Your promotional efforts are not yielding acceptable ROI. So, you develop a lead generation campaign. The only problem is, you're not getting enough attention from your target customers, which means leads are either non-existent or low quality.
What do you do to counter this?
One way is to implement a demand generation strategy. By focusing on demand generation, you can increase brand awareness, get more qualified leads from your target audiences, and generate higher ROI on your marketing campaigns.
But what exactly is demand generation?
This guide will introduce you to demand generation and its key pillars. We'll also take you through the steps to building a successful demand gen strategy. By the end, you'll have actionable insights to reach more qualified leads and grow your business.
The Content Marketing Institute defines demand generation (aka demand gen) as the "practice of creating demand for a company's products or services through marketing."
Going with that definition, we can deduce that demand generation revolves around any activity intended to create brand awareness and interest in a company's products or services.
But demand gen is more than that. It encompasses a range of activities that drive long-term engagement—including demand capture, lead generation, and pipeline acceleration.
The long-term element is critical, as demand gen isn't a quick fix. It's a continuous approach to engagement that comprises well-planned inbound marketing tactics such as webinars, social interactions, weekly newsletters, weekly campaigns, etc.
Demand gen can easily be split into three pillars as follows:
Lead generation is the first stage of any demand gen strategy and involves gaining the interest of potential customers. Once captured through a nurture program, these leads are handed to the marketing team to guide them through the sales funnel.
Demand capture involves the use of lower funnel operations such as SEO optimizations, PPC advertising, and third-party intent data to capture any existing demand in the market. Once captured, you can route the prospects to your products or services.
This pillar focuses on expediting the sales process using pipeline acceleration strategies. These can be as simple as engaging the leads via social interactions or creating content that addresses their pain points.
Demand Generation vs. Lead generation
Many marketers use these terms interchangeably. But they are not the same thing.
Demand gen is an all-encompassing term for the variety of sales, marketing, and customer support activities that attract, convert, and retain customers.
Simply put, demand gen is a holistic, long-term business strategy that covers all stages of the customer journey, from awareness to advocacy. It includes activities much down the sales funnel, such as lead nurturing and customer retention tactics.
On the other hand, lead generation is just a subcategory of demand gen marketing that has a narrow focus on the top of the funnel. Some proven lead generation tactics include creating marketing videos and writing engaging content.
The goal of lead gen is simple; convert targeted audiences into quality leads. On the other hand, demand gen casts a wider net and focuses more on brand positioning and awareness.
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If done right, a demand gen strategy can create awareness with your desired audiences, deliver quality leads to your sales team and foster business growth.
But how do you create a demand gen strategy that drives results? Here's our step-by-step guide on how to build a successful demand generation strategy.
Step 1: Build Awareness
With today's competitive business landscape, brand awareness is critical for a consistent flow of quality leads. In fact, 89% of marketers say brand awareness is their top goal.
And since demand gen centers around "brand awareness and positioning," creating brand awareness should top the list of every marketer seeking to grow their business. One surefire way to increase brand awareness? Customer reviews.
A positive customer review leaves potential buyers with a lingering, positive impression of a company and makes them want to trust that company.
Other innovative ways to increase brand awareness include:
Step 2: Develop a Content Strategy
"Content marketing is the only marketing left." ~ Seth Godin
Creating relevant and engaging content is a key element of a reliable demand generation campaign. And any marketer serious with demand gen or inbound marketing as a whole shouldn't play down the power of content marketing.
Did you know that 47% of buyers view up to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep? Or that 67% of consumers rely on content to make purchase decisions?
The thing with content is that it helps to build client trust, lays the groundwork for important conversations about customer pain points, and facilitates clients' interaction and engagement.
Moreover, developing content that answers buyers' questions while addressing their pain points helps instill trust and credibility in your brand.
Aim to develop personalized content that addresses the needs of specific kinds of leads. Also, make sure to include compelling CTAs to direct them to the relevant landing pages.
Step 3: Nurture High-Quality Leads
Healthy and reliable demand generation requires consistent lead nurturing.
That said, your marketing team should work alongside sales and other departments and be ready to give prospects the VIP treatment they deserve.
From answering questions to addressing their needs to follow-up activities, your team must exert the much-needed effort to make the conversion journey as seamless as possible. Most importantly, your sales and marketing team should focus on content prospective clients need.
We recommend identifying the right channels to share content and closely monitoring feedback to gauge the effectiveness of your lead nurturing efforts.
Step 4: Incorporate Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
As you begin to see a reliable flow of leads coming in from your demand generation strategy, you may want to pay attention to high-value leads. This is where account-based marketing or ABM comes in.
Account-based marketing is a business marketing strategy that focuses resources on key (usually high-value) accounts within a market.
Everything in an ABM strategy requires a deep understanding of the audience and the accounts you're targeting. This strategy requires the combined efforts of the marketing and sales team to select accounts to target and provide consistent engagement and support.
Step 5: Invest in Partner Marketing
Partner marketing helps reinforce your demand gen strategy by reaching out to audiences beyond the marketer's reach.
This involves partnering with a third-party provider to tap into their network and reach a curated, prescreened audience.
The quickest way to get your brand's message in front of the right people is to find a partner who has already carved out a niche and the audience you want. This can easily be achieved through influencer marketing. You can easily find influencers via popular influencer marketing platforms like Grin or manually find them on social media.
Step 6: Launch Your Demand Gen Strategy
Raising brand awareness, nurturing leads, and promoting engagement through content marketing are critical to growing revenue. A solid demand gen strategy will help you bring in a consistent stream of high-quality leads and ultimately grow your business.
Now that you understand what demand gen is and how to build a successful demand generation strategy, let's look at how you can apply demand gen tactics in the real world. Here are three tactics you can try today.
Sending gifts to prospects is a powerful way to drive demand for your products.
When done right, corporate gifting can increase the relationship with clients. According to a new study, 80% of employers said sending out gifts improved their relationship with employees and clients. Most importantly, corporate gifting improves brand awareness.
For instance, some corporate gift ideas, like an umbrella, offer a large surface area to print a brand's logo, name, address, and even add a brand's message.
If you're in an industry like real estate, where your customers do a lot of calculations, having a tool to calculate numbers is ideal. This may turn your website into a go-to resource.
Consider making the tool part of your website so it continues driving traffic back. This traffic is good for SEO.
Plus, you'll have the opportunity to market to prospects with a high likelihood of converting. According to a 2019 Demand Gen Report, interactive content can increase engagement 2x better than static content.
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Personalization isn't just a marketing buzzword. It's a proven method marketers use to connect and increase engagement with their target audience.
The modern consumer wants content that addresses their individual needs. One surefire way to implement personalization is through email campaigns.
Savvy companies are leveraging the power of AI and machine learning to provide content based on user preferences and browsing history. You can also derive customer info through buyer personas and provide content that matches their likes and preferences.
Building a demand gen campaign doesn't need to be complicated. With the right tactics in place, you can build a demand gen strategy that will create brand awareness and drive more qualified leads to your sales team.
We hope this guide will help you build a demand generation campaign that drives results. Feel free to comment and share!