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With time, marketing teams become aware that even the best SEO strategies are only capable of getting you traffic.
The traffic has to be converted.
Eventually, you have to turn all the curiosity of prospects into sales.
How? Through demand generation.
A demand generation strategy increases brand awareness, drives website traffic, and generates new leads.
It is indeed an effective way of eliminating the sales and marketing divide.
This blog is a must-read for anyone who wants to generate a healthy pipeline of prospects.
So what is demand generation?
The goal of demand generation marketing is to accelerate your sales team’s pipeline.
The initial campaigns are designed so your target audience can opt in to your mailing list.
Moreover, you can make your content engaging, events easier to attend, and more.
By nurturing and engaging your prospects, demand generation marketing keeps your brand at the top of your prospect’s mind.
It is crucial to guide and nurture them along the buyer’s journey until they reach the stage of qualified prospects.
You can then pitch to them to turn them into new customers.
This demand gen blog covers:
- Difference Between Lead And Demand Gen
- Account Based Marketing
- Blogging
- Live And Virtual Events
- Partnering Up
- B2b Seo
- Influencer Marketing
- Freemiums
- Lead Magnets
- Summary
#1. Difference Between Lead & Demand Generation
Demand generation is all about bringing new people to your site so you can promote your products and services.
Lead generation, however, aims to generate qualified leads. Demand gen contributes to lead generation.
In order to increase conversions and awareness, you need to develop interest first. Not all your prospects are ready to opt-in or convert immediately.
Particularly at large enterprises, buyers are locked to specific vendors, making it impossible to look for alternatives until there are specific deadlines.
Your audience may enjoy watching your videos or reading your blogs, even if they are not ready to talk with your sales team.
High-quality content fosters brand recognition and trust. Then, when that audience is ready to make a purchase, you’re in the game!
A lead generation campaign focuses more on getting leads into “qualified” status so that the brand can start a sales conversation.
In some ways, demand generation and lead generation overlap.
If you have a webinar about a product, driving registrations could be both demand and lead gen.
Both are relevant to nurturing your database as you progress through the sales funnel.
To understand the differences, have a look at this table:
| Lead Generation | Demand Generation |
|---|---|
| Focuses on converting prospects into qualified leads that can be nurtured into customers | Focuses on brand awareness, product education, and creating demand for a product or service |
| Is a subset of Demand Generation | Is the umbrella term used for describing multiple marketing strategies |
| Qualifies the target audience and readies them for the next marketing phase | Qualifies the target audience and readies them for the next marketing phase Builds a target audience |
| Utilises gated content, which requires the prospect to provide their email or other contact methods | Utilises free content to attract prospects |
Read
The Difference Between Lead Generation and Demand Generation
#2. Account Based Marketing
Account Based Marketing (ABM) focuses on a tightly defined audience segment and coordinates your marketing across multiple channels.
In ABM, you’re still driving demand, however you’re specific with your strategy, targeting the precise industries and companies you want to target ahead of time.
Typical outbound activities in an ABM campaign may include email marketing, LinkedIn ads, direct mail, and InMail.
In addition, you can direct your audience to landing pages that have tailored content or case studies.
#3. Blogging
Writing blog posts that address audience concerns and engage them is the key to building long-term awareness.
Content marketing tactics like blogging help companies promote themselves online.
Blogs also drive relevant traffic.
It helps brands interact with their audience, encourages them to download content of value, makes them register for webinars, or take other steps to learn more about your brand.
Using a blog throughout a buyer’s journey can help you target your audience.
Using them at the top of a content marketing funnel is the most effective.
#4. Live And Virtual Events
Having an in-person event gives an opportunity for industry insiders’ to network, learn cutting-edge know-how, and speak to experts.
By participating in industry events or even hosting your own branded events, your company can build crucial relationships.
Conferences help you offer truly unique experiences that make your brand stand out.
Here are 6 ideas you could put at your booth to attract attention and start the conversation:
- Giant gumball machines
- oversized sofas
- happy hours
- chocolate chip cookies
- interactive iPad games
- dazzling videos
You can also get creative with virtual events, as many companies did during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Focus on what’s digitally effective, such as video, tools, and templates.
#5. Partnering
To drive demand, consider strategic partnerships.
The idea behind this is to partner with companies that target the same (or similar) buyer personas as yours.
Create exclusive insights by combining information from each partner.
You can then co-host an event, do a joint podcast, or conduct a webinar together.
Each business will have access to the other’s network for promotion.
This will increase the overall awareness for both partners.
#6. B2B SEO
Get your digital assets optimised for SEO to drive tons of traffic to your site.
Researching the appropriate keywords and analysing search intent will help you align your marketing with how your audience thinks.
Furthermore, you’ll increase your brand’s visibility, which will extend your reach and boost awareness.
Perform keyword research, on-page optimization, and internal linking for each piece of content you create.
- Is the content crawlable?
- Does the website architecture make sense? Is it intuitive, confusing, cluttered?
- Have you optimised the URLs?
- What about your title tags? Schema? Image tags?
- Have you optimized the SEO for content on various channels where you participate?
- Does your site load quickly?
- Does it provide a great user experience?
By considering SEO lead generation when writing your content, you’ll get the most return on your investment.
#7. Influencer Marketing
Make sure you partner with passionate influencers.
Micro-influencers have a more personal connection with their audiences, they often produce better results in campaigns.
Focus on engagement rate and quality instead of follower count.
To achieve maximum impact, make sure your efforts are scalable.
There are technologies available that enable you to continually scour the web and pinpoint hundreds or even thousands of key influencers.
#8. Freemiums
Paired with blogging and SEO, lead magnets and freemiums can be powerful demand generation engines.
If you include it in your content marketing strategy, your audience will enjoy high-quality, downloadable content that matches their needs.
Media attention, reaching an expanded audience, and driving online shareability are all possible through original research.
Additionally, there are many other marketing techniques that can persuade site visitors to provide their email address.
For example, you can create guides, ebooks, checklists, presentations, white papers, toolkits, cheatsheets, templates, and infographics.
You may then launch marketing automation sequences to maintain touch points and engagement.
#9. Lead Magnets
Combined with blogging and SEO, lead magnets are incredible demand generation marketing tools.
When you offer high-value downloadable content aligned with your audience’s needs, they’ll gobble it up!
In addition to media attention, expanding reach, driving online sharing, and increasing traffic to your site, original research creates buzz in the media.
The site visitor can also be convinced to provide their email address by numerous other marketing methods.
There are guides, white papers, ebooks, presentations, toolkits, templates, swipe files, infographics, and checklists, among others.
Using marketing automation, you can maintain engagement by launching sequences that maintain contact points.
#10. Summary
The revenue strategy that can be used both in the short term and in the long, is called demand generation.
It brings in a constant flow of new potential customers, which fills the top of the funnel.
The process of generating demand is comparable to that of attraction marketing, but it offers more applications and advantages.
Your company will see a significant increase in the number of leads it receives if its demand generation efforts are carried out effectively.
Accelerate your leads with Lead Generation today!
Digitalzone puts your B2B leads and sales on steroids.
Using a global B2B database of 71 million companies, we have created and managed 46,872 successful campaigns for companies based in the USA.
We help B2B companies, just like yours, with Account Based Marketing, Content Syndication, Intent Based Marketing, Demand Research and Content Creation
Get in touch with us today, to accelerate your sales.
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