To grow your sales and revenue, your business needs to build prospect and customer relationships and generate high-quality sales leads. Achieving this requires a strategic and comprehensive approach to demand generation.
Demand generation encompasses all of the marketing strategies, programs, and channels you use to build relationships and generate sales leads. The goal of demand generation is to help your company reach new and existing markets, promote your products and services, build your brand, and nurture lasting customer relationships that result in long-term sales success.
Ultimately, demand generation can take many different forms, and you may need to engage in a comprehensive set of marketing activities to achieve your goals. Here are a few strategic ways you can generate demand through your marketing.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing might include blogging on your website or via social media channels, sharing videos and podcasts, as well as offering webinars, e-books, and other content.
The goal of inbound marketing is to attract and engage prospects with your marketing content and drive them to landing pages and sign-up forms where they can access valuable content or offers by sharing their contact information.
To sign up, your audience follows a link to a landing page on your website where you capture that person’s contact information in exchange for delivering the content. That contact becomes a lead that can be forwarded to your sales team or added to your prospect list for nurturing email campaigns or perhaps a weekly newsletter.
Digital Advertising
Creating and launching pay-per-click advertising campaigns through Google AdWords or other online ad networks is another way to generate demand. Digital advertising offers one of the fastest ways to drive new traffic to your website and landing pages, but it may require a significant budget depending on the level of competition for the keywords and content you might target through your chosen network.
Depending on your targeted industry, there may be ad networks and websites that offer opportunities to deliver digital display ads to your industry-specific audience. Social media also offers ways to reach a targeted audience by criteria including demographics, industry, and even job title and job function.
Well-crafted ads with the right messaging, along with the right website content or landing pages, can generate clicks-throughs that provide many opportunities to drive new prospects into your sales funnel.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a fundamental component of marketing, particularly when it comes to your website and blog. By researching and understanding the keywords your ideal customers use when searching online, you can include these keywords in your website and blog content.
It is also critical to optimize the design of your site and the presentation of your pages and content according to SEO best practices and guidelines published by major search engines such as Google.
With optimized web content, you can potentially increase your ranking in search results and attract more traffic to your site. In turn, you gain more opportunities to drive demand through your signups and offers.
Even if the competition for some of your relevant keywords is fierce, you can micro-target keywords and phrases that have less volume and competition but can still be extremely valuable in delivering highly qualified traffic to your site.
Social Media Engagement
Social media engagement is another potential part of a successful demand generation program. Prospects and customers may already be interacting with your company and brand through social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Or you may develop a strategy for building a social presence and attracting likes and followers.
Using social media channels, you can answer questions, provide customer service, and share product news, updates, and other content. Maintaining a meaningful social media presence can keep those prospects and customers engaged with your brand and allow you to have social conversations to foster long-term relationships that generate demand and increase your sales.
Guest blogging is another way to use social media to your advantage. Guest blogging on other websites is a way to establish your expertise as a thought leader in your industry, share useful insights with your target audience, and drive demand by including inbound links and references to your business, products, or services within your article or blogging profile.
Public Relations
Public relations can also play a pivotal role in successful demand generation. A press release that gets published online or a PR pitch that inspires an article in online or print media can lead to exposure for your brand and products. This can ultimately lead to visits to your website, sales inquiries, and new customers.
There are many channels and opportunities for distributing your press release to online and traditional media. Pitching stories is another way to get writers and editors interested in writing a blog post or article that generates ideal exposure for your business.
Have you created a new product or service that would be of immediate interest to readers or viewers? Are you doing something innovative that is having an impact on your local community or your industry?
Think in terms of stories that would be captivating or immediately interesting to the audience that a blog, website, or publication attracts. A well-crafted, thoughtfully-placed PR pitch on an engaging topic could land you the exposure that builds awareness of your products and services and boosts your sales.
Demand Generation for Your Business
While these strategies and tactics are often the core components of demand generation, our list here is not exhaustive, and the best options for your business may vary.
To identify and plan the right choices for your company, you will need to understand your target audience as well as the channels customers use to engage brands and find information on the types of products and services you offer. You will also need to assess your goals and budget, determine how much demand you need to generate, and identify the ideal strategies and tactics to make your vision a reality.
At Marketing2Connect, we can guide you through this process, help you plan a winning demand generation strategy, and help you execute your vision with a full complement of marketing services.
Contact our team today or learn more about our B2B marketing services and how they can help you build lasting customer relationships and drive sales growth for your company.