10 demand generation strategies to increase leads
One of the main challenges for businesses operating in crowded markets is to create genuine interest and demand for their products and services.
A good demand generation strategy can help companies produce the customer demand that will turn into quality leads, which will eventually convert into loyal clients.
This article will walk you through the definition of demand generation and will show you some of the most efficient demand generation strategies. After reading, you will be better prepared to take actionable steps and reach more qualified prospects to have more conversations with decision-makers.
This article will explain:
- What demand generation is
- Demand generation vs. lead generation
- 10 reliable demand generation strategies
- A platform to implement your demand generation strategies
What is demand generation?
Demand generation is a marketing strategy for creating demand and awareness for a business’s products or services. This process should generate buzz, expand the reach, drive traffic, and ultimately grow the customer base by transforming interest into action.
Demand generation should be a holistic approach that spans multiple marketing departments. It’s a common and relevant goal of demand generation marketing, to avoid working in a silo and instead, weave together diverse marketing efforts. That way, companies can engage and convert potential customers effectively.
Another way demand generation strategy can be more productive is by educating their target audience about the services the business is offering. It should also make the audience excited to learn more about what the company sells and willing to continue receiving updates about the latest products.
The goal of a demand generation strategy is to make the company’s solution the obvious way to mitigate a pain point or solve the customer’s problem.
Remember that demand generation is not just about creating a greater volume of leads, but about generating the right kind of leads. It draws in higher quality leads with a higher likelihood of becoming customers.
Demand generation vs. lead generation
To fully grasp the concept of demand generation, you need to understand the main differences between demand generation and lead generation. While these two might seem similar, there are major distinctions.
Demand generation is more comprehensive than the lead generation process, and it involves a number of different tactics to generate demand. Some potential tactics might involve downloading additional resources, registering for on-demand lectures, completing paperwork, among others. Demand generation also requires more research into suspects and prospects to identify their initial actions, as well as collaboration and communication between sales and marketing departments.
On the other hand, lead generation is more broad. A lead generation strategy will usually be uniquely based on a company’s target audience and demographics.
Demand generation and lead generation often get confused because they have various tools and strategies in common. Both benefit from engaging, current content, and require intelligent, precise targeting for effectiveness. Yet, their use of targeting and content serve completely different objectives.
10 reliable demand generation strategies
Now that you know more about the definition of demand generation and how it differs from lead generation, you may be wondering how you can start applying this process in your business so you can begin increasing your customer base.
Continue reading to learn more about these different demand generation strategies and how choosing the right one for your business can help you streamline your customer journey.
1. Content marketing
New and fresh content is a great way to attract customers. The content you create plays a critical role in demand generation, as it informs your audience and fosters great brand awareness. Therefore, there is a necessity of a robust and efficient content strategy.
By crafting a comprehensive plan for content creation and distribution based on your target audience’s behaviors and interest, you have better chances of attracting higher quality leads, which can result in higher numbers of sales.
To prepare a winning content strategy, you need to:
- Align content with the prospect’s pain points.
- Target your ideal customers and define your audience.
- Define the purpose of your content.
- Choose the type of reaction you want to encourage.
- Schedule when and where you’ll publish your content.
- Define how you’ll promote it.
- Consider any challenges.
2. Lead scoring
It’s important for a company to ensure that the marketing and sales teams don’t waste time and resources on leads that will never make a purchase. To avoid this, you can implement a lead-scoring strategy. Adjusting your lead scoring system can help you ensure that you’re dealing with leads that are more likely to make a purchase. This can help you know which leads you need to prioritize.
A lead-scoring strategy uses a point system to evaluate a prospect’s online and offline behavior in relation to your company’s products or services. Once a lead has scored a predetermined number of points, they are passed to sales.
Assigning a tracking and scoring system to your leads can help you gain insight into customer behavior. It aids you in determining the ideal time to connect with a buyer, the information to share, and the approach to use. Some information your lead scoring efforts should consider are the following:
- Lead demographics and firmographics
- Budget authority, need, and time
- Lead interest and engagement
- Lead behavior
- Social media activity
3. Use account-based marketing
Account-based marketing (ABM) focuses on small groups of prospects or individual accounts. This is a great strategy for scalable business development and revenue growth since it tailors solutions to the account’s pain points to create demand.
This approach allows companies to combine their resources and efforts and build personalized marketing and sales tactics. This is done with the goal of driving engagement among high-value accounts.
To use ABM effectively, your company needs to use quality data to build a list of qualified target accounts. Your marketing and sales teams will be in charge of targeting these accounts with personalized content and tailored messages.
Account-based marketing allows you to get closer to identifying the right contacts within a company in order to deliver personalized messages, providing more value to customers.
4. Invest in social media channels
Demand generation focuses on capturing the interests of your target audience. Social media channels are a great way to understand and capture this if you know how to take advantage of their reach and versatility.
