Demand Generation is a discipline of online marketing based on the execution of marketing strategies that increase the interest and visibility of a company’s products or services normally published on a website. It is about creating a meeting point between buyers and sellers that stimulates sales, registrations, downloads, product testing, opinion generation or any of the interests of the commercialization companies. Simplifying the concept, it is about marrying marketing programs with structured sales processes, eliminating all possible barriers for the interaction between bidders and plaintiffs. There are several components in a demand generation process that vary depending on the size and complexity of a sale, some of these components are:
● Knowledge or awareness that the product exists
● The positioning and relevance of products in search engines
● Support for the validation and generation of opinion around the products The function of generating demand in most companies is the responsibility of the marketing team. Advanced demand generation programs tend to depend on dynamic lead generation marketing actions supported by more traditional actions and processes:
● Branding
● Optimization for Search Engines
● Search Marketing At the same time, marketing artifacts are published and developed to facilitate the qualified capture of leads:
● Webinars
● Whitepapers
● Free downloads
● Demo versions It should be noted that demand generation is often confused with the sales or conversion process. The conversion of demand into sales is an independent task that occurs after generation. To manage the conversion, it is necessary to involve different resources of the organization and develop complementary tasks, such as telemarketing processes or the cultivation of leads (lead nurturing), which are the result of analysis and previous classifications of the generated leads ( lead scoring, lead rating or lead routing).
GENERATION OF DEMAND: ASPECTS THAT YOU MUST KNOW
The generation of demand is the implementation of strategies to increase the visibility of a brand, and this can lead to the generation of leads ; However, generating demand and generating leads are concepts that are usually confused.
If your goal is to reach your customers, you are talking about demand generation, which has an emotional connotation when appealing to the values of the organization.
If you are looking to improve your sales, then it is about generating leads , whose intention is focused on conversion, closure and loyalty.
Why generate demand?
The generation of demand is concentrated in three key objectives:
Make the market aware of the existence of a product or service.
Position the brand in a relevant place in the search engines’ lists.
Promote validation to the brand through the opinions of satisfied customers.
Seen from the perspective of Inbound Marketing, the generation of demand is a more complete process, ranging from brand recognition and the attraction of prospects, of course by converting and closing the sale, to loyalty.
Meanwhile, generation leads only concentrates, as stated, in the conversion, sealing and retention.
That is, the generation of leads is a consequence of the demand generated.
In your search for strategies to promote your product you should not ignore the generation of leads by the demand, or vice versa. With a campaign to generate demand you are looking to attract the attention of a target audience with the intention of forging a relationship of trust before they initiate a purchase process.
What are the fundamental aspects?
The fundamental aspects of demand generation, therefore, include: The strategy must be long-term. What is sought with an Inbound Marketing campaign is to create relationships based on trust so that the prospect has the brand in mind when faced with the purchase decision. So the creation of a reputation and brand positioning are ahead of the sale itself.
● Content is the engine that attracts and sells . Both to generate demand and to generate leads , the content created for the website, social networks and emails is essential. While for the former, content with interest and readily available is sufficient, for the latter it is necessary to make more specific content, such as ebooks and webinars , which require action on the part of the prospect: share their contact information and thus become leads . You can see it reflected in this infographic:
● It helps to expand the markets. By generating demand, or brand recognition, appeals are being made to other audiences that can become prospects and, eventually, clients.
● Social networks play an important role because they allow the brand to interact with the target audience even when they are not customers yet.
○ Awareness of the brand brings recognition and reputation , and this generates confidence in potential customers.
○ The process is cyclical. The prospects that become leads and finally customers are those who can be promoters of the brand and serve the generation of demand. It is better explained graphically like this: ○
The benefits of generating demand include :
● Achieve brand recognition.
● Generate expectations among prospects.
● Reach new markets
● Promote new features of the products.
● Carry out public relations actions.
