Simply put, Demand Generation is the process and execution of combining multiple marketing techniques, digital technology and customer understanding to achieve your goals.
The practice of Demand Generation centres around joining the dots between multiple key areas to produce results that outweigh the individual, for example – a content marketer might be 100% focused on creating insightful white papers that help answer customers burning questions, whereas a PPC expert will be more concerned with driving ROAS and increasing conversion. A good Demand Generation team will be thinking about how to use the content with the inbound strategy to drive prospects into the funnel and towards sale.
Many businesses think they have this nailed only to be disappointed when a sale doesn’t close or they lose a customer – why? Because putting the customer first often means, how can we get them to buy our product? If you’re thinking about Demand Generation then forget your product/ service/ solution firstly and think long and hard about what really drives your customers in their lives – understanding what really makes your buyers tick and what they really value will be at the heart of everything you do next.
If you remember the days when Yellow Pages was the best advertising tool or when sales teams held all the information cards (and brochures!) then you’ll remember that Push marketing used to be an effective tactic. Today we have access to every type of information we could ever want at the end of our fingertips and your buyers are exactly the same, we all turn to Google to solve problems, answer questions and of course find suppliers. Knowing what questions will pull your prospects to you, how to capture and engage them naturally and when to engage them effectively will not only save you time and money but will decrease spend and drive better efficiency.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – we all love to buy but hate to be sold to – think about your own inbox, how often do you roll your eyes at that “EXCLUSIVE SALE” email and hit the delete button? Giving your customers and prospects a truly valuable experience is key to driving loyalty with existing and maximising your conversions from new prospects. Get it right and customers will not only see you as the natural purchasing choice but will be raving about your business, attracting new customers at the same time. That could mean giving them valuable content that helps them solve a problem, presenting different ways of thinking that genuinely supports their job/problem/ need or it could be a simple easy sale process that works for them – whatever the pinpoint Demand Generation considers how the whole experience works together to help you achieve your goals.
The world has never been more data centric and yet improvements for many remain elusive. In Demand Generation, technology (simple or advanced) is a core pillar to assessing effectiveness and driving improvements, setting out key measurements that impact your pipeline and implementing tracking tools (MAP, CRM, DataStudio) will allow you to see performance gaps and more importantly design ways to close them.
Ultimately Demand Generation blends together traditional marketing techniques and digital attraction methods with new tools and intelligence to deliver a better experience for your clients and a better performance for your business.
If you’re thinking of adopting Demand Generation in your own business we’d love to hear from you so get in touch.
Posted by Helen Brookes on Sunday 4th October 2020
