When you are marketing a product, it is all about solving a problem that your audience has. If your audience is aware that they have a problem, then there is already some demand for your product. However, if you have identified a problem that your audience does not know about, you will need to use some tactics to generate demand for your product. This will help your audience understand the problem and why your solution is the best one.
WHAT IS DEMAND GENERATION?
The goal of demand generation is to create awareness and interest in a product or service in order to generate sales leads. The ultimate goal is to create a sales pipeline that will grow the business.
It’s a catch-all term for your marketing and sales strategy from every customer touchpoint, from when they first become interested in your product to when you upsell them.
Demand generation marketing today is about creating demand for sales and providing the right information to the right people at the right time.
OUR TOP 3 DEMAND GENERATION STRATEGIES
DEMAND GENERATION STRATEGY #1: GENERATING AWARENESS WITH YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
demand generation marketing is creating a plan to increase the leads that your sales team works with. It’s done by creating awareness for your product or service and getting people interested in learning more.This is different from inbound marketing, which is a strategy focused on getting customers to come to you through various online channels.
The point of this is not to get users to your website and then present them with a call to action. The goal is to make them trust your brand, remember it, and think of it as the best in the industry.
You need to do more than just guest-post and have a large social media presence to make people want your product or service. Everything needs to work together to create awareness.
The challenge is that people need to have a problem that they are struggling with or one that they have not yet realized that they have.
DEMAND GENERATION STRATEGIES HINGE ON WELL-DEFINED PERSONAS
The key to any successful marketing approach is to provide solutions that fit each potential customer’s individual needs in terms of the problem being addressed, their willingness to make a purchase, the type of content they prefer, and where they are in the sales process.
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
Your goal at this stage should not be to sell, but rather to answer questions and educate prospects as they start their journey. You can help people and generate interest by creating some good content, which can in turn make your brand a thought leader or go-to resource in your area.
PUBLIC RELATIONS
It is important to understand your buyer and their journey before you can develop a public relations strategy. You want to learn which websites, industry publications, and other resources they use so that you can generate more interest in your brand and build trust with potential customers.
DEMAND GENERATION STRATEGY #2: CONVERTING & MONETIZING EXISTING IN-MARKET DEMAND
After working on strategies to increase your awareness, you will then want to focus on getting customers that you already have.
Create content and ads that are specific to the type of person who is searching for your product or service, and target them with ads on social media and through pay-per-click advertising.
When trying to capture demand, you should focus on attracting users who are already interested in your solutions, rather than on those who are unaware of your existence.
This means that you can use content that is behind a paywall, as well as sales collateral that is more specific about your offers, like price sheets or white papers. Keep in mind that your demand generation strategy should reach as many channels and mediums as possible.
This graphic illustrates the types of content used at different stages of the buyer’s journey. The stages often overlap.
LEAD SCORING
All of this must be documented in a lead scoring system. A lead scoring system is an important tool for demand generation marketing. Marketing and sales teams need to work together to create a unified set of criteria for what makes a lead qualified, a hot prospect, or a bad fit. All of this should be documented in the lead scoring system.
Most customers in a B2B context interact with marketing content before talking to someone on the sales team, making a scoring system very important.
A scoring system helps teams to know when a prospect is most likely to be interested in what they are selling, so that they can use their resources more efficiently. Ask and answer questions like:
- Where do they work?
- What are their job titles?
- What content did they download?
- How did they find you?
To find out which factors had the biggest influence on sales, look at the data and develop a points-based system for qualifying leads.
Both teams can work together to develop a strategy for targeting the right audience through PR efforts, advertising, and organic marketing tactics.
START DEVELOPING (AND PROMOTING) DOWNLOADABLE RESOURCES
According to the awareness stage, you can increase your value to potential customers by offering free tools and reports.
If you want to capture existing demand, you might want to 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 to use SEO best practices, have a good keyword strategy, and create content that captures your audience’s intent to attract high-quality leads and convert them into customers.
The current approach to inbound marketing is more concerned with providing answers to the questions that real users ask, using long-tail keywords, than with persona and keyword research.
To understand what drives customer behavior, brands must focus on every stage in the funnel.
PAY-PER-CLICK ADVERTISING (PPC)
You will be more successful in promoting your content if you use paid search ads. For example, you could use Google Ads to increase downloads of your assets, get people to sign up for your newsletter, or promote an e-book. If your ads are closely related to what people are searching for, you are more likely to get clicks that lead to conversions, and potential customers.
NURTURE PROSPECTS WITH EMAIL AND REMARKETING CAMPAIGNS
Email campaigns that are spread out over a period of time and ads that remind people of your brand keep you from being forgotten by those who are interested in what you have to offer but aren’t quite ready to purchase something.