● Loyalty to current customers and turn them into brand ambassadors. Do not confuse concepts is a first step to design strategies and implement the correct tactics to raise awareness of your brand and boost your sales. How do you generate demand for your brand? Do you make a difference with the generation of leads? How do you promote the cyclical process of demand?
From cold calling B2B to automatic demand generation
There is no doubt that with the arrival of the internet there has been a significant change in the way of buying, and above all in the way of gathering the necessary information about a product or service before deciding to acquire it.The generation of demand has changed before the commercial stimuli and companies have taken note of this transformation: they have had to adapt their strategies to keep reaching the customer and try to lead him to the purchase.Let’s see what happened and how the new scenario is presented.The main need of any company in its beginnings, or when it launches a new product or service, is to generate demand so that these goods begin to be commercialized.For this purpose there are multiple formulas, but in this post we will focus on four fundamentals framed in the B2B field: You can use a team of commercials that makecoldcalls, that is, take a list of people and call them one by one and try to arrange meetings.From them will generate offers and business opportunities. Throughadvertising, locating the supports and most indicated means to develop it. Through amarketing department or a marketing agencythat promotes the company through direct marketing actions, digital marketing, etc. And, finally, one that has more to do withproduct marketing, with word of mouth, where the protagonist is the product and its great quality.It is a more viral environment, in which the key is that users speak well of the product.There are many technology companies that base their strategy on this idea.Let’s take Apple as an example, placing its product and the positive opinion of its users in the central axis, which they are responsible for disseminating, although it is true that for a long time it also relied on advertising, and now it is doing it again .Another clear model would beTypeform, a company located in Barcelona and in which a large part of the growth of the use of its tools has been viral through its own product.It’s a really effective formula that not many companies can boast of.These four formulas we can say that go from less to more sophistication in terms of marketing.The first two are available to everyone and, in fact, are those that start up companies with little knowledge of general marketing, product marketing or promotion.Your strategy is to hire advertising or call directly to the companies to get an appointment and power, thus, make them an offer.The last, product marketing, is reserved for companies that have focused on their product and bring it to excellence, and the third,inbound marketing, is the technique that many B2B product, service and industrial companies should put on going.On it we will deepen in this post.But let’s stop for a moment and look back.Both cold calls and fairs or other means of advertising were sufficient a while ago to generate demand despite being less sophisticated.However, they have fewer and fewer results.Which is the reason?Let’s try to find out.
Paradigm shift of demand generation
In the early years of the 90s there was a disruption in the market that companies did not know how to calibrate initially in its true dimension, nor to venture its future implications.The causes of this great change were two elements: theappearance of the internet and the emergence of search engines.Its effects have been gaining strength over time and have generated a transformation in the behavior of demand before advertising and other traditional actions, such as cold calling, fairs, etc.The impact on the functioning of the market has been profound and, more specifically, in the purchasing processes of users. But to understand this momentous change it is necessary to review what things were like before the Internet era.The consumption of information was done through newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and companies knew that this was where they could impact consumers.Thus, the purchase of spaces in these media was his usual way of advertising.In addition, when a user felt a need and wanted to buy a product, his most immediate thought was commercial, since they were the ones with the most information.In the best of cases, he turned to magazines.However, we should not forget that the magazines were aware of this, and that indirectly they were controlled by the advertisers, since they were the ones who maintained that business model.At least, his impartiality could be questioned.In addition to consulting the magazines and holding meetings with the commercials, the initial information search process was completed with the friends, who were asked.Then there was the reflection itself and, finally, the purchase materialized. As the companies knew this process very well, they counted among their ranks with great commercials very prepared.They also made direct marketing campaigns to send communications at the right time or infomercials in magazines, which provided details about the product.Thus,in this paradigm before 1990 the information was controlled by companies.
