Learn How to Create Robust Demand Generation Campaigns

Are you up to date with the latest marketing trends? If yes, you must know that 70% of marketers are amping up demand generation budgets in 2024!

It shows a growing interest among businesses in adopting this marketing strategy. One of the main reasons could be that demand generation within the marketing realm extends beyond lead generation. Unlike the latter, it brings high-value clients and fosters long-term customer interest.

However, to run effective demand generation campaigns, you must know all the crucial aspects of it. So, here's our well-detailed guide for your service. It has our expert 

insights and tactics for running an impactful demand gen campaign.

Let us start unfolding details about the demand generation marketing strategy.

What Is a Demand Generation Campaign and Its Components?

Demand generation is an umbrella term covering your entire marketing funnel that includes stages like: 

• Awareness
• Interest
• Consideration 
• Evaluation 
• Purchase 
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Retention

Thus, you can see that this strategic approach involves the entire customer journey, from initial interest to retaining customers. 

The strategy focuses on evaluating your brand's existing awareness among potential audiences. From there, the focus shifts to finding effective ways to introduce your brand to a new group of buyers. It shows how potential customers perceive your product or service. 

The ultimate goal is to foster and strengthen this relationship by building trust and establishing authority. Demand generation is about creating a positive and lasting impression throughout the customer journey.

Now, let's break down the four components of an effective demand generation campaign:

1. Inbound + Outbound Marketing

Inbound lets curious folks come to you in a busy marketplace. On the other hand, outbound enables you to reach out to high-value prospects without waiting around. These marketing approaches create a dynamic duo, reaching out and pulling in potential customers from all directions.

2. Sales Enablement

Once you get your potential customer's attention, this touch point requires you to arm your sales team with the right tools. Sales enablement is like providing them with knowledge, resources, and strategies. It ensures they're ready to swoop in and seal the deal when it is right.

3. Customer Retention

You made high-value customers purchase from you, but the campaign doesn't end here. You must maintain a thriving relationship with your customers, ensuring they remain happy and loyal. It's about making them feel valued and appreciated so that they stick around for the long haul.

4. Revenue Performance

You need to quantify the impact of your campaign and see the tangible results. It helps you understand whether your demand generation strategy brings in customers and boosts your bottom line.

Further, you'll learn the three pillars of the demand generation campaign. 

Understand the 3 Ds of the Demand Generation Campaign

Three demand generation pillars encompass the entire demand generation funnel stages of the campaign: 

1. Demand Creation

It is the first pillar of your demand generation campaign. It refers to your proactive efforts and strategies to identify and reach your target market. Your focus here is to generate interest and desire for your products or services among potential customers.

2. Demand Capture

The next pillar involves discovering buyer personas among your vast target market. Here, your sales and marketing teams must collaborate to thoroughly research and agree on the perfect buyer persona for your products/services. 

You aim to create consistent messaging that resonates with your target market to capture them within your sales pipeline. Such messages can prompt your prospects to take further action.

3. Demand Management

This final pillar keeps your demand generation efforts impactful. Here, you optimize and manage all vital touchpoints your potential customers go through. Management can require you to use CRM tools to promptly attend to your prospects' needs.

Create an Effective Demand Generation Campaign

You are now well aware of what a demand generation campaign consists of. But, you may still struggle to cover all the aspects while generating and retaining demand.

Thus, here is the demand gen campaign framework for the best outcome: 

1. Create Demand (For Awareness and Interest)

Make your target market aware of your product upgrade or new launch.

• Identify Your Target Market  

Your target market should include customers who find your product or service helpful. In return, they should bring enough value to grow your business.

Usually, they should be able to use your product to make more money and also:

• • Save money
  • Work more effectively
  • Make their employees more productive and happy

Your target market may include audience groups that: 

• • Match your current customer base. They show similar patterns and characteristics of your most satisfied and valuable customers.

• • Respond to your surveys, interviews, or reviews. 

• • Participate in social media platforms and industry forums for discussions related to your niche product or service. 
  • Buy from your competitors.

