It’s time to go beyond traditional marketing.
What’s that, then, you may wonder?
The answer is SaaS demand generation—an exciting approach that doesn’t rely on gathering contact information but instead shares information to make prospective buyers want to know more and invest in your product or service.
Are you keen to learn how to implement an effective demand generation strategy for SaaS?
Then read on👇. You’re about to learn insights from DG’s best: Alice de Courcy!
What is SaaS demand generation?
SaaS demand generation is a multi-channel, data-driven marketing strategy designed to educate potential buyers, build trust, and drive high-intent leads. Unlike traditional lead generation, which focuses on capturing emails and pushing sales, demand generation nurtures curiosity and establishes your brand as an industry leader before the sale even happens.
The process involves a combination of strategies to attract and engage potential customers throughout their buying journey, including content marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media engagement, and more.
Unlike traditional marketing approaches prioritising immediate sales, demand generation focuses on building long-term relationships by providing value-driven content and experiences.
This methodology attracts high-quality leads and nurtures them, ensuring they are well-informed and primed for conversion when they reach the decision-making stage.
Why is demand generation important for SaaS?
If you’re marketing B2B SaaS, you know the competition is fierce, and innovation is everything. Demand generation ensures your solution won’t ever go unnoticed while retaining loyal customers.
Here’s how B2B SaaS demand generation solves the most common B2B marketing challenges:
1. It builds brand awareness
The more value and content you provide, the more prospects trust your expertise and opinions. By consistently delivering valuable content and engaging experiences, you position your brand as a thought leader, increasing market visibility and recognition.
2. It educates the market
Demand generation showcases the value of your product. When you share insightful resources, you empower potential customers to understand your SaaS solutions’ unique benefits and practical uses, making it easier for them to embrace and adopt your offerings.
3. It helps nurture leads
Demand generation nurtures prospects through targeted content and personalised interactions, guiding them through the sales funnel and increasing the chances of conversion. Engaged and well-educated customers are more likely to remain, resulting in higher retention rates.
4. It aligns marketing and sales
Instead of cold leads requiring weeks of persuasion, warmed-up prospects are eager to buy—which, in turn, makes sales happy!
Moreover, a cohesive demand generation strategy fosters collaboration between marketing and sales teams, ensuring a seamless customer journey from awareness to purchase.
How does the SaaS demand generation funnel work?
Demand generation for SaaS follows a carefully structured funnel. Each stage guides prospects from casual interest to a firm decision.
Awareness
Here, the goal is to attract a broad audience and make them aware of your brand and solutions. Strategies include:
- Content marketing: Publish blog posts, whitepapers, and eBooks that address industry pain points and showcase your expertise. Focus on creating educational blog posts, whitepapers, eBooks, reports and guides that answer key questions and solve problems for your audience.
- SEO: Optimise content for search engines to increase organic visibility. High-intent search terms related to your industry are key here.
- Social media: Use platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok to share valuable content and interact with your audience.
- Webinars and podcasts: Establish authority by sharing your insights through engaging discussions with industry experts.
- Video content: Create short-form and long-form video explanations, case studies, and behind-the-scenes content for YouTube that attract attention and build trust.
Alice emphasises the importance of ungated, on demand content in this stage. This allows prospects to access valuable resources without barriers, thereby building trust and credibility.
She says:
Our guide on how to ungate your content explains more about how Alice implemented this idea into the marketing team at Cognism.
Consideration
By this stage of your demand generation funnel, your audience knows about your SaaS solution but is weighing their options. It’s time to deepen engagement and provide value beyond simple brand awareness. You accomplish this by:
- Case studies: Real-world success stories highlighting how your SaaS solution has helped similar businesses solve their problems.
- Whitepapers and eBooks: In-depth research and strategic insights demonstrating your expertise.
- Retargeting ads: Stay in front of your audience with ads that reinforce your value proposition and keep your brand top-of-mind.
- Comparison guides Help prospects understand how your solution compares to competitors, making their decision-making process more manageable.
- Customer testimonials and social proof: Showcasing feedback from satisfied users to build credibility and trust.
Decision
This is the moment of truth—when a potential customer decides whether to move forward with your solution. To ensure they say “yes,” your SaaS demand gen efforts should include:
- Product demos and free trials: Offer prospects hands-on experience with your software so they can see the value firsthand.