However, with the entry of the Internet era, companies lose that control and a process of democratization of information begins. Users begin to have direct access to it. Blogs appear, forums where the products are discussed (in which the dissatisfied users raise their complaints), social networks arise where it is possible to express opinions, ecommerce where the public comments on their experiences with the products, etc. Companies are still sources of information, but they are no longer the only ones. All these elements make change the way in which users perform the purchase process and, fundamentally, the way in which we gather data about the product or service in that process. One of the main consequences is that the user is less and less receptive to commercial information. In fact, when you need it you can look for it, you know exactly where to find it and you have enough tools to do it with ease. In addition, it will do it first-hand, without filters or third-party interests. The paradigm shift is clear and companies must adapt to this new scenario and begin processes of digital transformation.
How this change affects B2B companies and what alternatives exist
This disruption affects both B2B and B2C, but we will refer more to the first, since in the B2B world many product, industrial or service companies had remained alien to product marketing and promotion, and had focused more in advertising, cold calling and networking.With this change, all these techniques that are put in place usually stop working and observe how the demand they were able to generate begins to decrease.Accustomed to getting new clients with certain commercial tactics, they see howthe model fails and they look for solutions.So, naturally, companies that had never considered serious marketing development now do.All companies, including industrial and service companies, approach the marketing scenario, both promotional and product, referring in the latter to the high quality, in which the “word of mouth” is what generates new customers. And within all the scenarios and after a few years, in 2006,inbound marketing appears, with a series of formulas that offervery satisfactory results for B2Bservices or industrial products.Previously, they have tried other digital marketing strategies, such as emailing or SEM, which work very well on paper, but not in putting them into practice, especially in the case of complex and long sales.Companies investigate, catch up on the latest trends and discover inbound marketing.At first they make their investments cautiously, but the results speak for themselves.Let’s see an example in the following graphic: Evolution of visits accumulated in B2B inbound marketing projectsThis is the evolution of the visits in the inbound marketing projects of B2B companies that we manage in InboundCycle.Some cases, are organizations that started using the inbound after having tried other types of digital marketing formulas, fairs, webinars, etc.Observing the results we see that at first the development is slow, but after two years they manage to multiply their visits by 21.3.Due to this paradigm shift, all B2B companies of industrial and other services (such as technology companies, which develop long and complex sales processes) reach inbound marketing after a research phase.They verify that the results of this new strategy are timid but progressive, especially the first year, but little by little they are gaining strength, both from the point of view of visits and business opportunities.
Automatic demand generation
To conclude, we can say that in this new scenario, companies that had not needed sophisticated marketing techniques, promotional or product marketing, are forced to do so.Sometimes it is a painful process that starts from a model that no longer works, but when the first results are glimpsed, the feeling is transformedradically.The most notorious change is the way to generate demand, which was previously done mostly through cold calling.In this new environment of application of inbound marketing strategies, demand generation is automatic.Companies still have their commercials and CRMs, but all leads and new people requesting a quote, for example, are users who do so on their own initiative, without waiting for a cold call.To this we must add the strong impact on the branding of the company that inbound campaigns have and that we should not forget as part of the set of benefits.
How to increase demand generation in unknown products
A
few years ago, thegeneration of demandwas a much more expensive process in which we had to bet on offline advertising strategies and cross our fingers.Either you triumphed immediately, or you were lost forever.You remember?This is something that has changed radically nowadays, because now, when we present ourselves in the physical establishment of a clothing store, we have already been exposed to a series of advertisements on the internet, we have made a small search online, read one series of information and, therefore, we know what we can find.Simply, marketing can do its job much more effectively through more formats.But what happens when we find ourselves in front of an unknown or complex product?I explain it to you in this post!
