What is demand generation?
According to Hubspot, almost two-thirds (61%) of marketers say generating traffic and leads is their top challenge.
And that’s why demand generation techniques are so popular and so crucial in delivering a stronger, more sustainable sales pipeline.
What is demand generation?
Demand generation is a marketing strategy to generate interest in your company’s products and services – and then turns them into customers that you can retain for a long time.
Often, the terms ‘lead generation’ and ‘demand generation’ are interchanged. But fundamentally, they have slightly different roles:
Lead generation = This approach markets to the masses to increase interest in your products and services. For example, creating a blog or webinar series are a proven way to successfully attract leads to your brand.
Demand generation = This term covers a variety of sales and marketing actions that attract, convert and retain customers. It includes activities much further down the sales funnel – such as lead nurturing.
💡Top tip: You can find companies that will provide contact information for those that may be interested in your offering. We always recommend getting contact information (like through sponsored content), but it can be costly, the quality poor and one major thing we advise – do not try to sell to this contact list.
They need to be nurtured/warmed towards a sale. Otherwise, it can come across too strong and you risk burn-out and losing the lead for good.
👉Find out more about: How to generate (warm) engaged leads.
3 top benefits of demand generation strategies
Reach customers across multiple channels, at scale – Only 28% of marketers are completely satisfied with their ability to engage with customers across channels at scale (Salesforce).
Increase engagement rates – More than half (54%) of email marketers say increasing engagement rate is their number one priority (Ascend2).
Improve ROI – There is an abundance of free/low-cost tools you can use to increase demand. Here are some examples:
a. Email - 79% of B2B marketers credit email as the most effective distribution channel for demand gen efforts. (Content Marketing Institute)
b. Social media - 59% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn generates leads for their business. (Demandwave)
c. Content marketing - 93% of B2B companies say content marketing generates more leads than traditional marketing strategies. (Marketo)
Content – the king and queen of demand gen
Content marketing is fundamental to demand generation. It underpins all other activities across your website, social media, email, search optimisation (ranking in Google), and more.
There are many types of content you could choose to create:
· Blogs – articles on your website that educate your audience and help you get found on Google/other search engines.
· Videos – YouTube/Vimeo content that explores your product or topics relevant to your target audience.
· eBooks/whitepapers/guides – long-form guides that you can give away on your site, either gated (behind a form) or ungated.
· Webinars/virtual roundtables – to deep dive into specific industry themes or product features, normally with external guest speakers.
· Industry insights – inviting industry influencers to contribute to your content and promote it to their networks.
These pieces of content should provide free value by addressing your target audience’s key challenges and offering tips and guidance to solve them.
Content is THE key ingredient to driving the initial engagement to nurture them towards a sale. It builds credibility, trust and provides value.
👉Here are some tips on building credibility: The key to winning B2B clients.
Where does demand generation sit in the B2B sales and marketing process?
Demand generation strategies work at every stage of your B2B marketing and sales funnels.
For demand gen to be effective, you need alignment and transparency between your sales and marketing functions, with both teams being able to identify gaps or blockages in the process.
💡Top tip: Sales and marketing strategies should be created together, with the same KPIs that both teams work towards to create cohesion and shared input towards the same goals.
Tech for demand generation
There are tonnes of tools out there to help you make your demand gen work better – many of which are low cost or even free. Here are a few examples:
Google Analytics – to monitor web traffic and improve search engine rankings
Hubspot – to act as a CRM, create emails, landing pages and more
Canva – to create designed elements like social media images/banners, flip books/guides
Loom – to create personalised videos/recorded presentations
Final word
The ultimate way to create demand is to focus on a content strategy and use this to generate contact data. Once you have a pool of contacts, you can nurture these towards a sale through additional content, webinars, events which are tailored to those further down the sales funnel.
The aim is to be consistent and always front-of-mind for when a contact is ready to buy. We never know when that may be which is why consistency is key.
📕For more guidance, download our free guide: How to create demand, nurture leads, and convert sales.