It’s unlikely that clients who have never heard of your firm will come knocking at your door. The reality is that you need to make sure prospects are aware of your services, while at the same time making sure they know how your firm can help them to address their most pressing challenges.
That’s where demand generation marketing comes in. With demand generation, you attempt to find potential clients, learn about them, and win them over – all while guiding them to realize that your firm can help solve their problems. In this post, we’re covering everything you need to know about successful demand generation and how it can make an impact for your firm.
What is Demand Generation?
Demand generation is a form of marketing that builds on brand awareness, educates potential clients, and motivates them to interact with your company. The basic tenets involved are brand awareness and education, lead generation and nurturing, conversion tracking, and data tracking and analysis. Using all of these functions together, you can build out a marketing plan that brings more clients to you rather than constantly hunting down new ones.
Key Elements of Demand Generation Marketing
When it comes to planning your demand generation strategy, keep the basic questions in mind. Consider the following when planning your strategy:
- Who should you target?
- What do they need, and why?
- How will you reach them, and where? And then how will you know if it’s working?
- When should you check in, change course, jump on trends, etc?
We suggest using the data at your disposal to answer the questions. Chances are you already have information that could be helpful for audience segmentation, target market demographics, etc. This will help you to understand who your future clients are, and from there you can determine what your firm offers that they might need or want. Delivering timely, relevant content through the right channels is key, and research can also point you in the right direction there.
Demand Generation Process
So how does a marketer actually execute on a demand generation strategy? Here is a brief breakdown of the steps to follow:
- Focus on brand awareness with content marketing, thought leadership, social media efforts, etc. Make sure you’re employing SEO best practices to make your site more visible and allow more people to find you.
- Generate leads through lead magnets, data analysis, landing pages, event follow up, etc. Offer both high-quality free content as well as gated content that requires submitting contact information, and follow up after having people fill out forms or contact your firm.
- Nurture the leads you get by using targeted email programs, personalized content, etc. You can use scalable marketing automation tools to help you develop content and share it with the right people at the right time. Make sure sales and marketing are working in harmony and have access to the same data so that they can put together more comprehensive lead nurturing tactics.
- Seek to improve conversions by optimizing landing pages and enhancing the overall user experience on your site. You may also consider implementing lead scoring programs and better understanding which leads actually convert and what you can learn from them. This is a smart way to allocate resources when it comes to lead follow-up.
- Track results and optimize. Ideally, over time you will gain fresh insights, which you can use to improve your efforts in all areas. Make sure you have a reliable process for understanding results and what they are telling you, and then making adjustments.
Overcoming Demand Generation Obstacles
As much as demand generation is a powerful strategy for many organizations, it can be a crowded space. Chances are your competitors are also executing on demand generation strategies, so it’s more important than ever to keep attention focused on your firm rather than the broader market.
Additionally, consumers expect more and more from brands. With more options comes more opportunity to be choosy, and people are certainly exercising those options. They will look for companies that seem to align with them, or speak to them on a more personal level. According to Salesforce, 73% of customers say that they expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. This means that if you’re going to engage in demand generation marketing, you need to make sure your content is truly compelling and personalized. Generic content that is fit for just any audience won’t cut it – having true insight into your clients is absolutely necessary in order to create material and experiences that really resonate.
And finally, while data is the key to unlocking successful demand generation, it also presents a sore spot for many firms. A lot of companies simply don’t have the right data at their disposal in order to create quality experiences and stand out. With so many streams active (like social, email, web, etc.), it can be difficult to collect, sort, and organize the data that is available. Even if you are able to, how can you ensure that everyone on your team has access to that data and is on the same page?
A good first step is to look into your data sources and find any gaps. Remember that you need a complete picture of your ideal client from all of the various data streams out there. Such data is more than valuable – it’s nearly impossible to execute on demand generation without it. Being able to turn raw data into something is usable and digestible for your teams is essential. If you are hoping to create impactful demand generation plans, this is the place to start.
Takeaway:
Demand generation marketing is a powerful force that can benefit your firm across its entire sales funnel. However, to really harness the power of demand gen, you need to have a full view of your clients and prospects and a plan for reaching them, nurturing the leads you obtain, and creating great brand experiences. Doing so will lead to more engagement, more leads, and ultimately more clients, which is what every growing firm wants.