The problem of generating demand in unknown products: examples and situations
What happens when small startups are not yet known?How will you find us by the name of our brand if you still do not know what it is?And we talk about brand as we can also do it for a specific product or service.An example is found inUber: when it came out to the market, nobody needed to look for an alternative to the traditional taxi, to which most of them had a strong attachment, and yet their success has been notorious.This situation applies to any other company that wants to market a new unknown product or service whose concept does not even exist.For example:
● New beverages that come onto the market
● 3D printers for the home
● Support service to the financial department
● Launch of new software to improve time management and organize tasks
● Software for the automatic organization of business invoices, tax relief, etc. The launching of this type of unknown products could be quite a bombshell or, on the contrary, fall into oblivion if we do not properly channel marketing strategies to follow to find the buyer person. Not only we will face the challenge of carrying out Adwords or Ads campaigns with keywords that do not exist as such, but also when performing offline actions we find difficulties. Such is the case when attending trade shows the ROI is usually scarce in unknown brands, because as human beings we usually make decisions involuntarily to satisfy emotions and needs that have been imposed on us through the passage of time through stimuli, suggestions and a very studied advertising strategy.Let’s take another assumption … Let’s imagine that a well-known brand of gasoline cars wants to create a range of electric cars. How will users associate the corporate image of this brand to this totally new type of vehicle?First, it will be necessary to work on a strategy for generating value, for example, through a content strategy, with inbound marketing. That is, in order not to generate a controversy or that our loyal customers are impressed by this new business course, we must generate a positive conversation with them,positioningourselvesas experts in this matter(in this case, why electric cars are needed now)and placing us in the top of mind of the users.
How to generate demand based on the unknown: Captio success story
How to increase the generation of demand for unknown productsPrecisely, the problem with which the company Captio was found in its beginnings is the one that I have commented to you.Captio helps other companies and their employeescontrol expenses related to their business trips, a business based on a great idea that has encountered difficulties in its takeoff.When he startedthey did not even know how to promote themselves to generate profits.The users did not know that they could count on this type of help or what would be the advantage of such a service.So, when faced with the lack of knowledge of such a specific service,they had no competition, but they could not even advertise in the search engines (SEM).They had to start with astrategy that started from much moreto start generating the demand they needed.If you wonder how the story continues … read on!For this, a way forward was tothink about the most frequent questions that users made in Google in relation to this serviceand, from there,link these search terms with the product, elaborating information that would be useful to users for connect with them and their interests.For this reason, this company relied on the effectiveness of aninbound marketing strategy to gain a good position and achieve the loyalty of new customers.If you want to know Captio’s inbound marketing strategy and the results it has generated,you can download the success story here.
Why does inbound marketing increase demand generation?
Inbound marketing is a strategy that combines marketing techniques and advertising in order to contact the user at the beginning of the purchase process (even before he considers it as such) and accompany him to the final transaction.For this, it directs the appropriate content for each of the phases of this purchase process, based on their profile and the interests they have shown in their browsing behavior: search terms, most visited pages, pages where they have spent the most time, most viewed items, etc.In this way, the inbound marketing increases the qualified users (MQL), increases the records (lead) and loyalty to the clients.The strategy consists in increasing the visibility of the company in the organic and direct channels to direct more traffic to the web, build a good database through qualified records, as well as generate valuable and personalized content towards the interests of those qualified users. that we have achieved, positioning the company in an expert in that sector.Also, when we have called the attention of those users, making their records on our website, inbound marketing is responsible for nourishing content through a chain of emails that announces and publicizes the product.And that’s where everything starts!
How inbound marketing generated demand in Captio?
Following our case study, only after a year of application of the mentioned inbound marketing techniques, Captio achieved the following: ● It surpassed the 135.000 visits to the web, multiplying the volume of visits and improving its positioning like experts in the sector of the technology applied to the trips. ● Its contact base was consolidated withmore than 3,300 contacts, increasing, in turn, the loyalty and the quality of the leads.Evolution of Captio’s accumulated leads
● They closed90 sales in a year, increasing their commercial opportunities, which is a milestone for a company that had just taken off.
● The specialization and consistency of its marketing department, which integrated the philosophy of this methodology. ● They expanded the scope of their contents and generated synergies with other companies.
