Start from the top to earn leads with demand generation
Demand generation encompasses all of the activities that create awareness and generate interest in your service or product. Effective B2B marketing activities drive demand generation with a key outcome of inbound and outbound lead acquisition.
If you can create a scalable and repeatable marketing strategy – a demand generation engine – you will create the conditions necessary to create and nurture customer relationships.
Demand generation helps potential leads and customers identify you, and gives your sales and marketing teams intel on your leads, based on how they first interacted with you.
This important tidbit of information will ultimately lead to stronger conversations and relationships between sales representatives and leads, positively impacting your conversion and sales rates.
Here are some steps to consider when creating your demand generation engine.
Brand assets and content
Brand assets come in a variety of elements – color scheme, logo, jingle, mascot. Creating a brand that is synonymous with your company requires consistent application of these elements. When creating content for your brand, whether it’s a blog, white paper, web page, television commercial, etc., make sure that these are consistent with your brand standards, every time.
When creating your brand, keep your buyer personas in mind. Use their wants, needs, and demands top of mind to create content that resonates with them. Also, know where your personas are in their buyer’s journey to create content relevant to their needs. This will come in handy when pulling content for your outbound efforts and marketing outreach campaigns.
Outbound efforts
Outbound efforts are the attempts you make to attract new prospects and customers. Many of these efforts are considered “cold” outreach as the individuals you are reaching out to may have never interacted with your company before. Programs such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Seamless.ai can help you find contact information to enter new prospects into your marketing channels.
You also want to drive traffic to your assets using search marketing, media buys, or social media. Your main goal is to drive awareness, interest and traffic, opening up the opportunity for inbound opportunities.
Inbound inquiries
With potential customers coming to your website – either organically or through your outbound marketing efforts – make sure they have a way to connect with you. Using technology such as chatbots or contact forms will allow your visitors to connect with you in a matter that is comfortable for them.
Marketing outreach
Email plays an important role in demand generation. When used properly, email can stir up a lot of interest and engagement for your company. In fact, 73 percent of marketers say email is their top digital channel for ROI.
Email prepares your prospects for conversations with your sales team. It gives customers a starting point so your sales team isn’t trying to explain what they are trying to sell and why the prospect needs it.
Outbound sales
Even with all of the work put in in the above stages, there are still going to be prospects who have not engaged or are seemingly uninterested. Before these prospects go cold, your sales team should take the opportunity to connect with them. The most common and effective outbound sales methods are cold calls, personal emails, and social media outreach.
Leads
Qualifying leads is critical – you need to make sure you are selling to the right people. Use the NEAT (Need, Economic impact, Access to authority, Timeline) criteria to ensure that your leads are able to, willing to, and potentially interested in purchasing your product or service.
Inbound and outbound lead creation merges sales and marketing into a single, efficient machine – accomplishing your lead generation goals. When sales and marketing work together you effectively build and nurture customer relationships to further revenue growth.
Stay tuned for future posts as we take a more in-depth look at the individual elements of the demand generation engine.
Generate more quality leads and lower the cost of winning new customers with your own demand generation engine. Download our Demand Generation Services Brochure today.
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