- Sales enablement content: Provides ROI calculators, feature comparisons, and cost breakdowns to justify investment.
- Personalised outreach: Your sales team should follow up with high-intent leads, offering tailored solutions to address specific needs.
- Customer success stories and use cases: Reinforce the impact of your product through tangible results.
- Live Q&A sessions: Addresses any lingering questions in real-time to eliminate doubts and hesitations.
Promotion
While not traditionally included in the B2B marketing funnel, promotion is vital in amplifying your SaaS demand generation efforts across all stages. Tactics include:
- PPC advertising: Running targeted ads on platforms like Google Ads and social media to reach a wider audience.
- Retargeting campaigns: Engaging visitors who have previously interacted with your brand but haven’t converted.
- Influencer partnerships: Collaborating with industry influencers to expand your reach and credibility.
- Loyalty programs and referral incentives: Encouraging existing customers to spread the word and refer new prospects.
- Upselling and expansion campaigns: Introducing additional features or products to increase customer lifetime value.
Switching from lead gen to demand gen in SaaS
Transitioning from lead generation to demand generation isn’t an overnight shift. Instead, it should be tackled in manageable stages. Here’s how to make the switch without disrupting your current marketing strategy:
Step 1: Implement small changes immediately
You don’t have to abandon your existing MQL model right away. Instead, start by integrating demand gen tactics.
Here’s an excerpt from Diary of a First-Time CMO, which outlines some of the things Alice says you can do straight away:
Step 2: Introduce demand gen with a controlled budget
Rather than taking a radical leap, test demand generation by allocating a separate budget.
A small experimental fund (e.g., $5K per month) can be used to run ungated campaigns that focus on content consumption rather than conversions.
Monitor high-intent inbound demo requests to validate the effectiveness of your demand gen efforts.
Step 3: Split the funnel reporting
Start tracking separate conversion rates for direct demo requests versus traditional MQLs.
If your data reveals that high-intent demo requests convert more efficiently than gated content leads, present these insights to stakeholders.
Show how reallocating the budget to demand gen improves pipeline velocity and deal size.
Step 4: Shift budget based on performance data
Once you’ve gathered enough data, analyse underperforming MQL campaigns.
If certain lead-gen efforts yield a high cost per lead (CPL) with low returns, cut them.
Reallocate that budget to demand gen initiatives while keeping only the highest-performing MQL campaigns.
Step 5: Gradually adjust the balance
Over time, transition your budget and activities toward a demand-generation-heavy model.
Aim for a 90% demand gen and 10% MQL split, but move at a pace that aligns with your internal buy-in and success metrics. Sales leaders will appreciate the increase in high-intent leads that convert faster and with fewer objections.
By methodically shifting from lead to demand gen, you build a marketing engine that creates sustainable, high-quality pipeline growth without reliance on outdated, low-intent tactics.
Creating a demand generation strategy for SaaS
Content marketing
Content marketing is the foundation of any SaaS demand generation strategy, but it needs to be good. It has to serve a purpose and be valuable to your audience.
Alice says:
To establish your brand as an authority and educate potential customers, you’ll need to focus on a range of content. All ungated, of course 👇.
- Blog articles: Publish high-quality, SEO-optimised content that addresses critical questions and industry pain points.
- Case studies: Showcase real-world success stories highlighting how your product delivers tangible results.
- Whitepapers and eBooks: Provide in-depth insights into industry trends, challenges, and solutions.
- Interactive content: Create quizzes, assessments, and calculators to engage prospects and encourage self-qualification.
- Webinars and video content: Use engaging formats to demonstrate expertise, showcase product capabilities, and answer real-time audience questions.
At Cognism, our content focus has shifted to “big rocks,” like our annual cold calling report, the SDR Zone, our demand gen course and, of course, “Diary of a First-Time CMO.”
Creating content now involves phased builds towards these big rocks, allowing our team to produce smaller, related content while contributing to larger projects.
The content team uses a colour-coded planning system in Asana to map out and track deadlines, ensuring flexibility and alignment with the core themes of what the business wants to be known for.
Learn more about our updated DG content strategy.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Search engine optimisation ensures that your SaaS demand gen content reaches the right audience at the right time. A strong SEO strategy includes the following:
- Keyword research: Identify high-intent search terms and integrate them naturally into your content.
