Many brands find it difficult to create demand for their products and services.
The goal of demand generation is to find potential customers based on their initial behavior and then help them through a process so that the sales team gets good leads that are well qualified.
The main difference between demand generation and lead generation marketing is that the former takes more time to produce results. Demand generation marketing encompasses multiple touchpoints and campaigns, whereas lead generation focuses on a single touchpoint.
What is demand generation
The goal of demand generation is to create awareness and interest in a product or service in order to increase sales. This includes activities such as marketing and advertising.
It is ann umbrella term for marketing and sales initiatives from every touchpoint in the customer’s journey, from initial prospect interest to upselling customers.
Elements of a successful demand generation campaign
There are certain steps that every demand generation campaign should take to ensure maximum interest in your product or service.
1. Generating Awareness with your target audience
It’s essential to understand that demand generation marketing is a bit different from your inbound marketing strategy.
The goal of this approach is to build trust, increase brand recognition, and establish your brand as the top choice in your industry, rather than just driving users to your website.
You need to do more than just guest-post and have a large social media footprint to make people aware of your product or service. Everything should work together to make people want what you’re offering.
Start by defining the following:
- Who are your ideal prospects?
- How do they make buying decisions?
- What are their pain points?
- What questions do buyers typically have at each stage in the sales cycle?
Develop top-of-the-funnel content
The goal of this stage is to answer questions and educate prospects, not to sell. Creating content that helps people and generates interest can position your brand as a thought leader or go-to resource in your niche.
Public relations
After you understand your customers and their journey, you need to find out which websites, publications, and other resources they use to make buying decisions. A good PR strategy helps brands generate interest, build trust, and reach more people than just content strategy. Strong PR drives demand generation.
Create a free tool
You can create demand for your brand by offering a free tool that helps with the pain point your brand solves. This could be something like a free calculator, hashtag generator, or evaluation tool.
Some free demand generation tools for businesses include Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer, WordStream’s Google Ads Performance Grader, and SproutSocial’s social media image resizing tool. Another option you could consider is offering a free report.
2. Converting and monetizing existing in-market demand
Reach the people searching for products and services that match your persona with content and PPC ads.
In the demand capture stage, content should be focused on attracting users who are already interested in your solutions, rather than on awareness.
This means you can use content that is only available to people who have subscribed to your website, as well as lower funnel sales collateral like price sheets or white papers that specifically mention your offers. Keep in mind that your demand generation strategy should reach as many channels and mediums as possible.
Lead scoring
It’s important for marketing and sales teams to come together to create a lead scoring system that defines what a qualified lead, hot prospect, or bad fit looks like.
A scoring system is important because it allows customers to interact with marketing content before talking to someone from the sales team. This is beneficial because it allows customers to get the information they need without having to talk to someone who is trying to sell them something.
A scoring system can help teams figure out when a potential customer is open to being contacted directly, so they can make the most of their sales resources. Ask and answer questions like:
- Where do they work?
- What are their job titles?
- What content did they download?
- How did they find you?
Data mining can uncover which factors had the most impact on sales so that a points-based system can be developed to better qualify leads.
Start developing and promoting downloadable resources
The awareness stage is when you first introduce yourself to a potential customer. You can show them your value by offering free tools and reports.
If you want to capture existing demand, you might offer a free resource in exchange for an email address and a few details, instead of a web-based tool with no strings attached.
SEO and Inbound marketing
You need a combination of SEO best practices, a well-executed keyword strategy, and an inbound content strategy that captures audience intent to attract high-quality leads and convert them into customers.
Instead of just throwing content at the wall and hoping something sticks, today’s inbound marketer needs to align their content strategy with their overall business goals. This content should answer the questions that your target audience is actually asking, and use long-tail keywords that are conversational.
If brands want to understand why customers make the decisions they do, they need to focus on every stage of the customer journey.
Pay-per click ( PPC )
You can use Google Ads to drive asset downloads, newsletter sign-ups, or promote an e-book. This will help you place your content in front of the people actively searching for related terms. Aligning your digital advertising with intent will ensure you can convert clicks into conversions, and potential buyers into customers.
3. Nurture prospects with email and remarketing campaigns
Email drip campaigns and remarketing display advertisements are effective in keeping your brand top of mind for those prospects who don’t seem ready to buy just yet.
