Do you know how to generate demand? If that sentence confused you, you must read this post on building a demand generation marketing strategy. It may seem like a mouthful, but understanding demand generation is pretty simple. The difficulty arises when it’s time to strategize and manage your demand generation campaign and nurture your leads.
What is Demand Generation Marketing?
Demand generation marketing is about creating demand for your business. To create demand, you need a demand generation marketing strategy that drives traffic back to your home base. To put it simply, the purpose of demand generation marketing is to attract potential customers.
You may think this can be accomplished by just putting out a few ads; in theory, it can be. But a demand generation campaign demands so much more. And, of course, you need to ensure you are not accidentally performing lead generation instead of demand generation.
Demand generation and lead generation differ in the actions you want your prospects to take. In a demand generation marketing strategy, prospects are expected to arrive at your intended destination and engage. At most, they can be converted into followers or marketing qualified leads. In lead generation, your prospects need to be turned into sales-qualified leads or loyalists.
Demand generation gets your prospects at the top of your funnel, and lead generation and other marketing tactics take them through your sales pipeline or funnel. In the demand generation funnel, your prospects can be guided towards joining your email list, becoming partners, or being part of your community. Demand generation marketing isn’t designed to be about sales but can be used in sales promotions for events and product launches to build relationships and revenue.
Other Digital Marketing Strategies that Can Be Used in Demand Generation Marketing
There is a lot of confusion about demand generation vs. lead generation because demand generation and lead generation use similar tools and marketing strategies. In the demand generation funnel, prospects are collected through various demand generation marketing efforts and directed towards lead nurturing. To accomplish this in a demand generation marketing strategy, a variety of marketing strategies are used, such as:
Data-Driven Marketing
Mass amounts of relevant consumer and business data would be needed to target efficiently. Data-driven marketing techniques focus on data acquisition, analysis, and management. The best data-driven marketing companies include data validation and enhancement services that ensure your data is clean and safe for your demand generation strategy.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing techniques lure prospects back to your landing page, website, or whatever platform you choose as your home base. Because an inbound marketing strategy performs similar tactics to attract, engage and delight as demand generation, many new business owners confuse the two. But inbound marketing tactics also cover lead generation strategies that focus heavily on converting prospects into sales.
Omnichannel Marketing
Next to data-driven marketing, omnichannel marketing is the best strategy to pair with your demand generation marketing strategy. Omnichannel marketing covers every possible channel your prospects might use, online and off, while connecting everyone to your home base and various offers. And with access to the correct business data, an omnichannel marketing strategy will help you achieve B2B demand generation success.
Content Marketing
As always, you need content with any digital marketing strategy. And content is the reason demand generation marketing demands entire teams and marketing agencies. Because how else are you planning to attract their attention and provide value?
Social Media Marketing
As of January 2022, 58.4% of the world’s population is on social media, spending an average of 2.7 hours daily. So. Including a social media strategy in your demand generation campaign isn’t wise. Not to mention, without paying for ads, it is a cheaper way to generate demand.
Along with these marketing strategies, you can use other marketing strategies, tactics, and tools to generate demand. For some marketers, mass marketing is usually the go-to strategy for demand generation, but when you avoid segmentation in your targeting, mass marketing can work against you. Instead, you can use any other method to gain a customer’s attention once it can be incorporated into your demand generation strategy.
Easy Demand Generation Marketing Tools
Every demand generation campaign needs a few standard and not-so-common support tools to be successful. The tools you choose to manage your demand generation campaign should support your preferred marketing strategy, customers’ needs, and brand objectives. Remember that the software you use should be easily integrated into existing systems and make processes more manageable and not more complex.
Analytics
Data needs to be segmented to be useful for any demand generation program. Therefore, analytical tools are necessary for data segmentation and campaign assessment. Without analytical software, you may as well kiss any form of accurate targeting goodbye.
Marketing Automation
If you want your omnichannel marketing strategy to succeed, it will need marketing automation support to manage your demand generation funnel. The internet runs 24/7, and marketing automation allows you to seamlessly connect with your prospects whenever and wherever they are online. Marketing automation guided by artificial intelligence (AI) will enable you to create intelligent campaigns that can adjust to customer behavior.
Programmatic Display Ads
Since demand generation requires a lot of reach, generating demand can become costly. Thus, reducing your demand generation marketing costs without losing reach is essential; this is where programmatic display ads come in. Programmatic display ads are strategically created to reach and attract your ideal prospect without overspending.