● A visible improvement in the brand image, associating with a company in search of innovation that participates in its sector proactively. In short, for the generation of demand for unknown or new products, inbound marketing is the ideal methodology to achieve a sustained increase in organic traffic and a consistent capture of leads, all thanks to the generation and dissemination of content that makes you position yourself as an expert on that subject. Do you need more reasons to convince yourself of the benefits of inbound marketing? Did you get the urge to know more about this technique and see how you can apply it in your project? This is your blog! And if you have doubts or you want to comment on anything … count on me!
WHAT IS THE PROCESS OF GENERATION OF DEMAND?
In a previous note , we talked about the function of Demand Generation as a process that drives sales.
How do we start this process? To know it, nothing better than to dismember it and analyze it part by part …
STARTING TO MAKE NOISE
Demand Generation is a key activity for B2B businesses: keeping our company and its offer in the mind of our prospect is essential to open the conversations. We need to make our way through the long and complex sales process.
Like all marketing techniques that have good results, a good strategy is what makes the difference. We need to mark a clear north in the activities we are going to carry out.
STAGES OF THE DEMAND GENERATION
The Generation of Demand is not the work of chance. Before starting to generate interest, we need to create a process with its respective stages. Your inputs and outputs. Let’s see in detail what these stages are and what each one consists of Define your goals: Let’s start by establishing commercial goals. E.g. amount of sales of software licenses that we aspire to specify before the end of the fiscal year. In this way, you can estimate the number of leads you need to fill your sales funnel. Having clear your objectives will help you to better focus your target market.
● I defined your market: Is it clear who we run our campaigns? It is important to do a careful segmentation work. Define the type of target company and ideal contact profile.
● Determine who your buyers are: Generating demand in 2020 is more associated with knowing your client than knowing about marketing techniques It is a great investment to devote time to study your buyer. You can create buyers people based on roles, needs or objectives of your audience. Over time you will be able to create more robust profiles with the help of more detailed questions to clients. They will help you understand what motivates them (and what not) when choosing a product like yours.
● ● Choose your strategy: the type of strategy you should use will depend on your ideal client profile. The 2 most used approaches are: ○ Broad-reaching marketing: in this case, as many marketing channels as possible are used: Website, e-mail marketing; SEM, SEO, Content Marketing. The premise of this type of strategy is to sow, attract and convert. Account based marketing (or marketing based on accounts): The Account Based Marketing does not seek to reach a lot of companies, but the bigwigs. It all starts with a list of target companies. With them we will design personalized strategies to open conversations (prospection).
○ I defined your marketing objectives in each stage of the funnel: When a LEAD enters your funnel two things can happen: advance or abandon. To move forward we need levers. The best levers are the value contents. What is a value content? The one that helps your buyer to do their job better Each stage has its own objectives. For example, at the beginning of the funnel, we seek to generate awareness and attract new leads. In this stage, activities such as pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, dissemination of articles of organic positioning, webinars, among others are carried out.
● On the other hand, as leads advance in the purchase process, messages and activities are used that are more personalized and oriented to the specific needs of each prospect. Live demonstrations, Business cases and Assessment are some of the most successful techniques to close sales.
● Segment your database: by segmenting your base of contacts using criteria that fit the objectives of your strategy (position, age, or sector of the industry, for example) you can generate messages and more personalized content. This will make your messages resonate with greater impact and arouse interest.
● I chose the channel mix: at this stage the objective is to choose the right marketing mix. The ideal mix will depend on your objective. The techniques are classified among those that serve to position products or concepts, which serve to attract leads, cultivate leads or generate sales. Automate your strategy: the ideal end of any strategy is to be automated. When we find the combination that works, it is a good idea to automate certain processes: attracting leads; answers to queries, dissemination of contents segmented by interest.
● I use platforms like Hubspost; infusionsoft or Marketo will not only help you execute your initial strategy, it will also give you the bases to make improvements during the execution through the registration and tracking of key metrics such as generated leads, cost per lead and the ROI of the strategy.
REMEMBER TO DOCUMENT!
