Definition

Demand generation is the process of creating awareness of your products and services amongst target audiences.

Description

Your target audience will be interested to buy your products or services only if they know that a product from your brand exists.

People buy things when they have a need. And they buy your product and service when they are aware that it exists. Hence, you can understand that demand generation includes lead capture, nurturing the lead, and pipeline acceleration.

Demand generation begins with creating initial campaigns so that the target audience interacts with your brand. It is about growing the audience by informing them about the solution you offer.

With demand generation, you motivate the audience to engage with your content and take actions. The ultimate goal with demand generation is to encourage the buyer until they become a qualified lead.

Example

Backlinko, founded by Brian Dean, is an excellent example of demand generation. Brian is an SEO expert and his knowledge about SEO is profound.

He started with courses and made videos to make the audience aware of his services and knowledge. Brian Dean launched Backlinko where marketers turned to get more traffic and higher rankings.

His videos and courses helped people find value for the knowledge he shared. It then drove ultimate traffic for him.

Importance of Demand Generation

Demand generation is more like attracting an audience and creating a market for your products and services. It is important as it helps in:

• Increasing brand awareness:

Demand generation helps to bring an audience to your website. Inbound marketing campaigns drive people to think about your product even though they may not need it.

The process involves you creating engaging content and posting about it on social media, conferences, and places where you expect your audience to be present.

The content assists your brand to earn credibility and trust of the audience. Demand generation strategy will create website engagement and interested traffic.

• Generate more leads

A well executed demand generation strategy will assist in lead generation. Several percent of the potential customers will immediately translate into high quality leads. Most of them will give to your brand’s loyal customers.

• Increase ROI

The simple rule towards higher revenue is:

Increased Awareness = More Lead Generation =Increased ROI

The Internet is the biggest saviour when you talk about expansive demand generation. The largest part of the target audience can now be found online who is most likely willing to make the final purchase also online.

So when you use an online medium to increase awareness, you can soon expect better ROI also.

Key Strategies of Demand Generation

These are the key strategies of demand generation:

• Blogging: Blogs are the best mode of communicating your thoughts and information about the products and services. It offers convenience to connect with your target audience and leave them with information on how they can connect with your brand. Blogs engage the audience with the content and encourage them to make the purchase.
• Lead Magnets: If your aim is to get an audience to your website, you better mix the content marketing with SEO. Create high value engaging content that keeps the audience captivated and brings in more traffic to your website. Some of the lead magnets for you would be presentation, infographics,templates, and checklists.
• Account-based Marketing: Account based marketing is keeping your narrowly segmented audience informed and engaged. The ABM campaigns might include outbound marketing like LinkedIn ads, InMail, email marketing, and direct mail.
• Webinars: Let the world know that you are an expert of your field. Connect with your audience through Webinars and keep your target audience informed about the product developments. This makes the audience aware about the latest updates for the products.
• Podcasts: Podcasts are another way to capture the audience’s attention towards your brand. It is yet far away from hitting its point of saturation and not many have tried their hands on it. The trick for higher involvement with podcasts is that you have to create exciting content which could be your last popular posts.
• Videos: Videos offer an immersive experience to the audience and help them remember your brand because visual content can be remembered for a longer time.
• Direct mail: Direct mail is another effective way for demand generation. It allows you to pitch your target audience with your brand name. Direct mail is a successful strategy when you run a B2B business model.
• Social campaigns: Nothing can be more cost effective than connecting with your target audience through social media campaigns. The campaigns can be around keywords that touch your customers. It drives their engagement more with your brand.
• Influencer marketing: Influencer marketing is another convenient way to connect and influence your audience. You can partner with the influencers who have a large fan base. They can help you market your products. Choose influencers who create impressive content and receive good response from their followers.

How to work for demand generation?

This is how you can think exclusively for demand generation:

• Create a consistent brand identity: Keep your brand identity same for your target audience through all the touch points.It prevents any confusion for the audience to interact with your brand. Your content should reflect your brand values which helps your audience to connect.
• Integrate sales and marketing teams: Integrate sales and marketing team teams for aligned outputs. Include CTA in your content that defines your actionable goals and pushes the audience towards providing their information as a lead.
• Develop buyer personas: The demand generation activities are centred around the audience only. Create buyer’s personas and map them to the customer’s journey. Because you can serve your customers better only when you understand their expectations and pain points.
• Use demand generation softwares: Amplify your business by using demand generation software. Some of the most popular softwares are HubSpot, Optimizely, and ActiveCampaign.
• Analyse campaigns and optimise: Start with making a content planner and create content around it. Assess the outcome of each content topic by monitoring the output of all the posts in terms of:
  • Conversion Rates
  • Organic Traffic
  • Overall Traffic
  • Marketing leads
  • Sales leads
  • Visibility

FAQs on Demand Generation

What is demand generation Vs lead generation?

Demand generation is attracting new customers to your website by informing them about the solutions you offer. On the other hand, lead generation is converting the audience to qualified leads.

Quick steps to follow for demand generation

These are the quick steps to follow for demand generation:

Step 1: Lead nurturing and lead scoring
Step 2: Create interactive content
Step 3: Attract the right audience
Step 4: More awareness with Webinars and Events
Step 5: Conduct contests to attract users
Step 6: Engage in specific ways

Best demand generation softwares

These are the demand generation softwares:

• HubSpot Marketing
• Pipedrive
• Mayple
• Ortto
• Marketing Creatio
• Unbounce
• Wishpond
• Optimizely
• BrightInfo