Demand Generation Strategy and How to Improve it?

Most marketing professionals understand the strategy’s purpose, but many struggle with executing on each funnel stage.

So how do you develop a demand gen strategy that turns cold prospects into long-term customers?

A successful demand generation strategy operates across the whole funnel. It starts with understanding the objective of each stage of the funnel, then identifying the appropriate channels and offers to drive leads through those stages. It’s not complicated, but it takes some planning.

Dive in to learn more about what to consider when developing your demand generation strategy.

So, First Understand.

What is Demand Generation?

Demand generation is building awareness and interest in a brand’s products and services. A successful demand generation connects a brand’s value proposition to potential customers from the beginning of the buyer’s journey when they first start looking for your product to the point of purchase and beyond.

Marketing teams work in a cross-functional capacity to develop ongoing, omni-channel strategies that utilize tactics to connect value propositions to the right Audience.

What’s the Difference between Demand Generation and Lead Generation:

Does Demand generation sound similar and confuse you with Lead Generation?

You aren’t the only one to think so.

While the two terms are somewhat synonymous, demand generation strategies span the entire funnel. On the other hand, it is aided by top-of-funnel awareness that demand generation drives. Middle and Bottom of the Funnel are the next steps.

Demand Generation = Sales + Marketing

Demand generation is a joint effort between marketing and sales organizations. The goal is to target the right prospects and bring them along the buyer’s journey.

Whereas lead generation is the process of converting sales-ready prospects into qualified pipelines.

Demand Generation Steps

Demand generation is like a sales pipeline and most often go through the following steps

Create awareness of products and services
Nurture key prospects.
Move the prospect through the sales cycle.
Retain, up-sell, and cross-sell the customer after they make the purchase.

A well-executed demand generation strategy can have several outcomes. Still, in general, it works to broaden your Audience, keep your brand top-of-mind for your ideal customer, drive them to convert to your website, and ultimately encourage them to buy into your offerings.

Who works on Demand Generation Campaigns?

A demand generation manager must work cross-functionally with teams across the organization to build out a demand generation plan. Several functions must be looped in and aligned to execute activities that include but aren’t limited to:

Digital Marketing Team
Events Organizing teams Like those involved in Webinars, B2B Conferences and Trade Events.
Corporate Communications and PR Teams
Core Marketing Teams
Business Intelligence and Analytics Team
CRM

How to Develop a B2B Demand Gen Strategy

If you plan your demand generation, you are always driving towards specific and measurable goals keeping benchmarks in mind. Once you establish your sales goals, you can build out a demand generation strategy that specifically caters to achieving them.

After doing the initial research, you can begin generating demand in a planned and data-driven way.

Start with the goals and work backward.

This process is easier and more accurate if your company has historical data it can rely on to establish benchmarks. Most companies will carry out this process every quarter.

Understanding of Audience’s pain points

The demand generation process relies heavily on an in-depth understanding of your target audience’s pain points. It goes a long way in helping to create a demand for your product and services. Once both sales and marketing have a clear understanding of what prospects are looking for, you can proceed with establishing the demand generation programs that would best target them.

Decide on a type of demand generation strategy.

The demand generation strategy you select for your business should be based on your target audience. B2B demand generation strategies tend to be one of two kinds:

Account-Based Marketing (ABM):

This is Useful for Specific Products and Services. You can use it when marketing activities are carried out based on trying to win specific accounts.

ABM is not necessarily about amplifying the brand voice widely across your target market but approaching specific prospects and engaging with them directly.

Broad-Reach Marketing:

It is the most commonly used strategy and relies heavily on inbound marketing tactics. It aims to cast the widest possible net to bring in as many prospects as possible into the top of the funnel to generate as many wins as possible at the bottom of the funnel.

Brands that use a broad-reach marketing approach tend to optimize their digital marketing engine by utilizing their website, email marketing, paid ads, earned media, social media, and content marketing.

The Demand Generation Funnel

Demand generation tactics run alongside each stage of your marketing and sales funnel. You might be familiar with the modern sales funnel that most marketing and sales teams have invested in.

Top of the Funnel (TOFU) tactics
MIddle of the funnel (MOFU) tactics
Bottom of the funnel (BOFU) tactics

I have Written a Separate Article on the Modern Sales Funnel, where you will understand in Detail. I discussed all three stages of the funnel.

Conclusion

In Modern Marketing trends, Demand Generation has a Crucial Role in Sales and Marketing. You can follow different strategies for different domains, but the Main Aim is to Get User Data, Which can contribute to your Sales. I was hoping you could share your hurdle and Achievements in Demand Generation with me. I am here to listen to you.

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