Demand Generation focuses on building brand awareness and creating a demand for your product or services. It’s important that you have a well designed demand generation strategy that supports your sales goals. To get you started, we’ve put together these 8 demand generation tips that should always be incorporated during your planning process:

Understand Your Prospect

Know who you are targeting. Take the time to do the research and really understand what your customer wants, how they want to receive information from you, and what indicators are present when they are ready to make a purchase. This information can be collected through focus groups, e-surveys, phone calls, or whatever method you’ve found that works best for your particular organization and industry.

Buyer Personas

Creating personas or fictional characters based on real customer data will help you stay focused and provide you with a deeper understanding of buyer behaviors. Creating these personas will reveal profound buyer insights like what motivates them, what drives their decision making habits, perceptions, and attitudes about products and services.

Tools & Processes

Having the right tools and processes in place is a must in order to increase demand. The marketing automation tools that are available today are designed to strategically move leads through the sales funnel and convert them into customers. Understanding how the tools work, designing processes for different types of leads, defining job responsibilities for these processes, regularly analyzing progress, and implementing changes when necessary are all vital steps that must be taken to meets sales goals.

Killer Content

There is an incredible amount of content at our fingertips. People are constantly being inundated with information. That makes creating killer content that much more important. Your content needs to standout. It needs to be different than what your competitors are already providing. Be proactive, not reactive. Answer customer questions before they even ask them. Strive to always be one step ahead, current, visually appealing, and interesting. This killer content will keep your customers engaged and coming back for more.

Advertising

Where and how you promote your content is an important piece of the puzzle. What social media platform do your prospects and customers use most often? Are there specific websites they turn to when searching for information? What types of ads get the best response? As they move through their purchase cycle do they turn to different sources of information? Discovering the answers to these questions will help you plan appropriately and get the results you are seeking.

Lead Scoring

Create a lead scoring model that identifies the leads that are most likely to convert based on demographics, activities, and behaviors. For those that aren’t identified as a MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead), they continue to be nurtured until their score meets the defined MQL target. Scoring leads will save your sales reps time, and allow them to focus on the hot prospects, which will result in more closed-won business.

Nurture

Regularly communicate with your prospects. Create segmented campaigns based on their interests. Nurture them through the buying process by providing them with the answers to their questions. Be a helpful and guiding resource as they work through the decision making process. The more you support them, the more likely they will be to turn to you for help and purchase a product or service.

Data Analysis

Continually learn and grow with your customers. Identify key metrics and regularly monitor them throughout each campaign and analyze them after they close. Remember, the data is only helpful if you understand it, analyze it, and make changes based on those findings. Review the successes as well as the failures. Use these insights when planning future demand generation efforts.

Start incorporating these demand generation tips into your marketing strategy today. Need help with that? Measured Results Marketing is waiting to hear from you - call 571-606-3106 or email us anytime. The Yetis want to help you!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net