sector companies offer self-service via free trials. While the number of buying interactions jumped from 17 to 27 during the pandemic [2021 Forrester]. Only 19% of customer groups spoke to a vendor’s representative [2021 Demand Gen Report]. Also, almost 80% of B2B decision-makers preferred remote human interactions [2020 McKinsey]. E-commerce will play a crucial role in B2B automation, reducing lead times and allowing customers to self-actualize.
5. Social Analytics and Intent Data: Social analytics involves gathering and analyzing data from social networks to inform business decisions. It is important for companies to identify key though leaders, topic/product evangelists, and how prospects interact with their content. In 2021, 32% of marketers integrated social analytics into their demand generation strategy [2022 Demand Gen Report]. Intent data is a type of business intelligence data sold by third-party vendors that shows buyer online behavior and potential purchase intent signals. Demand teams can use this data to narrow down targeting to specific companies and even individuals who are searching for specific solutions. In 2022, 31% of marketers wanted to use intent and signal information as a key data source in demand generation strategies [2022 Demand Gen Report].There are also many AI based platforms that can integrate directly into a company’s customer database to analyze, and identify anonymous account-level buying intent data. This is done by monitoring prior sales activities, company’s website, social channels, and other marketing campaigns. Marketing and sales are alerted once the platform detects surges in key account engagement.
6. Third-Party Cookies: Third-party tracking cookies allowed ad platforms to trace individual user browsing history and identify their buying habits and interests. With the increasing demand for user privacy and stricter data sharing laws, Google will be eliminating the use of third-party cookies starting in 2023. Third-party cookie removal would translate to challenges for customer prospecting, and retargeting solutions. However, this could also be beneficial if you were able to adapt quickly.

• Companies can use email marketing and other channels to properly secures consent before providing data.
• IP advertising involves targeting buyer groups based on their company IP address. This ABM type marketing tactic can be highly effective
• First-party cookies on your website can track basic data about visitors, and will continue to provide valuable information
• There are many other tactics such as Distributed ID Systems, Publisher Provided Identifiers (PPIDs), User Identity Graphs, Private ID Matching, Fingerprinting and Zero Party Data [Here is a good article on this subject] that will help minimize the impact of third-party cookie elimination.

A summary of 2021 trends can be found below:

1. Personalization: 72% of business buyers expect vendors to personalize engagement to their needs [source]
2. ABM (Account Based Marketing): 69% respondents said that their account-based efforts have met or exceeded expectations [source]. 76% of marketers saw a higher ROI with ABM than any other strategy [2021 ABM Leadership Alliance]
3. Self Actualization/e-commerce: 70% of millennials are involved in making B2B purchase decisions [Source]; 69% expect Amazon-like buying experiences [Source]
4. Thought Leadership and Word of Mouth: 64% of marketing professionals said word of mouth marketing was more effective than “traditional” marketing. [Source]
5. Webinars and Virtual Events: Attention span has dropped to eight seconds — shrinking nearly 25% in just a few years [Source]. 89% of businesses believe that webinars outperform other channels [2021 On24]. In fact, 45% of marketers consider webinars as a top engagement tactic [2022 Demand Gen Report].
6. Organic/Inbound/Chat: Leads generated through inbound activities (drawing customers to a brand or product) have one of the highest conversion rates and CLV (Customer Lifetime Value).
7. PPC campaigns (SEM): 78% of B2B buyers start with a Google search, and 70% of those prospective buyers return to search 2–3 more times. [Source]
8. Prospecting (AI and Intent): Allows companies to market beyond their existing database in a targeted manner.
9. Data Analytics: Test and learn is one of the key principals of Demand Generation
10. Dynamic Micro Content: Interactive and clickable elements such as quizzes, surveys, GIF or video previews helps motivate customers to take action. Incorporating interactive elements in content can generate 73% higher click rate [source]

Keyworks: B2B demand, B2B lead generation, Lead generation. Top trends, third party cookies, growth marketing. Sales alignment, ecommerce

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