Demand Generation : Definition, Types, Benefits, Strategies, and Metrics

What is demand generation?

Demand generation refers to the process of creating brand awareness and generating audience interest in order to generate and nurture high-quality leads. Demand generation is a comprehensive process that involves creating brand awareness to bring users' attention to your product or service and then leading the funnel to conversion through steps.

It helps to increase brand visibility and put the brand name forward as an industry leader with credibility. It’s a good strategy to engage the audience while leading them towards conversion.

What are the types of demand generation?

The types of demand generation are inbound demand generation, outbound demand generation, account-based demand generation, content marketing, social media demand generation, and relationship-based demand generation.

Some of the main types of demand generation are listed below:

Inbound demand generation

Inbound demand generation helps to indirectly yet organically lead your audience to your brand using tactics like social media marketing, content marketing, advertisements, search engine optimization, or events and webinars.

When users look at interactive and engaging infographics, social media posts, and blog posts, or see your name on top when they search for relevant keywords, they tend to explore what the brand has to offer. This adds value to the nurturing process and increases the chances of conversions while they are exploring.

Outbound demand generation

Outbound demand generation includes reaching and connecting with prospects and educating them about your brand who might not be aware of it, using various strategies like email Marketing, LinkedIn outreach, cold calling, advertisements, or sales development representatives.

When a prospect receives information about your brand through emails, ads, LinkedIn messages, or one-on-one interaction it generates interest in your service or product and leads to conversions.

Account-based demand generation

Account-based demand generation is a blended technique combining sales and marketing to generate demand within high-value accounts. Account-based demand generation is done by creating targeted campaigns and putting sales and marketing efforts purely tailored based on prospects' pain points, requirements, and interests. This helps to engage high-value prospects and close deals for an enhanced return on investment ROI.

Content marketing 

Content marketing is a form of demand generation that helps to position your brand at the forefront of your industry especially when your prospects are looking for the solutions or products you offer. Content marketing uses blogs, social media articles, guest posts, case studies, graphic-based content, e-books, or white papers to provide information that helps to build credibility and support your lead nurturing process.

Social media demand generation

Social media demand generation helps to increase brand visibility and engagement with the target audience. The use of posts, infographics, engaging media, targeted ad campaigns, influencer marketing, and social media interactions helps businesses build relationships and nurture leads through social media platforms by increasing brand awareness.

Relationship-based demand generation

Relationship-based demand generation focuses on building relationships with prospects and nurturing the leads to lead them toward closing. Brands often create relationships with the target audience by sending personalised emails, engaging through LinkedIn, and social activities, or newsletters and webinars. This helps to keep prospects engaged and leads towards a smooth transition when they want to buy.

What are the benefits of demand generation?

The benefits of demand generation are better brand awareness, high-value closings, optimized sales pipeline, better customer engagement, and combined team efforts.

Some of the main benefits of demand generation are listed below:

• Better brand awareness: Demand generation helps your brand gain more visibility and brand awareness as a result of various strategies like SEO and social media marketing. Your target audience starts to recognize your brand as a top authority with credibility and your product or service becomes more recognisable as a leading entity in the industry.

• High-value closings: Demand generation helps your brand to reach people who are actively looking for your product service or the people who have a slight interest and want to know more about it. This results in high-value leads that convert with a better return on investment.

• Optimized sales pipeline: Demand generation helps your sales pipeline to become more optimized as the leads are nurtured through various touch points and they are already well aware of the brand reputation. Unlike lead generation, demand generation mainly involves bringing the partially nurtured leads towards conversion with a bit more nurturing.

• Better customer engagement: Demand generation helps to keep prospects and clients engaged through various platforms like social media, newsletters, email marketing, or website blogs. It encourages customers to engage with the brand which results in trust and authority built by the brand across the community.

• Combined team efforts: Demand generation helps sales and marketing teams combine their efforts for brand awareness, lead generation, and closing rates. It helps to focus on shared team goals and improve overall efficiency for better results.

What are the drawbacks of demand generation? 

The drawbacks of demand generation are intensive resources, ongoing efforts, complex processes, precise targeting, and team collaboration challenges.

Some of the main drawbacks of generation are listed below:

• Intensive resources: Demand generation requires more upfront resources like money, time, and effort. It involves putting in resources to create strategies and campaigns while engaging the audience through different modes and platforms. Demand generation requires different tools and platforms that might be expensive for small businesses or start-ups. Moreover, it takes time to generate results from demand generation as brand awareness strategies give gradual escalations.

