9 Killer Demand Generation Strategies for New Brands

One of the biggest challenges for new businesses, particularly startups and other companies operating in crowded markets, is demand generation. Distinctly different from lead generation, demand generation is a much more involved process – which makes it all the more challenging for new brands.

In this post, we’ll be covering what demand generation is, how it differs from “traditional” lead generation, and going over nine demand generation strategies for new brands. By the end of this post, you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get people excited about your products and keep those (qualified) leads rolling in, so let’s get started.

What Is Demand Generation?

At its simplest, demand generation can be defined as – surprise, surprise – the generation of demand for a business’ products or services. This is accomplished through a gradual, comprehensive, and holistic process that often spans entire marketing departments.

Demand generation, like conversion paths, can (and should) be thought of as a funnel. Demand generation begins by identifying audiences that are likely to be receptive to the marketing messaging of a brand, before shepherding prospects through a funnel that addresses every stage of the conversion process. However, unlike inbound marketing or traditional conversion paths (both of which play a part in the process), demand generation aligns marketing closely with sales to accomplish these goals.

Think of demand generation as a long-term relationship between a brand’s marketing and sales teams, and prospective customers. Demand generation starts by identifying and qualifying prospective customers through content and inbound marketing, direct response and email campaigns, and events, before passing these leads to a nurturing team. This team then further qualifies these prospects through scoring systems depending on the stage at which the prospect is in the conversion funnel, before passing these highly qualified, nurtured leads onto the sales team.

Demand Generation vs. Lead Generation

Although demand generation and traditional lead generation might seem very similar, there’s actually an important distinction between the two.

Some businesses are indiscriminate when it comes to leads and what qualifies a prospect as a lead. Someone who merely visits a website, for example, might be considered a lead to some companies. This is especially true of businesses that rely on high-volume cold-calling to generate new businesses – think those annoying companies that call you up to try and sell you steak knives.

However, demand generation identifies potential prospects based on their initial actions and takes them through a (oftentimes lengthy) nurturing process to provide sales teams with much higher quality, genuinely qualified leads. This results in better conversations between sales reps and prospects, and – of course – higher conversion rates and more sales.

Essentially, the greatest difference between demand generation and lead generation is that demand gen is a significantly more comprehensive process that takes place over a much greater span of time than lead generation, involves close collaboration and communication between sales and marketing departments, and incorporates elements of inbound, direct, and email marketing to nurture prospects while offering them the material they need to learn more about how you can solve their problems.

9 Demand Generation Strategies for New Brands

So, now we have a better idea of what demand generation is, how can you, as a new or smaller brand, go about implementing it? Here are nine demand generation strategies you can start using right now.

1. Give Away Your Best Stuff

Whether it’s a content download, a free offer, or another promotional campaign, be sure to only give away your very best stuff. Although this might seem counterintuitive, consistently offering giveaways of real value has several benefits.

Firstly, it creates a sense of trust between your audience and your brand, which means they’re more likely to come back to your content or your website. Secondly, it reflects well on your brand – so much so that enthusiastic prospects may take things one step further and advocate for your brand on your behalf, becoming the elusive “brand ambassadors” companies are always talking about. Lastly, by offering something of real value, your visitors are much more likely to part with whatever information you need to begin qualifying them as a viable lead, the first stage in the demand generation process.

2. Provide a Free Tool, App, or Resource

One of the most effective ways to create a successful demand generation campaign as a new brand is by offering a free tool or resource.

Source - https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/10/22/demand-generation
 

Ways to Kickstart Your B2B Lead Generation

 

Ways to Kickstart Your B2B

Lead Generation

 

Generating leads for your B2B business can be difficult and time-consuming at the same time. But it is one of the most important steps that every business must go through before they make a sale.

So, having a strong and efficient lead generation strategy is a must if you really want to get started with your customer acquisition process.

With a robust marketing plan and the right tools, you can easily target customers who are genuinely interested in your products and services. Once you get those leads, you can build relationships with them and convert them into customers.

Let’s check out the 4 most effective ways to kickstart your B2B lead generation process.

1. Publish Valuable And Relevant Content

Having a resourceful blog or website is extremely important for your business to be successful. It will not only help you gain exposure but will also help generate leads for your business.

But for that, you need to publish relevant and valuable content that people love. The internet is flooded with thousands of blogs that publish the same type of content as you do.

So, give your visitors a good reason to read your posts over your competitors. The best way to do that is to offer content that engages people and helps them solve their problems.

This can be in the form of a solid blog post, an engaging video post, or even a resourceful webinar. Make sure to create customer personas and learn more about the pain points of your target audience so that you can create content that’s relevant to them. Once that happens, generating leads won’t be a problem anymore.

