B2B demand generation agency create demand, then capture it

B2B demand generation strategy channels and the 95-5 rule

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute's Professor John Dawes set out the arithmetic: if companies change a supplier about once every five years, only about 20% are in market in a year and about 5% in a quarter.

He is clear that 95% is a heuristic, not a precise rule.

With a two-year buying cycle, about 13% of buyers are in market each quarter.

So work out your own figure.

That shapes the strategy.

Most of the budget should reach the 95% who are not buying yet (content, LinkedIn, podcasts, events), and a smaller, sharper share should capture the few who are: search, retargeting, review sites and a fast route to sales.

LinkedIn found 96% of B2B marketers expected their ads' main effect within two weeks; a strategy judged on a two-week window will always over-spend on capture.

The channels that usually matter for B2B: LinkedIn (organic and paid), search, founder and team content, podcasts and newsletters, events and webinars, and, for named accounts, ABM.

We pick two or three to do well rather than seven to do badly.

Measuring demand generation beyond MQLs

Forrester's waterfall benchmarks show that in a lead-centric process built on MQLs, less than 1% of inquiries become closed-won deals.

Forrester now tells clients to say goodbye to MQLs and measure buying groups and opportunities instead: its 2023 buyers' survey found 93% of buyers bought in a group of two or more, and 71% in a group of four or more.

Attribution software misses much of what creates demand.

In a 12-month test, Refine Labs found its software credited web search with 78% of conversions, while buyers named it only 12% of the time.

That is one agency's own data, but the method is worth copying: a mandatory, free-text "How did you hear about us?" field on the booking form, with no prompts.

We add it on day one.

Demand generation for B2B SaaS UK and US

SaaS buyers research alone, often trial first, and compare you with a dozen competitors.

So SaaS demand generation leans harder on content the buyer finds on their own (comparison pages, honest pricing, a founder whose posts they already read) and on capture that routes a trial from a target account straight to sales.

For UK SaaS companies selling into the US, the US market is larger and more crowded; we usually start with the ICP segment where you already have customers and proof, and expand from there.