Top 12 demand-generation strategies for quality leads
Demand generation can play a key role in increasing revenue. Learn some effective demand-generation strategies that stimulate interest in a company's product or service.
Developing the right strategies for demand generation is important because it helps organizations drive more qualified leads, increase brand awareness and nurture long-term relationships with their prospects. By creating effective campaigns that target key audiences using personalized content and messages to engage them throughout the entire buyer's journey, businesses can maximize their ROI from each lead generated. With well-planned strategies for demand generation, businesses are more likely to build loyal customer bases that are happy to purchase goods or services regularly. Additionally, developing successful strategies also has a major impact on the company's bottom line because it increases top-line revenue growth by reaching out to new customers while retaining existing ones.
What is demand generation?
Demand generation involves creating and nurturing interest in a product or service among potential customers, with an aim to generate high-quality leads that can be nurtured into loyal customers. This process encompasses a range of tactics, including crafting compelling content to drive qualified traffic to the website, using marketing automation to generate leads from existing contacts and employing customer data for targeted campaigns. By strategically driving customer demand for a company's offerings, demand generation plays a crucial role in boosting sales and revenue by attracting new prospects who are inclined to make purchases.
Differences between demand generation and lead generation
Differentiating demand generation from lead generation is crucial; these terms are often used interchangeably despite their distinct nuances. Demand generation has a broader scope, encompassing a range of marketing activities aimed at establishing awareness, generating interest and stimulating demand for a product or service. Its focus is on cultivating interest and building relationships with potential customers, even before they actively consider making a purchase.
In contrast, lead generation specifically involves capturing and collecting information from individual prospects who have demonstrated interest in a product or service, with the goal of qualifying those leads for potential conversion into customers. Lead generation tends to flow into demand generation after capturing prospect information in order for the demand-generation strategies -- such as retargeting campaigns and email nurtures -- to kick in.
Demand for a product or service begins by generating awareness among potential customers. The goal is a purchase decision but also retaining the new customer in the long term.
The objectives of demand generation and lead generation also differ slightly. The primary objective of demand generation is to create awareness, drive interest and nurture relationships with potential customers. Even when an immediate conversion is not the primary goal, demand generation still builds brand awareness and establishes credibility for a brand, generating more interest from the buyers for a company's products or services.
The primary objective of lead generation is to collect contact information and identify potential leads who are likely to be interested in a product or service. The focus is on identifying and capturing individuals who have already expressed interest and have the potential to be converted into customers.
12 demand-generation strategies
1. Develop a content strategy
A content strategy involves planning, creating and distributing content that aligns with the target audience's needs and interests. By providing valuable and relevant content throughout the buyer's journey, brands can attract and engage potential customers, build trust and drive demand for their products or services. Content such as blog posts, articles, videos, infographics and e-books to attract and engage the target audience establishes thought leadership and drives interest in the company's products or services.
2. Use content syndication to boost engagement
Content syndication involves distributing the valuable content that was created on third-party platforms or websites to reach a wider audience. By leveraging established networks, companies can increase brand visibility, attract more engagement and drive demand for the offerings. These third-party sites should be selected carefully and have a target audience that matches the company's ideal customer profile.
3. Employ search engine optimization
With all the great content created that shares thought leadership and addresses prospects' pain points and needs, it will be important to ensure that the company's website is optimized to show up in search engine results pages (SERPs). Increased visibility when prospects are searching for solutions to their problem is key to driving quality traffic to the website. This strategy involves keyword research, on-page optimization and link building to increase visibility in search engines.
Search engine optimization can be an effective strategy for generating demand for products and services, but one that requires considerable forethought and planning.
4. Leverage social media and influence marketing
Use social media platforms to connect with target audiences and share valuable content, engage in conversations and build brand awareness. This strategy includes creating and posting engaging social media content, running targeted ads and fostering community engagement. Social media also presents an opportunity to collaborate with influential individuals or industry experts who have a significant following and credibility with a company's target market. By partnering with relevant influencers and leveraging their reach and authority, brands can amplify their own visibility and generate demand among the influencer's audience.
5. Build authority through in-person and digital events
Event marketing involves hosting or participating in industry events, conferences, trade shows or webinars. Whether hosting in-person or digital events, companies being able to showcase expertise and provide valuable insights establishes their brand as an authority and thought leader in their industry while also building trust and generating demand among the event attendees.
6. Incorporate account-based marketing
Account-based marketing (ABM) focuses on personalized marketing efforts tailored to specific high-value accounts or key decision-makers within those accounts. By aligning the marketing and sales teams and their efforts to deliver customized experiences, teams can generate demand and establish valuable relationships with target accounts.
7. Nurture high-quality leads
Lead nurturing involves building relationships with leads who have expressed interest in a company's offerings but might not be ready to make a purchase. By delivering targeted and personalized content, addressing prospects' concerns and providing ongoing value, marketing teams can nurture leads, keep them engaged, increase the likelihood of conversion and ensure they are sales-ready by the time they become a marketing qualified lead. Nurturing in this way is commonly done using email marketing to continually drip content over time and keep the company in the top of the prospects' minds.
Demand generation plays a crucial role in boosting sales and revenue by attracting new prospects who are inclined to make purchases.
8. Incorporate paid advertising into demand generation
Paid advertising is a great way to earn premium placement on SERPs when prospects are researching solutions to their needs. It's even better to use niche ad targeting because -- unlike broad targeting -- niche ad targeting focuses on reaching a specific segment of the target audience. By refining the ad campaigns based on specific demographics, interests or behaviors, brands can increase relevance, engagement and, ultimately, demand for their products or services. Retargeting is also a helpful ad strategy, as companies can build retargeting lists from website visits or already engaged audiences.
9. Use marketing automation tools
Marketing automation tools enable teams to take advantage of list segmentation and automation tactics -- such as those used for email nurture drips and lead scoring, to name a few. Leveraging the growing technology stack that marketing uses to capture and nurture these leads will help identify which leads are more engaged and what content leads to conversions, as well as providing an opportunity to flag to sales those higher-quality leads using lead scoring.
10. Create content for each stage of the buyer's journey
Part of having a strong content strategy is creating content and mapping that content to each stage of the buyer's journey. Having content that moves a prospect through each stage from awareness to consideration and further into the decision-making process engages the target audience at each stage, driving more demand for a company's products or services.
11. Invest in partner marketing
Partner marketing involves companies collaborating with complementary businesses or influencers to reach their audience and generate demand for their offerings. By leveraging their networks and expertise, brands can expand their reach, tap into new markets and benefit from the trust and credibility associated with their partners. Frequently, there is a mutual benefit in partner marketing, as partners often offer additional services that can strengthen the acquisition of new customers.
12. Put customer-intent data to use
By analyzing customer-intent data -- such as search queries, website behavior or social media interactions -- sales and marketing teams can gain insights into the interests and needs of the target audience. This data can inform the marketing strategies, enabling the campaigns to incorporate more relevant and targeted messages that resonate with potential customers, increasing demand for the offerings.
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