Demand Generation for Commercial Services: How to Build an Outbound Lead Generation Engine

Introduction

Demand generation marketing is a well-known method of filling the sales funnel. Combining aspects of inbound and outbound marketing, demand generation strategies educate and build awareness in your market for your products and services while providing opportunities to convert into sales.

A demand generation engine is one of the most powerful ways to keep a sales funnel full of leads, whether you’re in commercial HVAC, grounds, solar, waste management, or janitorial. Since these industries rely heavily on connecting with property owners, facility managers, and decision-makers to drive business growth, having an effective top-of-funnel lead generation engine is crucial.

This guide will walk you through the strategies and tools you need to create a powerful sales engine for your business.

Before we dive in, let’s discuss the differences between lead-gen and demand-gen and then cover the fundamentals of a sales funnel.

Demand Generation vs. Lead Generation

Although these terms are often used interchangeably, the two have very distinct and different roles:

• Demand Generation: Focuses on creating awareness and educating potential customers about your products and services- this is done through account-based marketing (ABM), content, email marketing, pay-per-click advertising (PPC), and social media campaigns.
• Lead Generation: Focuses on converting existing interest into action by driving prospects toward conversations with your sales team. Lead generation also includes things like email marketing, but the primary focus is creating a list of ideal customers and creating messaging that converts them into customers.

In some ways, lead generation is a subset of demand generation in that it is just one aspect of the process, but both are necessary to build an effective sales engine.

Top of Funnel vs. Bottom of Funnel

In the next section, we’ll begin diving into “demand tools,” but before we do that, understanding the difference between the top and bottom of the funnel is key to timing your sales cycle:

• Top of Funnel (TOFU): The top of the funnel is where people are first to understand who your company is. Known as “TOFU,” top of funnel strategies focus on creating awareness and attracting potential customers to your website, content, landing pages and social media accounts. The goal here is to inform and educate, so your audience knows your brand and the services you offer.
• Bottom of Funnel (BOFU): Bottom of funnel is where potential customers decide if they’re ready to make a purchase. “BOFU” aims to convert potential customers into paying clients. Here, you nurture those who have shown interest, providing them with detailed information about your products and services to guide them toward making a purchase.

Demand Generation Tools for Commercial Services

In commercial services, generating demand often involves a multi-channel approach that includes showing up on Google with content, SEO, and social media marketing, as well as highly targeted outreach and product messaging. This multifaceted approach requires a few key tools – let’s break down the most common activities supported by demand-generation tools:

1. Cold Outreach and Prospecting: Outbound campaigns require access to prospect data, and for that, you need tools like Convex’s Atlas, which combines property intelligence, sales intelligence, and Generative AI for outreach. There are other platforms in this category, but the key things you’ll need are prospect data and buying signals to target the right accounts and properties for your products and services.

2. Follow-up Sequences: Next, you’ll need either email or sales automation tools. Whether these sequences are attached to a pipeline manager, email marketing platform, CRM, or sales automation tool- creating ongoing sequences that nurture leads will drive sales in the future if you provide value.

3. Lead Scoring: Lead scoring allows you to prioritize who you talk to and when. Lead scoring tools like Convex’s “Signal Strength” feature identify which prospects are more likely to convert based on buying signals, behaviors, or the level of interaction with your brand.

4. Personalized Messaging: Tools like Convex’s Generative AI allow for highly targeted, personalized sales messages, helping you cut through the noise to reach the right people at the right time with the right message.

Demand Generation as a Growth Strategy

Demand generation is not a short-term play. It’s a long-term, education-based growth strategy focused on reaching customers who may not yet be in the market for your services.

As an over-arching marketing strategy, demand-gen should do a few things:

1. Brand Awareness: Your goal is to position your business as a trusted name in the industry.

2. Building Relationships: Rather than pushing for an immediate sale, demand generation helps nurture relationships that may pay off later.

3. Education and Insight: Let’s use HVAC as an example. By educating your audience about energy efficiency, HVAC services, or EPA regulations, you’re building goodwill with prospects, even if they’re not ready to buy yet.

4. Creating Trust: Providing value and insight helps build trust with potential customers, positioning you as an expert in your industry.

5. Lead Nurturing: By regularly communicating with leads and providing valuable information, you can keep them engaged until they’re ready to make a purchase.

How to Build a Demand Generation Strategy

A successful demand generation strategy involves more than just casting a wide net. It’s about delivering the right message to the right people at the right time.

