Leverage The Power of Social Media for Killer Demand Generation
The year 2020 was expected to be the year of happiness, business, and social power. But, little did anyone know how the year would make everyone twist and turn to adjust their life to what could potentially be considered the new normal.
The first financial quarter of the year was especially daunting for businesses; the situation was as good as surviving a cyclone and an earthquake simultaneously. During these troubled times, social media platforms were the ones that stepped up and provided companies and businesses with a platform and comfort from where they could operate and remotely continue transforming the world one click at a time.
Social media was no more just a simple platform; instead, it had transformed into a giant who nursed the businesses during their hardships. These platforms have achieved a level of prominence that they can make or change the game of your business universe. So, while being in the ocean of digital technology, one should not underestimate its impact and instead should work their way around to ensure they stand out at the right end of the spectrum.
As anyone can envisage, Digital Marketing has matured into an expertise-driven field. The link between businesses and customers or vendors is connected like a spider's web, Pay Per Click campaign managers to obtain new users via online ads. Growth optimization specialists make sure that online traffic streams are further converted into monetizable customers. Marketers have found such depth that they can spend the entirety of their careers channelizing just on the single part of the sales funnel.
Although there’s one marketing concept that helps determine the flow for all marketing activities, it's commonly known as demand generation. What exactly is demand generation, and how different is it from the popular concepts like lead generation and inbound marketing?
What is demand generation?
Demand generation is more than your regular branding concept or just an early funnel marketing tactic. Demand generation programs are the checkpoints throughout the campaign optimization and the direct sales cycles. A legitimate demand generation strategy considers every touchpoint in the potential customer or vendor's journey, which starts from a random anonyms visitor and ends with a delighted customer. It ropes data in the process of decision making to showcase a track to your marketing and sales teams. And most importantly, demand generation drives growth for your organization.
In simpler words:
Demand generation is a data-driven marketing approach that helps create awareness and interest in a company's offerings through technology.
Demand generation vs. Lead generation
Even though demand generation and traditional lead generation might sound the same, there is a stark difference.
Some businesses do not look at random anonyms users and intent-based leads differently. For them, each person that visits their website automatically qualifies as a lead; this is the case with the business that depends highly on the volume of visits and cold- calling to expand their business. These are the organizations that you find annoying you in the middle of the day with some random offers.
Although, demand generation recognizes intent-based leads from their initial actions. It guides them through a nurturing technique to equip sales teams with extremely high quality and genuinely sales qualified leads. This automatically results in better conversations between potential business or vendor and the sales representative; when all of this falls in line, it automatically results in higher conversion rate and sales.
Substantially, the most significant difference between lead generation and demand generation is that demand generation is an unquestionably more detail-oriented, thorough process executed over a much larger duration than lead generation. Demand generation also involves direct collaboration and close communication between marketing and sales departments. It also assimilates e-mail marketing elements, traditional marketing, and inbound marketing to bolster prospects while providing them with the material they need to get detailed information about how you can help them solve their problems.
Fundamentals of Demand Generation
Since demand generation works on a broader scale as compared to any other operational department. They can generally be divided into four major parts as Brand awareness, inbound marketing, Marketing- Sales direct flow, and Customer retention.
· Brand Awareness
o To appeal to a broader audience, people need to have an idea of who you are. The first step is developing brand awareness on such a scale that customers and vendors can remember, recollect, and recognize your brand.
o The following are the methods that can be used for brand awareness: -
§ Building brand identity
§ Properly identifying buyer personas.
§ Establishing thought leadership
§ Leveraging a strong social media presence
§ Maintaining public relations management
§ Creating a go-to-market strategy
· Inbound Marketing
o There is a strong sense of misconception that demand generation and inbound marketing are similar concepts with different terms. But they indeed are not. Demand generation is an activity; you want to spawn demand for your particular product or service. On the other hand, inbound marketing is the approach in which you can execute that activity.
o If you are one of those organization which believes in educating their customer base and helping them through the channel with valuable content and offers, inbound marketing is the way forward for you.
o Because the inbound marketing approach works with converting visitors into leads and nurturing them into customers, it also helps generate demand for your product or service because inbound marketing is all about guiding consumers to identify and solve their challenges with the assistance of your organization.
o The following are the methods that can be used to execute a strong strategy: -
§ Blogging and SEO
§ Paid advertising
§ Gated content
§ Lead generation
§ E-mail marketing and lead nurturing.
· Unification of Marketing and Sales
o Marketing and sales alignment is critical to the success of your entire business. A proper and planned unification of the team can help generate a lot more traction and, in turn, may result in more business opportunities.
o The following are the tools that can be used to ensure the execution of effective demand generation concerning the unification: -
§ Testimonials
§ Case studies
§ Fact sheets and FAQs
§ Estimate and discount calculators
· Customer Retention
o Even though acquiring new business is critical, retaining, engaging, and embracing your current customers is essential for managing uninterrupted growth with demand generation strategy.
o With this in mind, you always have to outperform yourself for your customers, catering them with the ultimate impression of what you and your company have to offer along with the delivery.
o One of the oldest tricks in the book of under-promising and over-delivering can be used to surprise and delight your customers at every turn in your long journey.
o Along with everything else, you must provide top-notch customer service experience.
o The following are the methods to ensure customer retention: -
§ Execute client marketing initiatives
§ Use a knowledge base.
