Demand generation is the process of using marketing programs to create awareness or interest in a company’s products or services. It encompasses different areas of marketing, but it is the integration of marketing programs joined to a structured sales process.
Demand generation programs can assist a business to reach new markets, develop a consumer buzz, promote new products and services and re-engage existing customers. There are different components of the demand generation process, but they differ depending on the difficulty of a sale and size. These components include:
Positioning relevance;
Building awareness;
Supporting validation; and
Mitigating customer evaluation.
The main goal of demand generation is to develop and nurture customer relationships and primary prospect in the long run. For marketers to do this effectively, they should do things like use social media to promote blog posts and respond to customer questions, run email marketing campaigns and host webinars.
The principles of demand generation
Know who is buying your products and why – it is critical for any business to know the right leads to sales. In addition, it is also paramount for a business to ensure that the sales take over from where marketing ends. The best way to do this is to develop buyer personas, which entails delivering the right content at the right time to help the buyer through the buying process.
Never use disjointed sales and marketing strategies – if your marketing operation is disorganized, it is good to change it to be an integrated sales and marketing process.
Concentrate on the right leads – for a business to concentrate on the right leads, it must be able to define its target customers, understand the customers’ behaviors and apply a scoring model that qualifies the customers. The business is giving its sales a prioritized to-do list.
Delivering the right content at the right time and frequency – all customers are not created equally, and this means that they cannot all fit at a particular marketing strategy at the right time. This means that a business must deliver the right content to its buyers, at the right time and at the right frequency.
Measure success – it is good to measure the success of your marketing programs as it gives you an insight into the future of your business.