Geofencing Mobile Marketing
Like programmatic display ads, geofencing mobile marketing helps with segmentation by reducing your focus to a specific geographical location, such as a particular device. Geofencing can be used with local SEO to attract new prospects or your competitors’ customers to your business. Powered by artificial intelligence, geofencing mobile marketing helps improve targeting and customer engagement while reducing marketing costs.
Dynamic Content
Content plays a significant role in all digital marketing strategies, and creating a dynamic range that is personalized and attractive guarantees your offer will be seen. Content created specifically for a prospect’s interest has a better chance of converting than just a random ad. Pairing dynamic content with data-driven marketing or programmatic display ads allows you to create beautiful, interactive dynamic content that can be positioned and posted at the correct times for maximum effect.
The proper demand generation tools make a difference in your demand generation marketing strategy. Demand generation marketing managers must assiduously research marketing trends and consumer and business data to choose the right marketing strategy for demand generation success. Choosing which tool or marketing strategy for your campaign is crucial when perfecting your demand generation strategy.
5 Steps to the Perfect Demand Generation Marketing Strategy
Creating the perfect demand generation marketing strategy for your business requires finding the right tools, processes, and team. However, as a solo entrepreneur or small to medium business owner, you may not have access to a huge marketing department like large corporations. This makes it more important for you to find the right partnerships to provide the necessary tools and support.
Start With Accurate, Relevant Data
As always, data takes the lead in any marketing strategy. It should be the foundation for all your demand generation campaigns. Data accuracy can make a massive difference in the accuracy of your targeting and in choosing the right marketing strategy.
Provide Value from the Start
Ensure that your website is worth visiting and your offer solves your customers’ problems. Remember, every free offer represents the brand’s quality, experience, and expertise. Make sure every piece of content suits the customer’s needs and excites their interest.
Reach Your Prospects Anywhere
Choose marketing strategies that give you the most expansive reach possible and allow for the personalization of content and targeting. Social media or omnichannel marketing should be your first choice when designing your demand generation campaign. An omnichannel marketing strategy can include inbound, outbound, email, mobile, social media marketing, and more.
Build Partnerships for a Wider Reach
Networking is a skill that is very valuable to Business to Business (B2B) survival. As mentioned, if you don’t have a team at your disposal, outsourcing your demand generation marketing needs will take priority, especially if your business is new or using demand generation for product expansion. The right partnerships can impact your supply and distribution chain and present more opportunities to reach a new audience or marketplace.
Don’t Forget to Remarket
Remarketing is crucial in a demand generation strategy. Since demand generation is about attracting the customers’ attention, you may need more than one attempt. Remarketing allows you to retarget with new offers or redirect to their interests keeping the customer within your demand generation funnel.
Demand generation isn’t just for new business owners, and it can also be used to generate demand for new business offers, events, and job opportunities. When you incorporate these five basic steps in your demand generation marketing strategy, you target correctly, reach as many people as possible, provide quality offers and increase customer engagement. But to get access to the right tools that suit your business, you need to strategize your next demand generation campaign with the right digital marketing agency.
How FrescoData Fits Into Your Demand Generation Marketing Strategy
Partnering with FrescoData is crucial to your demand generation success if your company serves other businesses. We have one of the largest business databases to provide access to key decision-makers to build your network. Our data-driven marketing company provides data validation and enhancement services that ensure your prospects are worth the investment.
We focus heavily on omnichannel marketing strategies that can incorporate email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, and even outbound marketing tactics to reach your prospects anywhere on and offline. By unifying your demand generation marketing strategy, we can create a more cohesive customer journey while making a more significant impact. Other digital marketing services such as programmatic display ads and geofencing mobile marketing are available to give you a competitive advantage.
AI-assisted marketing automation is supposed to make customer outreach and data management more straightforward. Still, you may be losing prospects in your funnel when you only use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. We can incorporate our AI-assisted marketing automation with your existing CRM to make targeting and managing your demand generation funnel easier. And we ensure the safety of your existing customer and business data.
We have years of experience in data-driven marketing and partnerships with global and local governmental agencies to ensure who you onboard is precisely who they say they are. Follow our lead and partner with some of the biggest fortune 500 companies in the world. Contact us today, and let’s strategize your next demand generation campaign.