• Make the Target Market Aware of Your Services 

Now that you learn who to target, begin the process of generating awareness and interest for your product. Follow these methods to ignite your product's demand among your target audience:

• • Create Enticing Content: Develop educational and problem-solving content to engage your audience. You can use different content formats, such as: 
    • Blogs/articles
    • Pillar pages
    • How-to guides
    • Research papers
    • Infographics 
    • Webinars 
  • Engage With the Audience: Though you should keep highly valuable content gated, set aside freely accessible content for sharing purposes. Once done, use the below-given channels to share your content:
    • Cold email
    • Podcasts
    • Live events
    • Video outreach messages
    • In-feed social
  • Join Complement Firms: Collaborate with businesses, sharing a related consumer through co-marketing efforts. Both parties can promote one another's products among their consumer base. 
  • Use Paid Promotion: Implement paid social campaigns tailored to reach your ICP. These may include targeted ads on Mata, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
    
    However, remember that not every prospect in your target market will be compatible with the product/service you offer.
    
    Thus, you must develop a buyer persona you want to invest in. It'll help you find the high-value prospects you can pursue among your target market. 
    
    

2. Capture Demand (Enable Consideration and Evaluation)

Your above proactive outreach approaches will help you collect interested B2B leads in your marketing pipeline. But, you need to focus on prospects whose attention deserves to be captured by your upcoming efforts. 

Thus, establish a persona qualification framework such as: 

• BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) or MEDDIC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion) 
• Lead Scoring

These will help you narrow down which prospects are likely to turn into sales opportunities. 

To capture such prospects' attention, share a consistent messaging across touchpoints. It will keep them updated with your offerings and help you stay on top of their mind when they decide to purchase. 

Being present across touchpoints your audience passes through gives them enough data to consider and evaluate your product/service. 

Some common touchpoints for B2B buyers are:

• Warm Calls: Notice which target leads show activity by interacting with your shared content. They don't need to respond to your email, but they may do other actions, such as: 
  • Downloading your content 
  • Sharing your content 
  • Clicking on calls to action (CTAs) and more. 

Engage them in warm calls and address their interaction with your shared content.

• LinkedIn Inmail: Your prospect may respond to warm calls, but don't just stop there. Send them a personalized inmail invitations on LinkedIn. It's also helpful in cases where you don't get much response from warm calls. 
• SERP (Search Engine Result Pages): Use high-intent keywords to satisfy prospects' search. Such a keyword typically indicates a transactional or commercial purpose. These keywords often have words like "buy," "coupon," "deal," or "discount."
  Plus, they might mention a specific brand or product. Prospects using these keywords are likely to buy, but they might need a little push from you to purchase.
• Review Sites: 93% of buyers scroll through online reviews to make purchase decisions. So, focus on maintaining a strong presence on review sites. Here are a few methods that'll help you in it: 
  • Ensure your business is listed on relevant review sites (e.g., Gartner Peer Insights, Capterra, TrustRadius).
  • Claim your business profile to have control over the information presented.
  • Actively request satisfied clients to leave reviews on these platforms.
  • Address concerns, show responsiveness, and demonstrate a commitment to customer satisfaction.
  • Feature any industry awards or recognitions received on your profile for added credibility.
• Websites: The ultimate route of your target B2B buyers will be towards your website and product landing pages. They may visit it after your email follow-ups, social posts, or warm calls. So, ensure they get the best user experience. Here's how you can do so: 
  • Ensure your website is mobile-friendly for users who access it on various devices.
  • Communicate your value proposition on the homepage.
  • Provide detailed information about your products or services on landing pages. Address how your offerings meet your B2B buyers' needs. Include pricing details if applicable.
  • Integrate live chat for real-time engagement and to address queries promptly.
  • Implement analytics tools to track user behavior and optimize accordingly.
  • Conduct A/B testing for critical elements to identify what resonates best with your B2B audience.

The consideration and evaluation stages will further narrow your target prospects' list. But you still need to push them to choose your service.

3. Nurture and Manage Demand (Purchase + Retention+ CRM)

While evaluating your offering, your optimized touchpoints may turn prospects into sales opportunities. It's the period in their customer journey where they need a reason to choose you and stay your customer for the long run. 

Thus, you need to streamline the effectiveness of your touchpoints for each opportunity passing through them. 

Here's how you can do so:

• Use CRM to Store and Share Data

Implement a CRM system to store and manage your target customer information in a centralized location. It ensures a seamless collaboration between your sales, marketing, and customer service teams. 