2. Create Opt-in Campaigns

Lead generation for B2B businesses depends a lot on reaching out to the right people and sending them the right message to drive action. But, how can you reach out to them directly?

A good way to solve this problem is to create attention-grabbing opt-in campaigns that encourage site visitors to give you their contact information. Opt-ins are special popup messages that highlight products, services, special deals, discounts or coupons on your website to attract leads. There are various types of opt-in forms that marketers use for this purpose, what works best for most businesses are exit popups.

These pop-ups detect the visitor’s activity on your website and display the message right when they are about to exit. You can use exit-intent popups to tell your visitors about your products or services and give them special offers in exchange for their email addresses.

By collecting these contact details, you can easily reach out to your audience to market your business in your own terms. This is a very effective marketing strategy because by sending an email, you get the opportunity to interact directly with your leads.

3. Offer Useful Lead Magnets

To boost conversions of your opt-in campaigns even more, consider offering lead magnets. A lead magnet is an incentive that’s offered to your visitors in exchange for their contact details.

A lead magnet can be anything: a free digital download, cheat sheets, checklists, infographics, or anything resourceful that your audience would love. Offering lead magnets is a great way of attracting new leads because people don’t mind giving their email addresses in exchange for something that can help them solve their problems or help them learn something new.

You can then segment these addresses based on their interests and send personalized emails that can turn your leads into sales.

4. Add Powerful Calls-to-Action

The next amazing way to kickstart your B2B lead generation process is to add a clear call-to-action on your website. Without a CTA, visitors on your site won’t know what to do next.

This can overwhelm and confuse your visitors and result in decision fatigue. If that happens, the possibility of turning the user into a paying customer decreases to a considerable extent.

CTA’s can prevent that from happening by making your message clear for your audience. It helps you direct your users through the next step so that they can take the right action on your website. This can not only generate leads for your business but can also help you convert them into long-term customers.

 

Source @

https://customerthink.com/6-ways-to-kickstart-your-b2b-lead-generation/

#leadgeneration #leadgenerationstrategy #B2Bbusinessgeneration

3 Guidelines to Focus Your Digital Marketing Strategy — and See Results

Are you taking advantage of the latest and best digital marketing techniques? When it comes to marketing, many businesses simply stick with what they know, and not without reason. Time-strapped store owners and managers don’t have hours and hours to devote to planning strategies, not to mention acquiring and learning the necessary platforms and technologies. But the businesses that thrive are those that embrace the continually evolving nature of marketing and invest in it wisely. And wisely is the keyword.

A wise investment of your marketing time and dollars is one that ultimately increases efficiency and ROI. For many independent jewelers, spending hours mastering Google AdWords may not be a wise investment. Making simple changes, such as committing to write two new blog posts a month to boost SEO, is a much smarter and more effective use of time.

3 Guidelines to Market More Effectively

Marketing books and blogs can make you feel like you need to do a million things at once. But one of the best things about digital marketing is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. You can (and should) customize your approach to what works for you and meets the unique needs of your customers. Use these three guidelines when deciding what changes and tactics to prioritize.

1. Set small, achievable goals

Setting big, unrealistic goals is the number one reason people end up doing nothing at all. It’s not because they aimed too high, it’s because their goal was too broad, vague, or complex. If your goal is to update your website, where do you begin? When you try to get started, you are quickly overwhelmed by the many options and steps involved. Break the larger goal down into small, specific steps. Instead of updating the website, your goal might be to write ten new product descriptions a week.

2. Focus on consistency

This is another reason small, achievable goals are so important. If your new marketing tactic is too complicated or time consuming, it’s not going to be sustainable. For some, posting a video to Instagram every day is simply not going to happen. It’s too stressful, they’re uncomfortable with social media, it doesn’t suit their personality, or they just don’t have the time. Being realistic about this means you can either delegate the task to someone who loves hanging out on Instagram, or readjust. For example, you might decide to add a brief, personal video message to your weekly email blast instead.

3. Prioritize customer experience

When you see lots of room for improvement and you don’t know where to start, focus on changes that will have the greatest impact on customer experience. That’s because customer experience has the greatest impact on sales, referrals, and loyalty. To identify the highest priority tasks, look at every customer touchpoint, from email and social media to phone calls and mailers, and ask where leads might be slipping through the cracks.

 Source @ 

https://instoremag.com/3-guidelines-to-focus-your-digital-marketing-strategy-and-see-results/

B2B Digital Advertising Spend Growth Stays Steady in 2020 While Everything Else Changes

​Content marketing is one of the most difficult marketing techniques when it comes to measuring return on investment. Why? Because most marketers use content marketing for top-of-the-funnel goals like brand awareness, but not directly for conversions.