Utilizing a wide variety of social media platforms can be helpful when it comes to engaging and interacting with your prospect customers. This can yield valuable insights for crafting more relatable content.
Social media platforms make it possible for businesses to connect and interact with customers in a unique and personalized way. However, for this approach to be effective, businesses need to center their interactions around the customer’s needs and should offer valuable, informative content.
Remember that fostering trust is a key part of creating demand. A digital audience usually values transparency and authenticity when it comes to online marketing and social media.
5. Improve email marketing efforts
Email marketing serves as a significant data source for optimizing your demand generation endeavors. To do so, you need to evaluate and audit your email marketing campaign performance based on your open rates, spam complaints, unsubscribe rates, and more. Understanding and acting upon this data will lead you to improve your efforts.
Here is a list of best practices you can begin implementing to enhance your email marketing efforts:
- Ensure your emails have valuable information to reduce lost subscribers or unsubscribers.
- Evaluate your frequency to avoid spam complaints.
- Personalize your content for each recipient.
- Segment your email list.
- Use responsive templates.
- Test various deployment times.
- Make your messages and overall content more relatable.
6. Build authority via event marketing
Event marketing is a highly effective and productive method to boost the awareness of your brand, as well as increase credibility. In fact, according to Forbes, 70% of marketers say that live events are crucial when it comes to companies’ marketing success. This strategy allows you to maintain face-to-face interactions with your audience and provide them with solutions in a timely manner.
To implement event marketing in your company, it’s not necessary to attend the largest events. Smaller events can offer more intimacy and a chance to stand out. They can open the door for interaction with your audience. You can also host your own events if you have the means.
Utilizing this marketing tool can help your company gain trust and build brand loyalty.
7. Use intent data to find in-market clients
Another example of a demand generation strategy is using intent data, the data about online activities, to find in-market clients. You can use this strategy to reach potential customers and help them with their problems.
When implementing this strategy, you can use varying degrees of accuracy to fine-tune your approach. If you know search intent, then you can tailor your marketing to that intent to create demand.
This tactic is more crucial now than ever, as 99% of large companies are using intent data, and 98% of marketers are confident about using it as well. In addition to this, almost 70% of businesses are planning on increasing their spend on intent data.
Leveraging intent data can help you:
- Discover new prospects.
- Create personalized content.
- Deliver high-quality leads to your sales team.
- Shorten the sales cycle.
- Increase customer retention.
8. Integrate CRM and marketing automation
After you begin implementing a good demand strategy, you may face challenges in managing things on your own. To fix this issue, you can lean on automation tools to get things running smoothly and do more in less time.
Customer relationship marketing (CRM) can be a great tool as well when it comes to finding new customers, winning their business, and keeping them happy by organizing customer and prospect information.
Together, marketing automation and CRM allow all parties who are involved in the demand generation funnel to perform their duties more efficiently and improve the following:
- Lead generation and nurturing
- Social media posts scheduling
- Analytics and reporting
- Drip email campaigns
- Search engine optimization
- Digital advertising
- Reputation management
9. Improve demand funnel framework
Using an efficient demand generation funnel as a map can help you better visualize the various stages of the customer journey. This demand generation strategy can keep you aware of what your customers go through from the moment they first notice your brand to when they make a purchase decision.
You can refine your framework by breaking it down into four primary stages — discovery, engagement, conversion, and reward. However, remember that there’s no universal formula for demand generation strategies. Your approach, therefore, should be uniquely tailored to your brand, audience, and the products and services you offer.
10. Web insights and inbound marketing
Although this is the last demand generation strategy suggestion, it is one of the most important ones. Your website is a key component of demand generation. It is where you can observe and analyze the digital footprints of people visiting your website. These footprints can reveal their interests, pain points, content preferences, and even urgency.
The main purpose of inbound marketing is to make your company grow by building meaningful, lasting relationships with people, no matter whether they are customers or prospective consumers.
In essence, it’s about appreciating and enabling these individuals to achieve their objectives, no matter which journey they’re on.
Inbound marketing tactics that you can implement might involve blog posts, content offers, and other web resources.
When customers achieve success with positive experiences they received thanks to your product or service, they share it with others. This action can help draw new prospects to your business, which creates a self-perpetuating cycle. The process helps your organization grow and gain momentum.
A platform to implement your demand generation strategies
Using a demand generation strategy will enable you to increase the quality of your leads and ultimately create genuine interest and demand for your company’s products or services.
When you’re ready to get started, decide which demand generation strategy your company could benefit the most from. Implement it across your marketing and sales teams.
Once you’re in the process of implementing your new strategy, Adobe Marketo Engage can help deliver winning leads with account-based marketing automation.
Marketo Engage can help your business develop and qualify potential buyers well before they’re passed to sales with relevant, uniquely personalized nurturing campaigns and robust scoring capabilities.
To find out how Adobe Marketo Engage can help you attract, segment, and nurture customers, watch the video overview or take the product interactive tour.