7 steps you can take today to boost demand generation
One of the biggest challenges for any business is demand generation – generating interest in your company’s products and services and then converting this into customers that you can retain for a long time.
For small businesses and startups, like many of the new Fintechs that we work with, this is particularly tricky due to a lack of specialist skills and budget. Demand generation is more advanced than the traditional ‘lead generation’ techniques and so this compounds the challenges, resulting in businesses abandoning all demand gen efforts.
But it doesn’t have to be so complex.
Here’s a selection of demand generation tactics you can implement today…
1) Give away your best stuff – for FREE
People don’t engage with your content with an intent to buy — they come to learn and educate themselves. By sharing your premium content for free, you:
Build trust with your target audience
Add value to them – which increases the likelihood of them reading more content and sharing it with peers
Showcase your business as experts in the field – without screaming “we are the best tech supplier and here’s why”
Once you’ve piqued their interest, you can then nurture contacts down the sales funnel from awareness to consideration. A full-funnel marketing approach is consistent over time, inviting rather than pleading, thereby building cumulative brand value – and being there when a customer is ready to buy.
👉Find out more about: Why you should adopt a "full-funnel" marketing approach.
2) Provide a free audit, tool or checklist
Playing to the first point, a free useable resource is a strong lead magnet. Businesses can practically use it and physically see the benefits and results – making it even more powerful than free guidance.
Whilst it may make you nervous to share a little more intelligence for free, the quality of the leads that come through will be more sales-ready – more demand-focused and therefore create a return on time and any money invested.
3) Use targeted ads on social media
For B2B businesses, LinkedIn is the go-to - 59% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn generates leads for their business. And 80% of B2B leads generated on social media come from LinkedIn.
You can specifically target industries, job titles, company sizes and more that fit with your ideal customer profile. Not surprisingly, free resources and tools perform really well on these ads (they capture attention and gain clicks/form-fills). And you can set budget limits for this so it’s all within your control.
It’s important to keep your business’s social media accounts updated with regular posts. Prospects will look at these when considering purchasing from you and an empty account or (worse) poor posts can turn them off and lose you a sale.
👉Find out more about Why your business should use #socialmedia, here and What you should be posting on social media, here.
4) Partner with industry pros
We’ve done loads of these successfully and it all comes down to data and strength of relationships with contacts already.
People won’t commit their time if they don’t have a close personal bond.
If you are budget conscious but you have strong relationships with customers and prospects, you could run your own events for much less than being a sponsor at a big event.
Or, you can partner up with industry bodies to run sessions collaboratively.
And, please – do not be tempted to sell during webinars and events. It is a MASSIVE turn-off for a potential buyer. Education is key and so this is an opportunity to add value and build trust – as we’ve covered in points 1 and 2.
5) Invest more in content creation
Content marketing is fundamental to demand generation. In fact, the top two methods to nurture contacts towards a sale are email (87%) and educational content (77%).
Why? Content underpins all other activities across your website, social media, email, search optimisation (ranking in Google), and more.
There are many types of content you could choose to create; blogs, videos, whitepapers, industry insights.
There are millions of copywriters out there earning their daily bread through creating content for businesses 🍞
So to stand out, your content needs to really add value to your audience by sharing your knowledge (for free), and writing in a way that’s engaging. There’s tonnes of boring, corporate content out there.
And to support sales, your content should appeal to different stages of the sales funnel so that you capture the interest of those not ready to buy yet (c.97% of your audience).
Good quality content has recently helped our clients:
🙌 One client rank #1 organically in Google for their top keyword.
👊 Sent another client's content viral, getting their brand in front of thousands of their ideal customers.
😁 And helped another generate direct meeting requests from C-Suite Enterprise accounts.
6) Optimise your email strategies
At any given time, there’s only roughly 3% of your market ready to buy - and these contacts are driven by price and therefore you miss an opportunity to build trust, a connection and encourage them to buy from you.
So whilst your contact may have gone cold following the initial engagement, it just may not be quite the right time for them to buy. And that’s ok. You can nurture these contacts towards a sale by drip-feeding your brilliantly engaging, value-adding content to them – and reminding them that you are here for when they ARE ready to buy.
👉 Read more on: How to nurture website visits with email to increase sales conversions, here.
Email is one of the best tactics for this. In fact, 79% of B2B marketers credit email as the most effective distribution channel for demand gen efforts.
Here are five practical tips you can implement in your email campaigns now:
1. Avoid certain keywords to get past SPAM filters – Hubspot has a comprehensive list here.
2. Keep the human touch – Include a real person’s from name, use a friendly/less formal tone and even include a headshot of the sender to build a relationship, trust and familiarity.
3. Focus on multiple touches - People don’t invest large sums of money on an impulse or because of a single email. On average it takes 5 to 10 touches to convert a lead to a customer. In addition to email, consider how you can use a mix of content types like social media, webinars and events, personal Outlook emails, or even direct mail, to nurture your prospects into customers.
4. Educate and inform - Analysis conducted by Admitter, found that in 90% of cases the call to action link “more info” converted better than “try me now” or “buy now.” Indicating that content or informing your audience before selling works better in most cases.
5. Report on insights at an individual & account-level – This is the exciting bit. The key metrics you want to report on will depend on your overall objectives, but I tend to report on;
the most engaged contacts and accounts
the most popular content
engagements by sector and seniority
All this insight provides sales with crucial information to follow-up on (if appropriate).
👉 Read more: 5 tips for best practice email marketing.
7) Consider implementing lead scoring
Demand generation is all about both increasing the quantity but also the quality of leads. Lead scoring is one of the best ways to measure whether your leads are of the quality you need to close more deals.
Lead scoring works by building a view of engagements over time for one particular individual, and at a company level. You can score engagements differently and the accumulation of these engagements builds an overall score and the insight into what they are interested in is like gold for a follow-up.
For example, you may score a guide download as a 0.2 engagement and an event attendance a 0.8. Over time, this may accumulate to a score of 2 for one individual and that may be where you get in touch with the contact. If they engage with multiple pieces on the same topic, you know they are more likely primed to that topic and your relevant products and services so you can tailor the meeting.
Final word
Demand generation doesn’t happen overnight – this is largely due to the need to build trust and credibility over time, and because your target customer most often won’t be ready to buy right away (only 3% are ready to buy at any one time).
But you can take steps today to focus on a more demand gen led approach to grow your sales pipelines.
If you need further demand generation guidance, get in touch with Kerry or Becca, or check out our blog.
Sources: https://swzd.com/blogs/20-demand-gen-stats-that-you-cant-ignore-in-2020/