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Mastering Demand Generation

Tayyaba Qamar

Turbo Charging Your Sales Efforts for Revenue Growth

In working with companies over the past three years we’ve noticed a trend: companies that seem to scale the fastest from startup to significant revenue are those that have a coherent sales and marketing strategy that encompasses a solid demand generation strategy paired with an almost scientific, analytical approach to lead generation. Companies that flounder tend to miss the top level marketing strategy and are generally over committed with many digital marketing activities. We believe that the secret to success is to do less in a much more targeted and precise fashion. And, that great demand generation is actually a function of data driven, Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) and precisely targeted lead generation.

What is Demand Generation?

Demand generation is creating marketplace desire for your products and services with the ultimate goal of driving net-new customers and or driving up-/cross-sell deals with your existing customers. Demand generation activities underpin the entire customer experience across the entire customer engagement funnel - from initial prospect interest, to lead generation and lead nurturing to sales enablement and ultimately, first sale and future cross-sales. 

Successful demand generation requires full-funnel education and programs that build interest, establish trust, generate pipeline opportunities and revenue, and ensure loyal, profitable customer relationships. Many of these educational materials are offered for free in order to attract the interest of potential new customers.

What Activities are Used in Demand Generation?

While the specific marketing tactics used within a demand generation strategy can vary between organizations and industries, they usually include:

  • Inbound and website marketing - blogs, resource pages, free tools, demos, case studies, unique research, etc.,

  • Content marketing - infographics, youtube videos, slide shares, podcasts, etc.,

  • SEO keyword-driven content  - Google Trends and Ahrefs for keyword research

  • Content syndication 

  • Blog Marketing - guest posts and advertising on top industry blogs, industry roundup posts using HARO, polls and surveys

  • Press releases 

  • Viral contest - using Vyper, Gleam or Rafflecopter

  • Event marketing

  • Social media marketing

  • Paid advertising

  • Lead nurturing via marketing automation

  • Lead scoring

  • Program measurement and optimization

  • Sales/marketing alignment activities, such as sales enablement

For more demand generation ideas, we recommend the following resources:

What is Lead Generation?

A subcategory of demand generation, lead generation is a collection of strategies and programs you use to attract potential customers (and potentially even multiple decision makers from several departments) and move them through your sales funnel.

It is the practice of identifying targeted ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and then collecting information that can then be used to qualify and nurture prospects into sale-ready leads, pipeline opportunities, and eventually customers. The goal of lead generation is much simpler than that of demand generation.  Lead generation aims to convert targeted audiences that match the ideal customer profile into a high volume of quality leads.  Lead generation focuses on filling the top of the sales funnel with quality leads while demand generation focuses on full-funnel performance.  

Again, lead generation is just one aspect of a company’s demand generation strategy. For example, demand generation content marketing may support the company’s objectives of gaining a share of conversation, increasing awareness, and developing a reputation as trusted subject-matter experts. In contrast, lead generation content marketing usually focuses on trading premium content for an individual’s contact information using owned or third-party forms or event registrations.

In short, lead generation is a way to “funnel-in” eventual purchasers of your product or service into the path of buying. The end result is to find qualified leads for your company so that they then be added to a lead nurturing process or so that a salesperson can follow up. Lead generation typically involves creating “gated” content and then asking for someone’s contact information in order for them to receive that piece of content.

What are the best Lead Generation Activities?

While specific lead generation tactics vary by organization and industry, they typically include offers that are gated on the company website with landing page forms:

  • Any type of company generated, educational content such as an eBook,whitepaper, solution guide, tip sheet, checklist, cheat sheet, newsletters, etc.

  • Third-party content marketing content, such as whitepapers, product reviews, comparison evaluations, and more

  • Live and Evergreen Webinars via  WebinarJam, Demio, GotoWebinar, On24 and Zoom and Tutorials 

  • Free-Trials

  • Product Demos

  • Viral Contests & Giveaways

  • Paid, targeted advertising on social or in search

  • Ad retargeting

  • Live events

Increasingly, not everyone is willing to fork over their email or phone number for gated content. For this segment of people who won’t submit contact information, but still might be qualified leads, a lead analytics platform like LeadBoxer can help you to identify these people and find their contact information so you can reach out directly. 