Offer your prospects personalized incentives to bring them back to your website. Connect with them through email and the websites they visit often, using display remarketing. Display ads let brands engage with potential customers who are still considering their options.
Develop a strategy for social media
If you want to increase brand awareness and build trust among your target audience, social media is a great platform to do so. By creating content that resonates with your audience and engaging with them on a regular basis, you can create a strong relationship that will ultimately lead to more exposure and demand for your product or service.
GoPro targets people who love adventure and telling stories, rather than photographers. It uses social media to create demand for its product, without spending a lot of time convincing people that the GoPro camera is superior in terms of technical features. Instead, it capitalizes on the emotions behind the stories its customers tell, by sharing user-generated content to social media. This shows new audiences just how easy it is to share their experience using a GoPro, without ever doing a hard sell of the product. Its audience may not be in the market for a new camera, but the ads pique the interest of anyone craving an outlet for storytelling.
DEMAND GENERATION STRATEGY #3: ALIGN SALES & MARKETING TEAMS FOR BETTER RESULTS
The sales and marketing teams have not always had a good relationship, but today they need each other to give customers the best possible experience. They also need to develop a process for closing deals, increasing deal size, and speeding up the sales cycle.
If an organization has a strong sales enablement strategy, it will be easier for them to turn solution-focused interactions into revenue. To do this, marketers need to know what happens after a lead converts and offer the sales team support in the form of price sheets, sales decks, case studies, and more.
The aim of demand generation marketing is to provide salespeople with the content they need to be knowledgeable about any product, service, or segment, and thus to increase the number of deals closed.
In this section, we’ll go over a few ways you can end the conversation.
PRODUCT-SPECIFIC CONTENT, PLAYBOOKS, & SALES DECKS
When marketers focus too much on blog posts, social media, and advertising, they’re not including other important aspects of the buyer’s journey.
It is important to help the sales team with internal content so that they are able to sell the product successfully and accurately. This includes sales decks and playbooks so that the sales team has all the information they need to represent the product well.
CASE STUDIES
Customer case studies are helpful in closing a deal as they show how your product or service has helped solve a problem for someone else. When creating case studies, be sure to target them towards a specific customer segment so that they are more likely to relate to the story and see how your product could help them.
This type of social proof can help build confidence in your company and turn prospects into customers. Many businesses think that their problem is so specific that no one else could understand it. However, in most cases, you can find a customer with a similar issue to show your prospect. This type of social proof can help increase confidence in your company and turn prospects into customers.
When writing case studies, make sure to focus on the benefits and results, and include specific numbers to back up any claims.
TESTIMONIALS
While customers are free to write what they want in a review, brands that approach clients for testimonials have some control over the content. Testimonials work well at just about any stage, but they can be especially useful toward the end of the sales funnel when buyers are looking to validate their decision.
To get the most accurate and beneficial feedback, approach your best customers one by one and ask them specific questions about how your product or service helped them. Video testimonials or written praise can be used in a variety of ways to generate interest and demand.
Create a free tool
If you offer a free tool to your audience, it can help them understand your solution better. Additionally, it gives you the opportunity to learn more about your audience’s needs and what they look for in a solution. You can use this information to figure out which segment of your audience is most interested and further define the pain point that your tool aims to solve.
Ahrefs created a free backlink checker that exposes users to additional valuable features and insights that they might not have known they could access, generating more demand for the premium tool.
Use a lead magnet
If you find a free tool too complex, try creating a simpler lead magnet. A lead magnet could be a free checklist, e-book, quiz, or access to exclusive content. Whenever you create something your audience needs to opt in to receive, you get valuable information about them. This information can help you understand who they are better. All of this information will help you confirm your product-market-fit and help you tailor your solution more to meet your audience’s needs.
A quiz lead magnet is used by Neil Patel to help capture information about his audience’s business and website. The information is used to create targeted campaigns for each audience segment to increase demand for Neil Patel’s online courses.
Track data over time
It is important to understand what makes your leads respond in order to more effectively attract them. By looking at your conversion rates and how they relate to your current strategy, you can determine what changes need to be made to attract higher quality leads from more reliable sources. Try testing different aspects of your strategy to see what produces the best results.
If you use a social media management platform such as Sprout, you can take advantage of the analytics feature to see how your data changes over time. This can be helpful in identifying patterns and understanding what your users want to see more of.
Conclusion
A significant amount of demand generation is based on your ability to generate and share content that is appealing to your target audience. Your chance of success for your demand generation campaign is much greater if you are able to properly engage your audience across various channels. As you guide them through the steps of the process, they will become more and more interested in what you have to offer. If you want to learn more about how to create a social media funnel that will work well with your demand generation strategy, read our article on building a successful social media marketing funnel. With a funnel in place, you will be able to identify which demand generation marketing strategies to use at each stage.
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