- On-page optimisation: Improve title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and internal linking structure.
- Technical SEO: Enhance site speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability to improve rankings.
- Backlink building: Earn high-quality links from authoritative industry websites through guest blogging, PR, and content syndication.
- Content updates: Regularly update old blog posts with new data, trends, and insights to maintain relevance.
Alice says:
What did this mean for SEO at Cognism?
We focused on quality content enhanced by internal subject matter experts. This ensures we always create content with authority and substance around subjects that are poignant to our core ICP.
This and our money keywords strategy saw us taking the place of HubSpot’s biggest organic competitor at the time:
Read this CMO diary chapter on creating content to outperform your competitors for more insight from Alice!
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
While organic content builds a long-term audience, PPC campaigns can accelerate SaaS demand generation by placing your brand in front of targeted audiences. Key tactics include:
- Google Ads: Target high-intent keywords to capture active searchers looking for solutions.
- LinkedIn Ads: Leverage LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities to reach decision-makers in B2B sectors.
- Retargeting campaigns: Keep your brand top-of-mind for visitors who have interacted with your website but haven’t converted yet.
- A/B testing: Optimise ad copy, landing pages, and bidding strategies for maximum ROI.
The key lesson Alice has learnt from Cognism's Paid journey is:
Sometimes the biggest impacts are in the basics!
How so?
Here are two chapters from Alice’s CMO diary to help you with your own B2B SaaS demand generation strategies for Paid:
Social media engagement
Social media plays a crucial role in SaaS demand generation by fostering engagement and brand awareness, and LinkedIn is the most important social platform for this purpose.
Alice’s demand generation strategy for B2B SaaS was to turn herself into a subject matter expert for Cognism's marketing audience.
Her top advice for using this tactic:
Don’t be afraid to use content more than once.
Best practices include:
- Consistent posting: Share valuable content regularly on LinkedIn, Twitter, and relevant industry forums.
- Thought leadership: Position key team members as industry experts through opinion pieces, LinkedIn articles, and speaking engagements.
- Interactive engagement: Host live Q&As, AMAs, and community discussions to build relationships with potential customers.
- Employee advocacy: Encourage team members to share company content and insights on their social profiles to expand reach.
- User-generated content: Leverage testimonials, reviews, and case studies from satisfied customers to add credibility.
Tracking and measuring DG success
A well-executed SaaS demand generation strategy is only as good as the data behind it.
You need to track and analyse performance across multiple touchpoints to ensure your efforts drive tangible business impact.
For Alice, this meant tying the team’s demand generation activities directly to revenue.
She said:
When I took the leap and started setting goals and KPIs against revenue, everything else became a lot easier. Weirdly, the fear of missing target reduced."
For early stage SaaS demand generation, this will mean getting approval from your CEO and setting aside an experimental budget.
To effectively measure demand generation success, monitor:
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) – Prospects showing genuine interest.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – Cost of acquiring each new customer.
- Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) – Revenue potential per customer.
- Website Traffic and Engagement – Organic and paid traffic trends.
- Pipeline Velocity – How quickly leads move through the funnel.
Organisation and centralisation is everything. This means ensuring your B2B marketing team formalise OKRs, align on progress reporting and tighten up Asana usage.
Alice says:
Here’s how she fixed this challenge:
- Migrated all OKRs into Asana for better visibility and collaboration.
- Established Asana best practices: precise due dates, task assignments, and linking projects to OKRs.
- Asana now auto-updates key project milestones for real-time progress tracking.
- Introduced monthly OKR status updates for company-wide transparency.
- Integrating OKR discussions in standups to strengthen collaboration and accountability.
- Ensuring all efforts align with shared objectives and improving cross-team synergy.
Learn more about Alice’s approach to reporting and OKR tracking centralisation.
Lastly, the tools you use for SaaS demand generation are everything. You can see a full list of the B2B marketing tech stack we use at Cognism.
Or read this chapter for a summary of the team’s favourite tools.
The ultimate SaaS demand gen resource
If you’re serious about mastering SaaS demand generation, Alice de Courcy’s Diary of a First-Time CMO is invaluable.
It provides real-world insights, case studies, and actionable strategies to help SaaS companies transform their outdated lead-gen tactics into sustainable demand-gen engines.
Give it a read, ungated 😉, by clicking the banner below 👇