According to a study by Content Marketing Institute, ~41% of content marketers rate their ability to calculate ROI as avera​​ge or below average.

How can you improve ROI when it is so difficult to measure?

The answer is to simply make your content marketing initiatives more effective in achieving your marketing goals. The tactics discussed in this post cost minimal investment in terms of money and deliver substantial results, thus improving ROI.

Want to learn five important tips to improve your content marketing ROI?

Read on to find out.

Content marketing is one of the most difficult marketing techniques when it comes to measuring return on investment. Why? Because most marketers use content marketing for top-of-the-funnel goals like brand awareness, but not directly for conversions.

According to a study by Content Marketing Institute, ~41% of content marketers rate their ability to calculate ROI as average or below average.

How can you improve ROI when it is so difficult to measure?

The answer is to simply make your content marketing initiatives more effective in achieving your marketing goals. The tactics discussed in this post cost minimal investment in terms of money and deliver substantial results, thus improving ROI.

Want to learn five important tips to improve your content marketing ROI?

Read on to find out.

1. Conduct research to fuel your strategy

The first step towards achieving a high ROI from B2B content marketing is to have a solid strategy in place. For that, you need to be thorough with your research and back your strategy with data and insights.

Here are a few aspects that you need to understand better before you finalize your content marketing strategy.

Your target audience

Understand and define your target audience to create pieces of content that your audience cares about. For B2B companies, the usual target audience includes high-level decision-makers of companies.

But, even within that segment, you should know exactly what kind of companies could be your potential clients. The next step is to understand what level of people you should be targeting to drive sales.

Once you have target customers in mind, do some research and find out what type of content they engage with. Check their activity on professional networks like LinkedIn and check what your competitors are doing.

You can also gather insights into your current audience by analyzing the traffic on your website and social media profiles. While most social media platforms have their own built-in analytics tools, you can use Google Analytics for your website.

Understand your sales funnel

According to the previously-cited CMI study, most successful marketers create content based on a buyer’s journey through their sales funnel. The more clearly you understand your sales funnel, the more effective you will be in targeting your prospective buyers with the right content at the right times.

This is because prospects at different stages have different content needs. During the initial stage, your content’s aim would simply be to attract relevant people, but during later stages, you need content that can convince a person to buy.

The most important things that you should be aware of are the length of the sales cycle, stages in the sales funnel, and the content requirements at each stage. While you will have to do a sales funnel analysis to understand the first two, we can help you with the third.

To get you started, here is a list of content types, along with the stage of the funnel that they are best suited for.

Understand content trends

Adding to the previous point, you also need to understand what type of content resonates with your audience. Analyze your website and social media user behavior and engagement metrics to find out:

·         Which pages/posts get the most engagement and conversions?

·         Where are you losing your leads?

·         Which type of content gets the most views, shares, comments, etc?

Metrics like time-on-page and bounce rates are helpful in assessing this. For social media content, the engagement rate can tell you a lot about what your audience likes.

Also, before you finalize your strategy, you should also set realistic and time-bound goals and define KPIs to measure your performance on those goals.

2. Select the right content marketing platforms

One of the most important tips for B2B content marketing is to choose the right content distribution platform.

Some platforms like LinkedIn work better than others for B2B companies because they have a more professional audience base. Understand what each platform is best suited for and select the right ones for your B2B content marketing.

Social media and company websites/blogs are the two most commonly used B2B content distribution channels.

Here are some key channels that you can choose from:

Blog

This should be your primary content marketing platform, as high-quality posts on current industry topics are one of the best ways to engage an expert audience. Your blog content should be targeted at your audience and should provide value to them.

For example, check out this blog by the cloud accounting company FreshBooks. Their target audience includes small business owners and their posts provide useful, informative content to help them.

In addition to posting useful content, you should also place calls-to-action at strategic places to get conversions from your blog and increase your ROI.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the content marketing platform of choice for B2B marketers as it is where professionals connect with other professionals and businesses.

It is especially useful for posting thought leadership pieces, joining conversations in relevant groups, and promoting your latest blog posts. You can also leverage video content such as interviews, panel discussions, and other informative videos that are relevant to your audience.

For example, Mailchimp uses live videos to provide useful tips to business owners on how to succeed. Their topics are current and relevant, and their videos are to-the-point and provide actionable tips.

Also, don’t forget to add a CTA or a link to your website, just like the one in the below example.

Other social media platforms

While LinkedIn might be more popular among B2B content marketers, you cannot underestimate the effectiveness of other platforms.

