It occurred to me, after writing my last blog, that we really needed a baseline to define what is demand generation!
Demand generation is the overarching marketing program that’s sole purpose is to amplify your brand’s message, capture leads, nurture them, and gain customers. Through technology, demand generation is responsible for every interaction in the buyer’s journey. The ultimate goal of a demand generation program is to build and nurture key prospect and customer relationships for the long term.
This is accomplished by implementing a marketing strategy across a variety of channels, that are designed to create demand. Demand can be created utilizing content on your website, pay-per-click advertising which drives traffic to your website or follows to your social media, or, pre-COVID events where you meet leads in person, etc.
Demand generation looks like many things.
It can be:
- A regular newsletter
- A blog post
- Webinars and recorded events
- Email campaigns
- Social media engagement
- In person event, tradeshow, conferences
- Pay-per-click campaign
Ultimately, it's any touchpoint throughout the conversion optimization and sales cycles
Once leads are captured in your database, the role of marketing automation kicks in. Through the delivery of perfectly timed content with messaging aligned to where they are in the buying cycle, the goal is to guide your buyer naturally towards the end goal of making a sale.
A demand generation program focuses on optimizing the performance of your marketing initiatives to generate leads, nurture them, and create sales qualified leads. This program needs to have content that helps guide the lead through the customer journey, traditionally pictured as a funnel, via marketing automation. I prefer to visualize this more as an infinite loop, where a customer’s journey never actually ends. The same steps that exist in the funnel, exist in the loop. Of course, the journey results in a sale, but that is not the end. Whether you have an annual subscription fee, or potential upsales, or both, you don't want to let your customer’s journey end after the initial sale.
What is important, regardless of the industry, is a customer’s lifetime value. A customer who has already purchased a product from you will make a much easier upsell than a net new lead. Therefore, it is important to continue to think how to nurture that customer long past the sale, whether you are selling software to the hospitality industry with contactless ordering or a personalized poetry experience, the job of a demand generation program is to keep your leads and customers engaged.
Tools for planning!
While there are many other steps to getting started with your demand generation program, defining it and communicating it with your internal stakeholders will ultimately lead you to success. Start planning your demand generation program today with our free demand gen planning template.
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE DEMAND GENERATION PLANNING GUIDE
To learn more about getting started with your demand generation program, read our blog post 4 Steps to Getting your Demand Gen Program Running.
