Understanding The Basics Of Demand Generation Marketing

Have you ever wondered about what it takes to get customers to buy your product? If you’re like most business owners, the answer is probably “yes.” 

This guide will teach you the different methods used in demand generation marketing to create a successful campaign for your business. After reading, you will understand more about this subject so you can implement them into your strategy!

What Is Demand Generation?

There are many myths about demand generation that even Forbes has debunked. But put simply, creating demand for products and services is one of the major challenges in a certain business.

Additionally, demand generation helps you identify the potential expectations of your clients. 

Demand generation programs can help your organization:

• Promote new product features
• Reach new markets
• Generate PR
• Build consumer buzz
• Re-engage existing customers

Take the article about the iPhone 13 by Gizmodo, for example, they discussed how much the masses love this Apple product, and the demand is skyrocketing.

Demand generation refers to the comprehensive program of marketing initiatives. The objective is to generate a customer or client’s interest in your products or services and retain them for the long term.

Importance Of Demand Generation Marketing

Demand generation programs cover everything from raising awareness to retaining customers.

Let’s break them into manageable parts and talk about each separately.

1. Brand Awareness

Well-executed inbound marketing campaigns make you stand out to those who may not yet need your services or products. This will make them constantly encounter your brand in conferences, social media, and the like.

A few methods that develop brand awareness are: 

Build a Brand Identity

Your brand helps your business differentiate itself from your competitors. Building your brand identity develops affinity and recognition to the public and is vital to facilitating the recollection of your company and what it has to offer.

Identify your Buyer Personas

It’s important to know who you’re attempting to sell to. This makes it easier for them to remember you. You won’t reach your target demographic and potential consumers if you don’t correctly establish your buyer personas.

Establishing Thought Leadership

Maintaining thought leadership will help you establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. People are more likely to think of you when they remember your business or the challenges you tackle.

2. Sales Enablement

Marketing along with sales alignment is critical to the success of your business. Fortunately, sales enablement initiatives driven by a comprehensive demand generation strategy can promote unification across sales and marketing, in turn accomplishing more business deals.

The foundational sales enablement methods and tactics your marketing team can execute to close the gap between marketing and sales include testimonials, fact sheets, FAQs, and estimate/discount calculators.

3. Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing methods involve blogging, SEO, paid advertising, lead generation, conversational marketing, and website conversion rate optimization.

These inbound marketing methods generate demand for your product or service by turning visitors into leads and nurturing them into consumers. This allows customers to identify and solve their problems using your products and services.

5 Best Demand Generation Strategies

1. Blogging

Blog posts with thoughtful, helpful information that caters to the audience’s struggles and hardships are a cornerstone of long-term affinity building and awareness. It is one of the modern forms of content marketing to gain visibility and recognition online.

This strategy helps you attract relevant traffic, engage with your audience, and guide them to download relevant content, sign up for any events you have posted, or otherwise advance to the next step in your program to learn more.

2. Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are great demand generation marketing engines. If your marketing strategy includes high-value content that’s aligned with your audience’s needs and is easy to access, your audience will make the most out of it.

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Original research is one of the ways to earn media attention, expand reach, drive online shares, and increase traffic to your site.

But, many other marketing tactics will convince your website visitors to provide their email.  For example, you can produce guides, papers, ebooks, presentations white, toolkits, infographics, templates, and checklists. From there, you can launch marketing procedures to maintain your customer’s engagement.

3. Live and Virtual Events  

Events give industry insiders an environment to network, learn the fundamental know-how, and hear from professionals in their field.

This way, your company can develop essential connections by participating in industry events or even hosting your own.

These conferences allow your brand to stand out by creating truly unique experiences. Considering the Coronavirus outbreak, you can also take a creative approach at virtual events. 

Focus on what works well in the virtual world. A few examples that you can do are:

Campaigns

You can connect to your audience via social platforms and host virtual campaigns through online campaigns. Showcasing your content will help you gain more popularity over time if your audience finds it entertaining, helpful, or educational. 

Running a campaign in the real world would work too. Hosting this event would bring in more potential clients as they pass by. If you happen to have a few customers interested in your services and products, you can expect them to multiply as time goes by.

Webinars

Same as online campaigns, webinars are very trendy nowadays too. Online seminars allow you to connect personally with your customers through discussions that they can relate to. 

Webinars accomplish many of the same goals as live events and are a great substitute if your audience is hesitant to join social gatherings because of the pandemic. The content in your webinar can help your audience overcome common industry issues. 

If you want your webinar to be more impactful, you can interview complementary solutions providers and influencers in the industry. This way, you will give everyone access to an expanded audience with little to no extra effort.

Podcasts

Podcasting is another adequate method to keep your audience engaged for a certain period. And better yet, the world of podcasting has been proven to be interesting and entertaining to the masses. 

It has relatively low competition and is also a way to establish a cadence of repeated brand touchpoints, build thought leadership, and start building a connection with your audience.

4. Account-Based Marketing

Account-Based Marketing or ABM campaigns focus on a narrowly defined audience segment.  ABM also coordinates your marketing efforts across diverse channels and tactics. 

Trying to drive demand with ABM still makes you precision-targeted with your approach, identifying the specific industry and sometimes the individuals themselves you want to target before your outreach.

5. Strategic partnerships 

Consider strategic partnerships to drive demand, which involves teaming up with companies that target the same audiences or personas as you do. 

Co-host events, webinars, podcasts, or produce a major piece of content in collaboration, compiling authoritative information from each partner to create original content. 

Each company will benefit from the boost of information and access to each other’s network. Collaborate with influencers that have a passionate and supportive fanbase. 

In addition to that, ensure that you can scale your efforts to achieve a greater impact. Commonly, micro-influencers produce better campaign results because they have a closer, more authentic relationship with their viewers. 

You don’t have to focus entirely on their follower count. Prioritize on the engagement rate and quality of their content and influence. 

FAQs About Demand Generation Marketing

Why Should I Prioritize Demand Generation?

Ultimately, demand generation captures the branches of marketing programs that get customers and clients eager to know about your company’s products and services.

However, demand generation is more complex than a simple branding concept or early funnel marketing strategy. Demand generation programs are touchpoints throughout the sales cycles and conversion optimization.

Demand generation aims to build and nurture key opportunities and customer connections for the long term. To do this effectively, marketers need to respond to customer questions on social media, promote blog posts, host webinars and email marketing campaigns.

What differentiates demand generation from other customer acquisition tactics is the commitment to long-term customer relationships and a strategic mindset.

What Is Inbound Marketing’s Role In Demand Generation?

This discrepancy between demand generation and inbound marketing can be tough to see readily. 

Typical demand generation tactics include blogs, social media, newsletters, videos, podcasts, and ebooks.

These tactics are content-driven resources that give the impression to your viewers that your company is influential, a thought leader, and an information hub in the industry. Generally, inbound marketing focuses on constructing quality content that attracts potential clients to your company. 

Conclusion

By matching your content and communications with your customers’ interests, you naturally attract people, build relationships with stakeholders, and create a culture around your brand.

Over time, a high proportion of your inbound traffic will convert into paying consumers. Inbound leads are more likely to be your customers than outbound leads. In addition to closing deals, you satisfy your customers and build long-lasting relationships with your community. 

Demand generation is the marketing system that bridges the gap with your company’s sales and revenue operations. It may include multiple touchpoints, from common marketing tactics and all inbound marketing tactics that are part of your company’s overall demand generation strategy.

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