Although it seems incredible, most B2B companies have never captured their Demand Generation strategy in a detailed document.
In the absence of a formal plan, there is no clear north in which all team members focus their efforts. This leads to the execution of isolated actions, failures in communication, and difficulties when finding faults in the activities.
Still have not convinced yourself to document your plan? Here we leave you a note entirely dedicated to this subject that will surely change your opinion
AFTER THE START-UP, WHAT’S NEXT?
You have already thought, documented and launched your strategy to generate demand. Whats Next?
The generation of demand is not just a process. They are many. That’s why when you finish one starts another connected.
The process of generating leads is followed by the cultivation of those leads that we developed in another note.
Finally, we recommend updating your plan every 3 months. There will always be things to improve and new techniques to try. It’s worth the update
7 keys to a successful demand generation campaign
At the end of February, taking a look at the CRM of the marketing department, you can see that you have not been bad about seeding opportunities, but in reality, few of thesedemand generationactionshave ended up passing the qualification filter to less, to be able to make a presentation of services.Let’s not fool ourselves.All marketing departments need to deploydemand generationstrategiesto get qualified leads that end up incorporating business.As basketball coaches say, it’s not just about shooting, but about the ball entering the basket.So what are the keys to deploying a successfullead generationcampaign?Do we want leads or do we want sales?What is the cost of acquiring my leads?Do they have the same conversion ratio of success depending on their origin?Am I connecting properly with my potential clients?Do I give to each possible lead the message that interests me the most? …Ourexperiencein Omnitel ingenerating demand, tells us that currently, the strategy of capturing leads, suggests combining different channels to get the qualified contact that can finally end up for sale.The challenge is to evaluate well the cost and result of this mix of channels, because as we know from the Pareto Principle, 80% of our business will come from 20% of our efforts.So the starting point of a gooddemand generation actionwill be to identify well those activities that are generating more sales and invest more resources in them.To be coherent with the previous point, ourlead generationcampaignmust start from an accurate knowledge of our customers and consumers: what they want, when they want it, how they want it …, and initially seek qualitative objectives.Later when we have well greased ourdemand generationchannelwe can go for quantity.Above all, because knowing success on smaller samples we can expand our range of action on similar samples of potential leads.As a third recommendation, in yourdemand generationcampaignstry to add value and know your differential points about what your competitors offer.If you want to be tall and handsome, you can not be short and ugly.If you want to sell something to Cristiano Ronaldo fans, do not spend time and resources selling the same to Messi fans.Most companies try to sell everything to everyone, when it is more effective to sell specific solutions to specific niches and groups.Another factor of success for a campaign togenerate demandis the capacity for self-criticism and reaction.Many of our potential customers will not interact with us until they really know our value proposition.Some will see it sooner and others later.So we will have to look for different incentives depending on the information we want to obtain.While in some cases a simple discount coupon will be sufficient, in others it will be necessary to go for a direct gift.The frequency and relevance of ourlead generationcampaignwill be two other success factors to consider.According to the statistics we search, it is estimated that a user can receive hundreds of promotional messages a day through different channels and formats.It is not about bombarding ten times with our message, but about generating a long-term relationship of trust, above all, because we will be sowing for the coming months.You also have to earn that trust by offering the user what he wants at all times.It does not make sense to offer a 20% discount when we have not yet been able to take you through the purchase process.Sixth recommendation: review and refine your list of contacts.Keep it alive.Be methodical.The usual error is to send the same to the same contacts.Expand the contact information of that reference that a friend has given you, create an interest group for the cards you collect during a fair, check the emails that are opened and those that do not … Our credibility and trust with our potential client is in game.Finally, to be successful in ourdemand generationcampaign, logically, we have to track, measure our successes, learn from mistakes and improve for the following actions.Let’s not hurry.Remember our quality and quantity objectives.Starting to harvest results soon is a complicated path.But you know that even the most difficult of the roads begins with a simple step.