In commercial services, you’re most likely prospecting property owners, facilities directors, and managers. This means you need to create customer personas, build an ideal customer profile (ICP), and create a strategy to reach these individuals. Here are the steps:

• Identify Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Define the type of business or decision-maker most likely to benefit from your products and services.
• Design a Content Strategy: I recommend starting with a content map (or mind map) that outlines all the topics, keywords, regulations, news, and products relevant to your target customers. Schedule time to create and share valuable insights across your website, blog, email, and social media platforms.
• Tailor Your Outreach: Use data from tools like Atlas to send highly relevant messages to targeted property owners and managers. A CRM tool will allow you to create customer segments so you can hyper-personalize on-going messaging to ensure that it resonates with potential buyers.
• Consistent Nurturing: A nurturing process that spans multiple touch-points—”pixeling” visitors on your website, follow-up ads, emails, calls, direct mail—ensures that prospects remain engaged with your brand over the lifetime of their interest.
• Choosing Demand Platforms: Next, identify the tools you’ll need to support your demand-generation strategy. This might include CRM, marketing automation, outreach platforms or even AI-powered tools like Convex’s Generative AI that can help with personalized messaging.
• Daily Execution: Finally, be consistent in your execution. You can download Free tools like Obsidian that can help you store all of your ideas in one place. Use Obsidian or a notes app to create a content calendar, generate ideas for outreach, store your ICP, list topics to discuss, outline video content, store testimonials, and more.

Review and adjust all aspects of your demand-generation strategy regularly to make sure you’re driving the right results. This may include changes in messaging, targeting, or tactics based on data analysis and testing.

Demand Generation Metrics and KPIs

Once you’ve built a strategy, how do you measure the effectiveness of your demand-generation efforts? Track the following metrics:

• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs): Leads who have shown significant interest and are ready for nurturing. How many new MQLs are you seeing each month?
• Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs): Prospects who are ready to engage directly with your sales team. How many new SQLs are you seeing?
• Cost per Acquisition (CPA): How much is it currently costing to acquire a new customer. This is known CPA or CAC (the cost to acquire a customer).
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV (OR) LTV): How much is each customer worth to your business over the lifetime of the relationship?

The best metric of success when measuring the effectiveness of your demand campaigns is this: What is your CAC to LTV ratio? If you can achieve a 1:3 or 1:4 CAC to LTV ratio, your business will probably create excellent results (this metric is industry agnostic). Tracking these metrics ensures your marketing budget is used efficiently and helps you identify areas for optimization and growth.

Demand Generation Channels

Successful demand-generation strategies leverage a combination of outreach channels to connect with prospects. These channels allow you to engage with property owners, facility managers, and decision-makers in commercial services industries:

• Email Marketing: Personalized email campaigns remain one of the most effective tools for nurturing leads. By segmenting your audience and delivering tailored messages, you can guide potential customers down the sales funnel.
• Social Media: Platforms like LinkedIn are excellent for reaching decision-makers in industries like commercial HVAC, solar, and janitorial services. By sharing valuable content and engaging with industry groups, you can build credibility and attract leads.
• Paid Advertising: Targeted ads can build awareness and generate interest quickly. Platforms like Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads allow you to tailor your ads to specific industries and job titles, ensuring that your message reaches the right people at the right time.
• Content Marketing: Publishing case studies, articles, and whitepapers position your business as a thought leader. Educational content also allows you to build trust and nurture relationships before prospects are ready to buy.

Combining these channels creates a well-rounded demand-generation strategy that helps maintain a steady stream of qualified leads.

Demand Generation Tools and Software

The right tools can streamline your demand generation efforts, saving you time and improving results. There are tons of tools out there, from Salesforce and Hubspot to Contently and Zapier. But you really only need a few key solutions to get started. Sales intelligence tools like Convex and LinkedIn Sales Navigator are great for finding prospects and building your list. Hubspot works well as a pipeline management tool and CRM, plus it integrates nicely with your intelligence tools.

Don’t forget about social media! Platforms like Facebook (Meta for Business), LinkedIn, Instagram ads, and Google LSA are fantastic for advertising your services. For marketing and email automation, tools like ActiveCampaign and Zapier can help you set up personalized email campaigns that really nurture your prospects.

And when it comes to tracking your demand-generation metrics and KPIs, data analysis software like Google Analytics is a must. Lastly, using content management systems (CMS) like Webflow, WordPress, or Squarespace makes it super easy to publish and share your content across different channels.

Conclusion

Demand generation is a powerful and strategic methodology for driving long-term growth in the commercial services industry.

The secret to success lies in how you use data to shape and improve your demand campaigns. It’s all about keeping sales and marketing in sync and making sure you’re targeting the right prospects. By focusing on building relationships, educating potential customers, and delivering the right message at the right time, you can create a predictable and scalable lead generation engine.

To maximize your efforts, use tools that streamline your processes and create efficiency.

By regularly assessing campaign performance, fine-tuning your strategies, and ensuring alignment between sales and marketing, you can secure a continuous flow of high-quality leads. However, keeping your focus on the customer’s needs will build enduring relationships and lay the groundwork for sustained revenue growth.

Ready to take your demand generation to the next level? Schedule a demo of Convex today to see how our platform can help your business scale by reaching the right prospects with the right message.