Thus, they can access and share relevant customer data timely. Embed lead scoring within the CRM to identify and assign sales opportunities to appropriate sales representatives and departments.

• Employ Drip Campaigns

Perform active prospecting by guiding your opportunities through the sales funnel. Drip campaigns are one of the best ways to do so. Use personalized content based on a particular touchpoint. 

To improve it, set your pre-scheduled, targeted email deliveries based on the opportunity's action triggers. It'll make the campaign relevant and engaging.

• Run Online Workshops

Provide additional valuable content to your sales opportunities through hosting online workshops. Ensure the inclusion of interactive sessions, such as Q&A sessions, polls, etc. Based on their interactions, keep following up with targeted communication through:

• • Warm calls
  • Voice messages
  • Video messages 
  • Emails, etc.

• Set Up Lead Management Tools

Employ other lead management tools besides CRM and its built-in scoring feature. It will ensure you are all set from the technical point of view. These are as follows:

• Marketing Automation: Various instances may come where your sales opportunities will convert or become SQLs (sales-qualified leads) or MQLs (marketing-qualified leads). Again, you'll need to prospect them based on their behavior. So, isn't it best to streamline repetitive tasks and nurture relationships with them efficiently?
  So, use marketing automation to create automated workflows that move leads through the sales funnel and trigger actions based on specific criteria. Some of the good choices are ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, etc.
• Social Media Monitoring: Stay alert on social media channels for mentions of your brand and engage with sales opportunities. Use social listening tools to understand their sentiment and address concerns proactively. You can try out Brandwatch, Hootsuite, etc. 
• Customer Feedback and Survey Tools: Implement tools for collecting customer feedback and conducting surveys. Use feedback to improve your products or services and demonstrate that you value customer input. It will create a positive outlook for your business among opportunities. 
• Customer Support and Ticketing System: Integrate this system into your lead management process. Provide timely and practical support to promptly address prospects and customer inquiries and issues.
• Sales Enablement Tools: Provide your SDRs (sales development representatives) with tools that facilitate effective communication with leads. Equip them with resources, such as sales collateral and competitive intelligence, to better engage and convert leads. Utilize analytics tools to track the performance of your lead management efforts.

Metrics To Measure Throughout The Demand Generation Campaign

You know what's working and what you need to improve through the three demand generation pillars. Thus, here is the list of metrics you must track while your prospects pass through each pillar: 

1. Demand Creation

Track the below metrics to see how your target market reacts to your outreach:

• Open Rates: The percentage of email recipients who open and view a particular email you send. It shows how engaging and relevant your content is to your target market.
• Website Visits: The total number of times users access and interact with a website within a specific period. It's best to measure it after sharing your content through particular channels. 
• Content Downloads: The number of times prospects download content shared through any channel or website. These may include ebooks, whitepapers, reports, or other digital assets. It indicates the level of interest and engagement in the content you provide.

2. Demand Capture

Track the below metrics to find out whether prospects are in your favor after evaluating your offering:

• Number of MQLs: The number of leads generated who are more likely to become customers based on their engagement with your marketing efforts. Measure the count within a specific time frame. 

• MQL-to-SQL Conversion Rate: Leads that have been further qualified and are ready for direct engagement with your sales team.

• Number of Sales-Ready Opportunities: This refers to potential deals in the sales pipeline, representing prospects likely to convert into customers. These opportunities are typically considered more qualified and closer to purchasing.

• Marketing-Generated Revenue: It is the revenue resulting directly from your marketing efforts. It showcases the impact of your prospecting activities.

3. Demand Management 

Track the below metrics to see how successfully your efforts are leading to conversion and retention:

• Opportunity-to-Win Rate: The percentage of potential deals you successfully convert. 
• Cost per Lead (CPL): The expense incurred for acquiring a potential customer's contact information through marketing or advertising efforts.
• Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate: The percentage of leads that eventually become your paying customers is called lead-to-customer conversion rate.
• Customer Retention Rate: The percentage of customers retained over a specific period.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): The predicted net profit from a customer's future relationship.

Conclusion

Strategic planning, targeted content, and non-linear engagement are pivotal in crafting a resilient demand-generation campaign. Revnew stands out as the ideal demand generation partner, offering expertise to amplify brand visibility and foster sustained interest and demand. Elevate your campaign with our experts for unparalleled success.