• Ongoing efforts: Demand generation is an ongoing process that requires consistent efforts to keep the audience engaged with high brand visibility. The prospects tend to lose interest in a brand especially when they see less of them because the efforts are not consistent from the brand's side. Hence, the strategies for demand generation required consistency and improvement in order to make it successful and with positive results.

• Complex process: Demand generation offers a high return on investment however, it involves a complex process to combine both marketing and sales efforts from multiple channels resulting in various touch points to manage. The teams need to be prepared to gather and handle the results in a productive manner so that potential leads are not wasted.

• Requires precise targeting: Demand generation strategies are made for the target audience and efforts are likely to be wasted if the target audience is not defined clearly. When brand awareness is being done for people who are not interested or relevant to the brand and are not likely to convert at any stage, the resources are wasted and the overall efficiency of the brand is reduced resulting in losses. To make the most out of the demand generation strategies, make sure to define your target audience and put your efforts into them.

• Team collaboration challenge: Demand generation requires both marketing and sales teams to work together in order to generate better results. The close collaboration of both teams requires adjustments and coordination from both sides. Demand generation efforts are likely to be wasted if the team coordination is not good and there are gaps in communication. This situation will result in a loss of good leads and conversions with a waste of resources.

How do you create a successful demand generation strategy?

To create a successful demand generation strategy make sure you define goals, set a budget, define the target audience, set team collaboration, create a strategy, manage lead nurturing, consider automation, and monitor results.

The main steps to create a successful demand generation strategy are listed below:

• Define goals: Initially, make sure to define your goal and the metrics you want to achieve with your demand generation strategy. Try to implement the smart framework for your goals as they should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Specified goals help to provide a clear direction for creating a strategy for demand generation.

• Set a budget: When your goals are defined, set aside a budget you want to allocate for the strategies. This will be your investment to generate the required results. Your budget should not be too high or too low and it should be distributed among the sales and marketing strategies for demand generation.

• Define target audience: Carry out research to understand and identify your target audience as per your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer persona. You will be required to create your demand generation strategies as per your target audience so that they generate the expected results. To define your target audience try to list down the demographics like age, gender, and location, buying intent and decision-making processes, their pain points, and how your solution addresses them. Use tools like Google Analytics to help you find your target audience.

• Set team collaboration: Demand generation strategies are conducted by collaborative efforts of sales and marketing teams. Align both teams to work on platforms associated with both like social media or CRM while communicating effectively in order to generate high-quality leads and lead them to conversions.

• Create a strategy: You need to develop a multi-channel strategy that drives results from various platforms. During demand generation, the prospects go through various stages like awareness, consideration, and finally the decision stage. Your strategy should address all these stages through various channels like blog posting, social media posting, newsletters, webinars, demos, free trials, and offers. Multi-channel strategies help to create awareness and build trust.

• Manage lead nurturing: Leads generated from demand generation often require nurturing to be closed effectively. Create a lead nurturing funnel for your demand generation strategies so that the leads are captured and engaged effectively while building a trust-based relationship with them.

• Consider automation: In order to optimize your demand generation strategies, try to automate some tasks to help save time, and effort, and improve overall efficiency. Use tools like HubSpot, Apollo, and Marketo to automate and manage your workflows in a better way.

• Monitor results: Once your demand generation strategy is implemented, make sure to track and monitor the results regularly in order to make changes where required. To track results, keep a check on website visits, content impressions, leads, conversion rates, cost per lead, and engagement rates. Try to use A/B testing for your strategies in order to find the best one that works well and offers expected results.

What are the tactics for demand generation in marketing?

The tactics for demand generation in marketing are content marketing, Account-based marketing (ABM), Paid ads, search engine optimization, and social media marketing.

Some of the main tactics of demand generation in marketing are listed below:

• Content marketing: Content marketing helps to engage the target audience while creating brand awareness through various platforms with precision. Try to use blog posting for search engine optimization, provide e-books and white papers, start a newsletter, offer well-written case studies, and provide engaging infographics and social media posts. Effective content marketing helps to establish your brand as a leading authority while building trust among the community.

• Account-based marketing (ABM): Account-based marketing helps to enable personalised marketing techniques to generate and close high-value leads. To conduct successful account-based marketing, try to find high-value accounts, research them thoroughly, and target them with a highly personalized approach that creates strong relationships with them resulting in high-value conversions.

