10 Essential Steps to Build a Winning Demand Generation Strategy

What is demand generation strategy

Demand generation is a  type of inbound marketing strategy that aims to generate consistent interest and brand awareness in order to provide high-quality leads. Demand generation can enhance the credibility of a company’s marketing communications, give them more weight in the eyes of potential customers, and eventually boost sales by generating quality leads.

Demand generation encompasses a broad variety of operations that begin even prior to prospect identification and goes on even after the prospect converts and becomes a customer. An easier method to conceptualize demand generation is by considering how a potential customer feels about your product or service.

Who does demand generation?

Demand generation managers are responsible for conducting market research, creating and promoting content, and optimizing the customer experience with your brand. Hence, demand generation specialists must use their strategic knowledge and skill sets to find ways to collaborate with other teams within your organization to help you expand into new markets.

Demand generation vs lead generation

Demand generation is a more extensive process than lead generation. It encompasses several strategies to create demand. Despite their apparent similarity, the terms are not the same. Lead generation is one component of the bigger demand generation. Typically, a lead generation strategy is tailored to the company’s target population and demographics.

How to build a demand generation strategy

Develop a content strategy

Creating original and compelling content is a terrific method to attract customers. Your content is essential to demand generation because it educates readers and increases brand recognition.

When you develop a successful content strategy, you increase the quality of leads you receive and potentially increase sales by developing a thorough plan for content production and distribution based on the interests and habits of your target audience.

Incorporate account-based marketing

Using account-based marketing campaigns is a great way to generate B2B demand because it has a specific target audience in mind. According to the ITSMA Survey, businesses who used ABM reported improvements in customer interactions of 74% and a reputation score increase of 84%.

With this strategy, you can target particular businesses and people to create demand, which improves results later in the sales funnel. Your business must create a list of qualified target accounts using high-quality data in order to implement ABM efficiently. Targeting these accounts with specialized messaging and content will fall within the purview of your marketing and sales departments.

Use search engine optimization (SEO)

It will be crucial to make sure that the business’ website is optimized to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs) with all the fantastic content that is produced that shares thought leadership and attends to the wants and pain points of prospects. Increasing visibility during a prospect’s search for a solution to their issue is essential to attracting high-quality website visitors. To improve exposure in search engines, this technique combines link development, on-page SEO, and keyword research.

Lead tracking and scoring

It is imperative for a business to make sure that its marketing and sales staff do not squander time and resources on unqualified leads. Using a point system, a lead-scoring method assesses a prospect’s online and offline behaviors in connection to the goods or services offered by your business. Leads are sent to the sales department if they receive a certain amount of points.

Giving your leads a tracking and scoring system will provide you more understanding of how customers behave. Consider the following to score your leads:

• Lead demographics and firmographics
• Budget authority, need, and time
• Lead interest and engagement
• Lead behavior
• Social media activity

Leverage social media

The goal of demand generation is to attract your target audience’s interest. If you know how to use the versatility of social media platforms, you will be able to capture their interests. Social media platforms enable businesses to engage and communicate with customers in a distinctive and tailored manner. This strategy includes creating and posting engaging social media content, running targeted ads and fostering community engagement.

Build authority via event marketing

Event marketing encompasses organizing or taking part in trade exhibitions, webinars, conferences, or industry events. This strategy enables you to stay in direct communication with your audience and promptly deliver them solutions.

Companies that can demonstrate their expertise and offer insightful commentary, whether they are holding in-person or virtual events, position themselves as thought leaders and authorities in their field, fostering a sense of confidence and creating demand among the participants.

Nurture high-quality leads

Developing a relationship with leads who have shown interest in a company’s offerings but may not be prepared to make a purchase is known as lead nurturing. Marketing teams should nurture leads, keep them engaged, raise the chance of conversion, and make sure they are ready for sales by the time they become a marketing qualified lead by providing targeted and personalized content, addressing prospects’ problems, and offering continuous value. This type of nurturing is typically carried out through email marketing, which drips content continuously over time to keep the business at the forefront of the prospects’ minds.

Paid advertising

When potential customers are searching for solutions to their problems, paid advertising is a fantastic approach to gain top placement on SERPs. Using specialized ad targeting is even more beneficial as, in contrast to broad targeting, it concentrates on connecting with a particular target audience segment. Brands may improve relevance, engagement, and eventually demand for their goods and services by fine-tuning their advertising campaigns according to particular demographics, interests, or behaviors. Retargeting is also a helpful ad strategy, as companies can build retargeting lists from website visits or already engaged audiences.

Integrate CRM and marketing automation

Once you start putting a solid demand strategy into practice, you could find it difficult to handle things independently. You can use marketing automation tools to resolve this problem and do more tasks in less time.

Customer relationship marketing (CRM) is a very useful tool for lead generation and nurturing, social media posts scheduling, drip email campaigns and more. by keeping track of customer and prospect information. CRM and marketing automation work together to improve the efficiency with which everyone involved in the demand generating funnel carry out their tasks.

Launch your demand generation strategy

Now that you have seen the importance of demand generation for your business, are you prepared to go a step further? Our demand generation agency can build a winning demand generation strategy for your business and deliver winning leads.