If you want to bring your prospects back to your website, you can incentivize them with personalized offers. You can connect with them in the inbox and on the sites they frequent with display remarketing. Display ads let brands passively engage with buyers who are still in the evaluation stage.
4. Generating a need for your product or service
It is typically necessary to explain why the pain points that your product or service addresses are worth investing money in solving before demand generation campaigns can be started. This could include showing how your product can make an aspect of customers’ work or lives easier, more efficient or more successful.
5. Create informational content
Your content should aim to educate your readers about a problem they may be facing. By providing valuable information, you can help them make informed decisions about their situation.
The founders of Squatty Potty achieved mainstream success by creating educational content that showed people how they had been using the toilet wrong their whole lives. A video they created demonstrating the right and wrong ways to use the toilet went viral, helping to spread their message.
6. Share a free report
When trying to get your audience to care about the problem you want to solve, it is helpful to have numbers and data to back up your argument. Sharing reports or statistics that are related to your industry can help your audience understand the problem you are trying to bring attention to. Not only will this create visibility for your brand, but it will also provide your audience with information that they can use to make future purchasing decisions.
7. Identifying a product-market fit
After you have shown your audience the problem, you need to create resources to help you learn more about that audience. This will help ensure that the content you are creating is something that will generate interest from the right people. Focusing your efforts will allow you to see who is interacting with your content the most and how effective it is in bringing them closer to becoming a customer.
8. Use a lead magnet
If you’re finding that a free tool is too complex, consider creating a more simplified lead magnet. Lead magnets can be anything from free checklists, e-books, quizzes, or access to exclusive content. By creating something that your audience needs to opt in to receive, you gain valuable information about them.
If you want to better understand your audience, you should gather information about them. This information will help you determine if your product is a good fit for them and how to better tailor your solution to meet their needs.
9. Develop a strategy for social media
Social media provides a great opportunity to increase brand awareness among your target audience. With the right social media marketing strategy, you can build trust and increase exposure to your brand. Building a relationship with your audience on social media will increase brand awareness and create even more demand for your product or service.
10. Invest in blogging and guest posts
One way to generate demand for your product or service is to blog about it. Write content that educates your audience and provides value; this will help build trust and establish you as an expert on the issue you’re trying to solve. You can also partner with other brands in your industry to guest post or create joint content; this will help you reach a larger audience.
Writing guest posts for websites in your industry can help increase awareness of a problem you’re trying to solve while also boosting your brand’s exposure. Establishing yourself as a thought leader within your industry can create opportunities to pitch your idea to more reputable publications. If you can get your brand published in big industry publications, you’ll reach and raise awareness even more.
How to measure the success of demand gen campaign
You can measure the impact of your demand generation strategy by looking at how much it is increase your sales.
Define KPIs
Before you can accurately measure your efforts, you need to know what you are looking for. To track the success of your efforts, you need to first define your target key performance indicators.
A few KPIs that may apply to your campaigns are:
- Website traffic
- Lead magnet downloads
- Cost per lead
- Free trial/tool signups
- Customer acquisition cost
This mapping will help you understand how your demand generation efforts relate to your business growth. Once you identify which KPIs are most relevant to your business goals, you can map them across your customer journey. Doing so will help you determine which areas are giving you the best return on your investment.
Average deal size
On average, how much does each new customer bring in? To find out, divide the total amount of revenue generated from paying customers by the number of deals closed in a set time period.
It is helpful to track your average deal size as it can give you an indication of how much revenue you can generate from demand generation, and help you to focus on the types of customers that are most valuable to your business. Knowing the average deal size for each of your marketing channels can also help you to get a clearer idea of the return on investment for each one.
Sales pipeline value
The sales pipeline value is the total estimated value of all the qualified opportunities in the sales pipeline. This is calculated by taking the estimated deal size for all leads in the pipeline. This metric allows sales reps to track their progress against their goals.
Working out the percentage of marketing’s contribution to the sales pipeline will help you gauge your marketing team’s success. It will also help sales people understand how much of their pipeline they need to source through their own efforts.
Drive business growth with demand generation
Content distribution is a key element of demand generation. The success of your demand generation campaign depends on your ability to engage your audience on various channels and moving them through the stages of the funnel.