A Quick Guide to Demand Generation

Launching a product that people want is one thing—putting a brand new product in the market and getting your target audience excited about it is another.

Just because you built a product doesn’t mean people will come buying it. Aside from letting your audience know your product exists, you must follow a step-by-step process that engages and nurtures them, turning them into highly qualified leads. 

This is what demand generation is all about, and it’s what we’re going to talk about in this post.

We’ll also learn how you develop a demand generation strategy using predictive analytics, which gives you insights on how you can increase your conversion rates with data from real-time buyers and multi-channel intent.

What is Demand Generation?

Demand generation is the process of creating awareness of your product to identify leads ready to become customers based on their behavior and activity.

By generating more buzz about your products and services, you can attract more website visitors who want to learn more about your offerings. 

Now, since these visitors took it upon themselves to check your website out for more information, they have the highest likelihood of becoming leads to your business. As a result, you have a list of people you can engage and nurture into becoming customers, leading to increased sales and revenue.

Is Demand Generation the Same as Lead Generation?

Based on the definition above, it’s easy to confuse both terms to mean the same thing. And while demand generation has lots of similarities with lead generation, they are not the same. 

Lead generation concerns itself with showing how your business can help solve the problems of your target audience consisting of unique users and prospects. 

On the other hand, demand generation is interested in people who already know about your product and are considering your business as an option to address their concerns.

However, while both function differently, they work towards the same goal of generating more sales for your business. So, your demand generation strategy will only work if you can turn your audience into qualified leads from your lead generation campaign.

Building a Demand Generation Strategy

To help you launch campaigns to create demand for your products, you must first establish the foundations of an effective demand generation strategy. Below are factors you must consider when piecing together demand generation campaigns for your business:

Generate Awareness

The key to creating buzz surrounding your products is to build trust with your audience. You can achieve this by positioning yourself as the primary brand that addresses people’s specific issues.

To help you develop brand positioning, you must know who your target audience is. A well-crafted buyer persona allows you to determine the demographics and psychographics of the people you want to reach out to with your campaigns. 

48% of customers are more likely to become customers if brands personalize their marketing campaigns to address their needs and concerns.

So, it’s in your best interest to know what your target audience wants to see from your marketing message and how you plan on delivering it to them.

Engage with Each Segment Appropriately

It’s important to point out that not all leads are the same—just because they joined your email list doesn’t mean everybody in the sales wants to purchase your products. 

Some may take more time to become customers. This means you need to engage with their in different ways using various methods until they’re close enough to secure into customers.

Using an automation tool, you must implement marketing segmentation to help you organize your leads’ level in your sales funnel. 

For example, a segment of leads signed up to your mailing list means they want to learn more about your brand. As for your campaign, you must continue sending them emails educating them more about their pain points and how your product can help alleviate these pains.

On the contrary, leads who signed up for your webinar are now aware of what your product can do and already trust your brand. A survey conducted by Demand Gen Report states that 48% of B2B marketers believe webinars are the most valuable content format in the mid-stage of the buyer journey.

From here, you can ask them via email to schedule a call with your brand and help them develop a plan on how to use your product more effectively. Doing so allows you to close them into becoming customers much quicker.

Segmenting them into different lists like in the examples above allows you to engage with them in ways that will bring them down your marketing funnel.

Align Sales and Marketing Teams

Another vital foundation of demand generation is getting your marketing and sales team on the same page. That means setting up marketing campaigns with input from the sales team. 

The sales team then knows which demand generation campaign the prospects came from to know how to approach them correctly. This enables your organization to attract the right kind of leads from your funnel that the sales team can quickly close.

Aside from an open line of communication, you need to enable both teams to use tools to track the activities. 

For instance, a CRM tool lets you create a system where the sales team can find opportunities from previous marketing campaigns. 

At the same time, the marketing team can see the kind of customers the salespeople have closed in their pipeline to replicate the campaigns that raked in the most revenue for the business.

This level of transparency between both times fosters the efficiency required to sustain an effective demand generation strategy.

How Predictive Analytics in Demand Generation Works

Developing the proper demand generation for your brand is a trial and error process. After launching a campaign, you must analyze the results over time and make necessary changes to generate more demand for your next campaign.

However, there is a way to get most—if not everything right— out of your first demand generation campaign. Using Demand Science’s predictive analytics, you can:

• Access multiple layers of buyer intent to create content guaranteed to generate high-quality leads for your business.
• Use targeted display advertisements on your outbound lead generation campaigns to get more buyers to engage with your brand.
• Gain access to survey results relevant to your industry to help you gain insights about prospective customers in the market.
• Identify who in the market are looking for products and services you’re offering with a few clicks of a button, saving you time and energy while generating the best possible leads for your business.

Demand Science’s PurePredict gives you the tools to unearth marketing data and intelligence that enables you to develop a demand generation strategy and launch optimized campaigns out of the gate that’s sure to generate more leads and conversions.

We can help shore up your demand generation needs. For more information, contact DemandScience today.