Instagram, for example, is great for posting visual content in the form of Stories, IGTV videos, and posts. Twitter should be your platform of choice for posting short and frequent updates about your company or sharing opinions on current events. Facebook groups and pages provide a good opportunity for you to create an online community for your customers to connect.

Find out which platforms suit your needs and include them in your content marketing plan.

Email

Email is a cost-effective and direct way to communicate with your existing and potential customers. You can use it both to nurture B2B leads and retain your existing customers.

Newsletters, for example, are a good way to engage your audience while cross-promoting your blog posts at the same time. You can also share offers and deals and introduce new products/features to generate sales from email marketing.

Here’s an example of a newsletter from the leading social media scheduling platform, Buffer. They used it to introduce a new tool that they offer. This information is useful for both existing and potential customers and encourages users to check out the new feature.

Other industry websites

Apart from posting content on your own website and social media, you can also leverage guest posting on other prominent industry websites. This allows you to reach a wider audience, who may or may not frequent your website. It also helps establish you as an industry expert, especially if you post on reputable websites that your prospective customers trust.

Make a list of some of the most reputable websites in your niche and reach out to them for guest posting opportunities. Pick trending topics and provide detailed outlines to ensure that your articles get selected.


Read more @ https://www.smartbrief.com/original/2020/10/b2b-content-marketing-tactics-increase-your-content-roi-part-2

 

  

How to Leverage LinkedIn for Lead Generation and Sales.

LinkedIn can be a powerful sales tool. Here are four tips for taking advantage of the platform to grow your business. 

 

 

With 700 million users, LinkedIn provides a massive opportunity for businesses to increase sales leads and revenue. In this video, the creator and host of “The Startup Story” shares tips for leveraging LinkedIn to start conversations with cold contacts, namely:

Research, learning more about the contact you’re reaching out to from their profile as well as other social media accounts

Requesting to connect, adding a personal message using the information you’ve discovered in your research and suggesting next steps

Delivering on your promise to follow up, inviting your contact to a phone call and requesting their assistance (as opposed to selling)

Nurturing the relationship with engagement via the platform by liking, sharing and commenting on their posts, keeping your name top-of-mind for when they enter a buying cycle

 

Read more @ https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/355220

 

Demand generation in the far future

 

Making predictions more than 10 years away is tricky, but as with developments over the previous decade, demand gen will look radically different to how it does now 

The end of demand generation as we know it 

In its current high-volume, mass-marketing form, demand generation is simply not sustainable for the next 10 years. The shrinking audience, lack of engagement and tighter privacy restrictions will render it untenable. 

The rapid rise in the popularity of account-based marketing over the past few years is a direct reaction to this as marketers search for a fresh alternative that will allow them to steal a march on their competitors. While the excitement and hype around ABM will undoubtedly die down, the method itself is here to stay.

 A characteristic of successful account-based marketing is a full commitment to the strategy, and for organizations with limited marketing resources this might mean dialing back on demand gen activity. This is what happened at Fujistu when the company went all-in on ABM a few years ago. As head of ABM, Andrea Clatworthy told the B2B Marketing ABM Conference in 2017: “We had to stop doing some stuff to give people the space to do ABM. So we stopped demand gen, we stopped lead gen – the business didn’t notice for a year.” 

Most companies won’t have the luxury of just switching demand gen off; it’s likely companies will operate some form of hybrid model with a combination of one-to-one/ one-to-few ABM, and one-to-many (or programmatic) ABM replacing the demand gen of today.

Programmatic ABM is powered by technology, its popularity is also likely to grow as the martech behind it becomes more powerful. Advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning will support smarter prospecting, better lead qualification, and much stronger personalisation through content, products and support.

No silver bullet, but multi-touch attribution will get easier 

Attribution modelling in the complex customer journey remains a headache, and unfortunately there is no foreseeable silver bullet to deliver a 100% accurate map of how marketing has influenced a sale. It should at least get easier. 

Collating data from a variety of systems that aren’t integrated can be a slow and laborious process. Consolidation among martech vendors, such as Adobe’s acquisition of Marketo (which owns Bizible) should mean systems can trade data with each other more easily, giving a more complete picture of the customer journey. 

The end of demand generation as we know it 

In its current high-volume, mass-marketing form, demand generation is simply not sustainable for the next 10 years. The shrinking audience, lack of engagement and tighter privacy restrictions will render it untenable. 

The rapid rise in the popularity of account-based marketing over the past few years is a direct reaction to this as marketers search for a fresh alternative that will allow them to steal a march on their competitors. While the excitement and hype around ABM will undoubtedly die down, the method itself is here to stay.

