Demand generation strategy that works!

Creating a killer demand generation strategy

A good demand generation strategy helps B2B enterprises build awareness in their target audiences. When marketing and sales work together they have an easier time driving interest and closing more deals.

The quality of leads will increase. Wasted marketing expenses will decrease. Sales and marketing teams will consistently hit their targets.

In this article, we will reveal some tried and true demand generation strategies that you can use to reach your company's sales and marketing goals.

Understanding demand generation basics

To set up a viable demand generation framework, we need to answer a basic question:

What is demand generation?

Demand generation is the deliberate, structured, and planned practice of building interest in a product or service. Demand generation transforms passive audiences, who may be aware of but disinterested in your company's products or services, into qualified leads who recognize their need for your company.

Demand generation is a complex process that spans the full range of sales and marketing activities. 

Why demand generation is key for success

If you are struggling to get leads, you may need to work on awareness first. Figure out how to  get potential customers to realize that whatever business problem they’re facing has a solution, and your company offers that solution.

Customers need to be problem-aware before they become solution-aware. Then, you can help them recognize your product or service as the solution for their business concern. Customers go through a process of being unaware, problem-aware, solution-aware, and product-aware. Finally, they become company-aware of your company as a potential valued partner in their business success.

How does demand generation work?

Follow these 5 steps to develop your demand generation strategy.

1. Build customer personas

Your should review your customer base, both active customers and leads, and develops detailed customer personas. In order to define your target audience, you need to understand the business issues they face and how your company is their solution.

To do this you can develop a survey, run polls on Twitter or Facebook, or talk with your outbound sales team.

2. Develop personalized messaging

Next, your sales and marketing teams develop messaging to reach those "ideal customers" to build interest and excitement about a particular product or service.

Once you have created a strongly motivating sales message, you can spin it from the top to the bottom of your sales funnel. But you must create a simple, memorable statement of your unique value proposition that also describes your brand.

You will need to:

• Understand your key customer personas and their pain points
• Understand how your industry relieves those pain points
• And, articulate and persuade your customers that you relieve those pain points better than anyone else‍‍

3. Determine communication methods

The messages your sales and marketing teams develop for reaching your ideal customer are delivered through a variety of top-of-funnel marketing communications. Your company casts a broad net to reach these ideal customers "where they are" with carefully crafted messages. All of these messages are designed to turn leads into customers and interest into sales.

4. Begin your outreach

Through a mix of sales calls, sales visits, and email campaigns, your sales and marketing teams will encourage the most promising leads to start a demo, take a sales call, schedule a consultation, and take other steps toward a purchase.

5. Fine-tune your demand generation strategy over time

You don't have to do elaborate analysis to figure out demand generation tactics that work. You just have to answer three easy questions:

• What are you doing right now that works?
• What are you doing right now that is missing your targets?
• What can you do differently in the future that might improve your results?

Don't make sudden, drastic changes to your demand generation tactics when things are going reasonably well. Incremental changes are easier to implement and don't raise unwanted scrutiny by your customers. Changing demand generation tactics drastically or frequently may lead your customers to question the quality of your management.

Demand generation vs lead generation

Demand generation and lead generation aren't exactly the same, but they aren't very different, either. B2B marketers tend to focus on lead generation when they assume (sometimes incorrectly) that demand is already there.

Demand generation strategy examples

The best way to work on demand generation is by creating content to become positioned as a thought leader. Reach your customer base as a thought leader without expecting leads. 

Inbound demand generation: Gated content

On your website you will build a landing page that serves as a gateway for a desired white paper, study, checklist, eBook, product comparison, or other lead magnets that collect contact information. Your sales team then sends follow-up emails or makes phone calls to the people who sign up on your landing page to nurture a potential customer relationship.

Outbound demand generation: Cold emails

Demand generation isn't all about getting businesses to visit your landing page to collect their contacts. Sometimes, demand generation is just getting your prospect to your website. That's it. You want them to visit your homepage and watch a video. AN easy way to do this is with cold email outreach. That's all you want them to do. You just want them to know that you exist. They will need to go further—into your sales funnel—to become leads.

Implementing your B2B demand generation strategy

Have one great idea, one key message. Deliver your unique value proposition over multiple channels. This increases your odds of getting your message in front of the right people. Develop a key performance indicator (KPI), to measure your success, so you will know how much demand you are generating.

Just remember to keep creating top-of-the-funnel content to fuel constant demand generation. Add gated content to drive lead generation. Automate the process of identifying your best leads. Keep in constant contact with your sales team to stay on course toward reaching your goals.

How can you make sure you stay on track with your demand generation strategy? The answer is UserGems. You can integrate UserGems with your existing tools to identify the leads who are most likely to convert to customers and the customers who are ready to buy your products and services.

Drive a bigger pipeline, reduce churn, and increase your win rate with UserGems.