Implementing demand generation best practices is one of the best ways to grow your business. Simply put, demand generation refers to using marketing to find people who want your company’s products or services. If you were selling lemonade, you would be thinking about making your product the most appealing to your target market.
However, this should not be confused with lead generation which consists of collecting contact information (usually in exchange for a content offering), that is then added to a database and followed up on by the sales team and/or drip marketing campaigns. For your lemonade stand, you would be thinking about offering a frequent slurper card in exchange for their contact information.
Both demand generation and lead generation have their place in an overall marketing strategy. And while they are two separate approaches with distinct differences, at the core of both in the B2B business world, you’ll find one thing in common: high quality content.
Demand Generation Best Practices
Create Valuable Top Quality Free Offers
Give away the best of the best content offerings for free. Share a useful template, webinar, or app. By distributing helpful and valuable information, you present your business as being trustworthy. This thought leadership is something people will remember, and then come back to you for more information in the future.
Voice & Visual Appeal
Consistency is key when it comes to how your marketing campaign looks, feels, and is perceived by the target audience. Messaging throughout the campaign needs to focus on and be created around the buyer personas.
Use an Integrated Media Marketing Approach
Coordinate all marketing activities across a range of media platforms - email, print, broadcasting, direct marketing, digital etc., to ensure that the largest possible audience in your target market reads the message in the places that they expect to find information.
Lead Generation Best Practices
Lead Offer
Create quality content that your target market wants. These offers can range from free webinars and e-books to videos or free trial of a particular product or service. No matter what the offer is, it needs to be enticing enough that the person submits their email in exchange for the content.
Landing Page
All ads should send leads to a landing page. Create a clean landing page with a clear call to action. When designed properly, your landing page moves closer to the point of purchase.
Lead Scoring
Assigning leads a numerical value based on their interactions on your website and with your content, will help determine the quality of the lead. Based on their lead score, you can then decide the next best step of action and even create different email marketing campaigns for leads with different scores.
Planning Time
Demand generation and lead generation are two different approaches to get to the same end goal: paying customers who love your product. The basis for either approach all begins with creating quality content. If you start there, select a strategy and follow the lead generation or demand generation best practices, you’ll be on your way to finding and moving leads through the sales funnel and into happy customers.