• Paid ads: Along with organic traffic, you will need paid advertisements to make your brand visible everywhere. It helps to expand your reach and deliver your message across high-intent target audiences. To start paid advertisements, use Google ads, and social media ads that are tailored as per your ideal customer profile (ICP) so that the ads land among the right audience for it.

• Search engine optimization: Search engine optimisation (SEO) helps to drive an organic audience to your brand by optimizing your website and content that ranks it high on search engines. Make sure to research and target the high-intent keywords in your blogs and website content, especially the keywords people are using to search for your product or service. Build backlinks to establish your domain authority and try to optimize your technical SEO.

• Social media marketing: Social media marketing helps to engage the audience while creating brand awareness and credibility. Try to share relevant posts regularly, engage your audience through live sessions or polls, and use influencer marketing to expand your reach and deliver messages. Social media marketing helps to create a humanistic and long-term relationship with your prospects.

What are the tools used in demand generation?

The tools used in demand generation are automation tools, CRMs, content management tools, Email Marketing tools, Search engine optimization tools, analytics tools, advertisement tools, social media management tools, and account-based marketing tools.

Some of the main tools used in demand generation are listed below:

• Automation tools: Automation tools help by automating repetitive tasks to manage and optimize the workflow. Use tools like HubSpot, Apollo, and Bookyourdata to manage your campaigns and data scraping effectively.

• CRMs: Customer relationship management tools (CRMs) help to manage and keep track of customer data and progress in order to engage and nurture the leads effectively. Use CRMs like Salesforce, or Zoho that help to manage your sales pipelines and offer easy integration with other platforms you are using for demand generation.

• Content management tools: Content management tools like WordPress and Webflow help to create, manage, and publish your content across various platforms easily. It optimizes content marketing, search engine optimization, and the overall lead generation process.

• Email Marketing tools: Email marketing tools like Mailchimp, Bookyourdata, and Sendinblue help to identify prospects and create or manage email marketing campaigns for the contacts in order to drive engagement and spread brand awareness.

• Search engine optimization tools: Search engine optimization tools help to drive organic traffic toward your brand by using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console. SEO tools help to optimize content and rank your website high among search engine results.

• Analytics tools: Analytic tools help to keep track of results, performance, ROI, and areas of improvement. Use tools like Google Analytics and Tableau to monitor the results and check which strategies are working and what needs to be improved.

• Advertisement tools: Advertisement tools and platforms help to run targeted ads on various platforms in order to generate leads and spread awareness. Use tools like Google ads and social media ad managers like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok ads to engage the audience on each platform and expand your reach.

• Social media management tools: Social media management tools help to create, and analyze social media activities in order to maintain a high-quality social media presence while driving engagement. Use tools like. Hootsuite, Canva, and Buffer to manage multiple accounts, create and schedule social media posts, or track analytics for various platforms.

• Account-based marketing tools: Account-based marketing tools help to personalize the outreach process for high-value accounts. Use tools like Demandbase, Bookyourdata, and 6sense in order to target the decision makers within high-value accounts and manage personalized campaigns for them.

How does a demand generation marketing campaign differ from other types of marketing campaigns?

Demand generation marketing campaign differ from other types of marketing campaigns as demand generation campaigns are focused on spreading awareness and interest by educating the target audience through multiple accounts whereas other marketing campaigns are focused on immediate conversions and promotions.

What is the difference between demand generation and lead generation?

The difference between demand generation and lead generation is that demand generation is focused on creating brand awareness and interests whereas lead generation revolves around gathering contacts for outreach. Demand generation vs lead generation has minimal differences with the same goal i.e. conversions.

What is the difference between demand generation and demand capture?

The difference between demand generation and demand capture is that demand generation involves creating new demand whereas demand capture focuses on working around existing demand and improving it.

What is the difference between demand generation and demand creation?

The difference between demand generation and demand creation is that demand generation involves a whole process from creating demand to nurturing leads whereas demand creation involves only creating brand awareness.

What is the difference between demand generation and digital marketing?

The difference between demand generation and digital marketing is that demand generation is a precise strategy to drive awareness whereas digital marketing covers various aspects of online marketing.

What is the difference between demand generation and growth marketing?

The difference between demand generation and growth marketing is that demand generation revolves around creating awareness and interest whereas growth marketing focuses on data-driven optimization.

What is the difference between demand generation and demand harvesting?

The difference between demand generation and demand harvesting is that demand generation helps to create new demand among the target audience whereas demand harvesting focuses on converting the existing demand among prospects.

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