Successful marketing, like successful sales, engages client curiosity and ultimately helps bring more attention to your brand. However, sales and marketing teams may not work together often or be aware of ways to bring an overlap between these two departments. This overlap can allow you to increase brand awareness and make your product more competitive within its industry. A prime example of this type of collaboration is called demand generation.
What Is Demand Generation?
Demand generation refers to the process of actively generating demand for your company’s products or services. This is a very complex, ongoing process, but if successful, helps ensure your business sits comfortably in a safety net of client demand.
Demand is the market desire or need to pursue whatever it is that you sell. How do you work to increase that demand for your target audience? The use of demand generation strategies is an effective marketing tactic because it examines ways to funnel clients toward your business. Think of it as the marketing teams ushering consumers to your sales team, where they can then close.
While strategies may differ depending on your vertical and specific audience needs, we’ve compiled some ways you can create demand generation strategies, regardless of your industry:
Free Firsts
One great way to generate demand is to give away a free product, service, or resource to potential clients. Include a link on your website, send out redemption codes in email marketing campaigns, or even include a free tool on your website that delivers a simple, instant service (instant grammar check tools, for example).
A free first product, sample, or service instantly builds trust and equates satisfaction with your brand. You were kind enough to provide something free, so clients immediately feel a positive experience. They may even spread the word that your company is providing a free offer. This generates more traffic to your website and turns visitors into clients and brand ambassadors.
Finally, giveaways help bring in leads that are a right fit for your business, meaning that they’re far more likely than a random sample of the population to become successful customers because you are addressing a need they have.
Invest in Content Creation
Content creation populates your website with SEO-oriented pages, which ultimately helps boost demand generation. Devote an in-house marketing staff or hire an external digital marketing agency (like your friends at VSSL) to create keyword-rich content.
This process requires consistent effort to really see an impact on your business. When blog posts and other content pages dry up, so does traffic to your site. Try to incorporate a mix of content types and tones, including strictly informational, FAQ-style content and fun-to-read pieces that exhibit your brand personality.
Content creation has another added benefit: it gives you an excuse to post on social media platforms. Every single platform used for your business has the opportunity to create new clients. Social posts create awareness, offer opportunities for potential clients to engage, and provides easy-to-access resources on a large scale. If you aren’t sure where to start with social posting, we recommend publishing links to your company’s blog onto your LinkedIn Business page. You’d be surprised at the impact that can have!
Improve Email Marketing Strategies
Nobody wants a stuffed mailbox, and yet email marketing has a proven track record of boosting demand generation. The key is in how you perform email marketing. First of all, don’t annoy your potential client base with outrageous numbers of emails. Email on a consistent, but only occasional basis.
Second, you should be sure to conduct A/B testing on your email marketing campaigns. What types of subject lines, graphics, and email lengths seem to be more successful? In general, less is more, and smartphone usage means graphics go further than large blocks of text. However, A/B testing gives you the only surefire confirmation that an email marketing strategy actually works. They tell you what works and what needs improvement.
We’ve only just touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to demand generation strategies. Drop us a line and let us know what your top concerns are and let our crew design a marketing strategy catered to your unique needs.