For more lead generation ideas, we recommend the following resources:

Can You Do Lead Generation Without Demand Generation?

There is an old adage in marketing that asking lead generation versus demand generation is like asking a professional baseball team manager if one should focus on scoring runs or getting on base. The reality is that you can’t score runs unless you get on base. However, there’s a lot more to scoring runs than just hitting the ball or walking. While batting practice will improve your team’s success, you’re going to derive the most benefit from a holistic focus on hitting, running, defensive plays and all other aspects of competitive gameplay. For most B2B organizations, a demand generation strategy that includes lead generation tactics and is focused on ideal customer profiles (ICPs) is mostly likely to efficiently drive the best results.

What is an ICP?

An ideal customer profile is a description of the company that’s a perfect fit for your solution. Note that this is not the individual buyer or end-user persona. Your ICP should focus on relevant characteristics and core traits of your target accounts, such as:

  • Industry/vertical

  • Employee headcount — company-wide and within key departments

  • Annual revenue

  • Budget

  • Geography

  • Technology they use

  • Size of their customer base

  • Level of organizational or technological maturity

To figure out your ICPs, identify the firms who buy your product and understand the primary business problem they are seeking to solve. It is also helpful to understand if there is any commonality in the types of customers who consistently move through your sales process the most quickly and are the most profitable. 

I have my Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), What Tools & Services Can Help?

There are many marketing tools that can assist you at every stage of the demand generation process:

  • For SEO, look to a popular all-in-one SEO tool like Ahrefs, Majestic or Moz Pro. With YouTube SEO, try YT Cockpit, TubeBuddy or vidIQ. 

  • For conversion optimization and A/B testing, try Optimizely, Omniconvert, Convert or VWO. 

  • In the area of behavioral analysis, check out Decibel, Clicktale, Mouseflow, Smartlook or Hotjar.

For end-to-end lead generation, consider:

  • Salesforce and Pardot: With this CRM and marketing automation combination, you can engage with your audience, generate more pipeline and empower sales to close more deals.

  • Adobe: With the Adobe Marketing Cloud, you can manage, personalize, optimize and orchestrate cross-channel lead generation campaigns.

  • HubSpot: The HubSpot Marketing Hub makes it a breeze to capture and nurture leads. It includes forms, live chat software and pop-ups. HubSpot helps your team grow your traffic, convert leads and track the entire funnel in one place.

  • Intercom: This software delivers a scalable messaging platform to better engage with site visitors, automatically route leads and qualify leads 24/7.

  • Act-On: You can use this software to configure lead nurturing, segment lists, score and distribute leads, and trigger offers based on user actions.

For account based marketing (ABM) target lists based on your ICP, you can use data that is open to you on Angel.co, Crunchbase, or LinkedIn. Headcount, money raised, valuation, industry, location, etc are all instantly accessible to you. These sites can be easily scraped for all of this information. 

Great Demand Generation = Data-Driven ICP + Targeted Lead Generation

As our world continues to become more digital, customers will increasingly look for convenience and seamless experiences from the companies they choose to engage with. Ultimately, the most successful firms will leverage the more and more data to continuously evolve their ideal customer profiles and develop the perfect demand generation offers to prospects at the right time and in the right place.

Ideal customer profile work is time-consuming and tedious. It may involve using multiple tools and hours upon hours of research and data analysis. Yet, every investment at this level is a dollar well spent and will yield powerful insights that can drive important demand generation changes and strategy.

We’ve been helping smart marketers save time with demand generation efforts and deliver business results over the past three years. Our expertise lies across the entire demand generation spectrum from: 

  • Ideal Customer Profile and Persona Development 

  • Data Cleansing 

  • List Building

  • Prospecting

  • Lead Generation Campaign Development and Execution 

To see how we’ve helped others and find out how we can help you, contact us.