 A characteristic of successful account-based marketing is a full commitment to the strategy, and for organizations with limited marketing resources this might mean dialing back on demand gen activity. This is what happened at Fujistu when the company went all-in on ABM a few years ago. As head of ABM, Andrea Clatworthy told the B2B Marketing ABM Conference in 2017: “We had to stop doing some stuff to give people the space to do ABM. So we stopped demand gen, we stopped lead gen – the business didn’t notice for a year.” 

Most companies won’t have the luxury of just switching demand gen off; it’s likely companies will operate some form of hybrid model with a combination of one-to-one/ one-to-few ABM, and one-to-many (or programmatic) ABM replacing the demand gen of today.

Programmatic ABM is powered by technology, its popularity is also likely to grow as the martech behind it becomes more powerful. Advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning will support smarter prospecting, better lead qualification, and much stronger personalisation through content, products and support.

No silver bullet, but multi-touch attribution will get easier 

Attribution modelling in the complex customer journey remains a headache, and unfortunately there is no foreseeable silver bullet to deliver a 100% accurate map of how marketing has influenced a sale. It should at least get easier. 

Collating data from a variety of systems that aren’t integrated can be a slow and laborious process. Consolidation among martech vendors, such as Adobe’s acquisition of Marketo (which owns Bizible) should mean systems can trade data with each other more easily, giving a more complete picture of the customer journey. 

Read more @ https://www.b2bmarketing.net/en-gb/resources/features/demand-generation-far-future

How Leading B2B Companies Invest In Innovation

 

How Leading B2B Companies Invest In Innovation

 

By Magnus Meier, Global Head of Wholesale Distribution, SAP

It was American investor Warren Buffett who said, “We continue to make more money when snoring than when active.”  This line of thought is not lost on many other financial experts who also favor long-term investments and believe “market timing” does not actually yield results and can be stressful, time-consuming, and risky.  In fact, the strategy of long-term investments in the financial market can easily be applied to a B2B organization’s approach to investing in business innovation. 

Consider a 401(k)-retirement savings plan. Ongoing, predictable contributions to a 401(k) account throughout an individual’s career aims to build a long-term, guaranteed path to a comfortable retirement. Likewise, continuous developments and investments in innovation can enable B2B organizations to keep up with, and even proactively address, the needs of a dynamic market.

What History Teaches Us

Past recessions have taught us a few things. Authors Ranjay Gulati, Nitin Nohria, and Franz Wohlgezogen studied the recessions of 1980, 1990, and 2000. In their book, Roaring Out the Depression, they wrote that 17 percent of companies didn't survive, 74 percent came out the recession the same or weaker, and 9 percent come out stronger. How can we apply lessons learned from these drastic shifts in market leadership?

The keys to coming out of recessions in a better position than you started are seeing and understanding trends, developing a strategic vision around them, then evolving the company around that vision. It means embracing change. It also means making the right, strategic investments into an organization. Enabling it to identify disruptive trends, define successful strategies, simplify or even abandon outdated practices and to embrace new technologies that will enable new practices or business models driving the company closer toward its vision.

How Leading Companies Approach Technology Investments

Although the majority of innovations are driven by business, technology is often a catalyst for change and vital to predicting and proactively responding to trends in the market, across all industries.

According to a 2019 Forrester Consulting Study, digital transformation journeys continue to be a priority for enterprises. These organizations are increasingly optimizing existing processes to improve efficiency, extending processes to capture new value, and transforming business models to gain new revenue streams.

As companies seek competitive advantages and operational improvements, they are prioritizing innovative technologies. As such, leading B2B organizations are implementing or have already implemented innovative technologies to drive digital transformation:

·         Internet of Things: 92 percent

·         Artificial Intelligence: 78 percent

·         Machine Learning: 77 percent

·         Augmented reality/virtual reality: 70 percent

·         Blockchain: 68 percent

According to the study, 92 percent of companies showed a high interest in platforms that unify data collected by, and used across, all intelligent technologies and business processes. Take I-D Foods, for example. This Canadian-based food service distributor continues to invest in advanced digital technologies that expose deep, real-time business insight that helps them better understand and predict demand. The company’s unified approach helped reduce stock, expand product offerings, increase availability and accelerate fulfillment times.

“We are always looking to improve and win more customers,” said Mike Issenman, CTO, ID Foods Corporation. “An important part of that is delivering great service. To achieve our future ambitions, we needed to adopt a platform that could offer deeper operational insight, greater agility, and superb scalability.”

Are you ready to take the next step towards building an Intelligent Enterprise? Take this short survey to learn more.