§ Employ a ticketing system
§ Appreciate your customers
§ Generate up-sells and renewals
§ Encourage feedback and make iterations.
§ Leverage Net Promoter Score
Demand generation strategy you can implement using Social Media
After going through all the details and the technicalities, we have a very good idea of what demand generation is; how can we, regardless of being a new, small or multinational brand go ahead with implementing it?
Here are a few demand generation strategies that we can start implementing today.
1. Create high quality give away campaign
a. While giving away any resource, make sure you offer the absolute best, be it content download, coupon code, or an incredible offer.
b. Giving away top quality product might sound opposite of what we are trying to do, but let me assure you, it does more good than bad for the company.
c. Giving away high-quality resources firstly ensures a bond of trust and respect between customers and the organization.
d. Secondly, it reflects very well on the brand. And as a result of this, the potential customers would go that extra mile to reach out and advocate for the product.
2. Providing a free service or resource
a. One of the most effective ways of creating a buzz and generating demand is through a free service or tool.
b. We at Markspace Media have been practicing this strategy for nearly half a decade now. We ensure that any business that approaches us is streamlined to an expert, who would understand their requirements and schedule a FREE virtual coffee meet to provide a solution for their problems.
c. Of course, hosting free service or tool is not cheap, but it pales in comparison with customer satisfaction and repo. it builds
3. Set-up placed Ad campaigns.
a. With the constant uprise in daily users on social media and the digital Ad campaigns launched, placing an Ad strategically has garnered the utmost importance.
b. A lousy placement or a mid-display Ad can more often than not generate a very negative rap.
c. This system immensely helps brand awareness, and instead of mid-page nagging, it creates a constant state of presence and acceptance in the mind of the End-user or client.
4. Display remarketing to boost brand awareness
a. In a general sense, marketers look at remarketing as a powerful tool for bolstering sales, mostly by increasing the conversion rates. But, remarketing is also a potent tool for brand awareness.
b. It helps by repetitively hammering brand presence.
c. By redirecting the direct traffic to remarketed products, it has been observed that the conversion rates have gone up by 40%, and the average time on site has gone up by 350%!
5. Give particular importance to content.
a. Inbound marketing is the key runway to demand generation success, and thus there has never been a time when content was as important as it is today.
b. A strong content strategy incorporates all the previously mentioned entities and a more human and direct touch.
c. However, content is not something that could account for immediate success; instead, it is a long-term product, and thus any investment in content can be considered a long-term investment.
d. Nearly 1.5 million blogs are published each day, so calculate what you are missing if you do not post something.
e. If you contribute to the blogging community, consider what can be done differently or what value your article can add to your blog.
6. Ace your E-mail marketing optimization
a. E-mail marketing has tremendous potential and unbelievable power. However, many advertisers fail to optimize it to perfection or misuse it and lose the charm.
b. In terms of E-mail marketing, it is essential that you test your e-mails to the internal department before you blast it. It ensures that the E-mails are performing as strongly as they can.
c. The principle of "Less is more" should be embedded while designing the campaign because too much data or too much content can have a negative impact on the client.
d. Remember the first method, "Create a high-quality giveaway campaign." This way, you only E-mail your client with the best. Because constantly spamming your database with low-value offers can make them want to unsubscribe from the E-mail chain.
7. Implement a lead scoring technique
a. While scaling up, it is critical to prioritize quality over quantity. Demand generation isn’t just about scoring leads; it’s about boosting the quality of those leads.
b. It is vital, and only the quality leads to reaching the sales team to close them. If you bombard them with low-quality leads, it will push down the outcome's conversion rates and quality.
c. The lead scoring system will help evaluate the points of a potential lead by analyzing its past behavior and the platforms it is redirected from.
d. If a particular lead qualifies as a hot lead or an intent-based lead, it would be automatically transferred to the sales representative.
e. While as if the lead doesn't qualify as a quality lead, it would be sent over to the E-mail support team, where it could be further scrutinized before being forwarded or discarded.
f. Even though this technique sounds tempting, your business might not be well suited for this method, or if you are already struggling with leads, it is advised to stay away from this particular method.
How to calculate the success of your demand generation campaign?
After you are done applying the strategies that suit your business the best, it is time to calculate if the strategies are effective. To calculate if your demand generation tactics are working correctly, you should measure the size of the impact your strategies are creating. Accurately measuring demand can be too tricky, especially if you are unaware of where to look. There are a few key performance indicators that you can use to analyze the results of your demand generation campaigns.
The KPIs are as follows: -
1. Website traffic
2. Lead magnet downloads
3. Cost per lead
4. Free trial/tool signups
5. Customer acquisition cost
Finally, the triumph of your demand generation strategies relies on how efficiently you can engross your audience on multiple channels. As you progress with them through the funnel's different stages, they feel warmer, and this makes them feel they are ready to buy.
If you have any doubts or queries or are looking to implement any of these strategies, please feel free to get in touch with MarkSpace media. We will help you know more about the demand generation process and assist you in leveraging the power of demand generation strategies to help you make your business profitable.