New marketers still struggle to understand the difference between demand generation and lead generation. One of the reasons; demand generation has undergone radical change over the past 8 years. You may think it is simply about generating demand for the product and services of a business. However, it’s much more and is achieved through a comprehensive, gradual, and holistic process.
When I started my first job as a marketing associate, my task was to find households in New Jersey that didn’t have cable. After finding this audience, my next goal was to sell the cable. My company used to sell them economy bundles just like the Optimum economy package. Since they were low-income group households, we had to sell them cable without sounding expensive. Sadly, demand generation wasn’t invented at that time.
Understanding Demand Generation
Just like conversion, demand generation can be considered a funnel. The process begins by identifying the audience that is likely to be receptive to the marketing message of the brand. Then, the prospects are shepherded through a funnel that addresses every stage of the conversion process. One thing that makes it different from traditional conversion methods and inbounding marketing is that it aligns marketing closely with sales for accomplishing the goals.
Demand generation is like a relationship between the sales team, marketing teams, and customers. First, prospective customers are identified through processes such as email campaigns, inbound marketing, content, direct response, and other events. Then, they are passed to a team of nurturers who qualify these prospects. They use a scoring system depending on the phase at which the prospect is likely to fall in the conversation funnel. Once highly qualified prospects are identified, leads pass the list onto the sales team.
Ways to Integrate Social Leads into Demand Generation Funnel
Here are some ways you can integrate social leads into your demand generation funnel:
Be the Best with Giveaways
Regardless of what type of marketing material it is; content download, promotional campaign, or a free sample, you must give your best.
Giveaways have several benefits for businesses. It helps build trust between your audience and the brand. That means they are more likely to revisit your website.
Another benefit is that it reflects greatly on your trust. You will see enthusiastic prospects advocating for your brand. They won’t hesitate to step up and become your brand ambassador. By offering something that has real value, your prospects will leave gathering whatever information you needed for them to have to be marked as a quality lead. This will help you in the first stage of demand generation.
Use the Look Like Audience Feature on Facebook
You must already be using Facebook’s advertising feature. It’s a powerful platform no doubt. Part of its greatness is the lookalike audiences. That is like a custom audience that resembles your users who have expressed an interest in your product, service, or content before. They share the same demographic and behavioral features.
| Also Read: 8 Different Ways to Lessen the Insurance Premium |
You can upload custom audiences by using the data you have gathered from your actual users. This will allow you to double the reach via Facebook goldmine advertising. The larger the custom audience you upload, the more you can cast your net using the lookalikes. Given the number of hours people spend on Facebook, you will find this feature to be very useful in demand-generation strategies.
Managed Placement in Display Advertising
Display advertising has a somewhat bad rap. Yes, the display has its own limitations but it seems that marketers undermine the role of managed placements in the display network campaigns.
| Managed placements let you control the audience your display ads are shown to. This is done by specifying where the ad should appear and limiting the ad’s reach to only those who are likely to react to it positively. It is a targeted approach for displaying ads. Your ads are not scattered here and there. | Usually, the purpose of the display campaign is to generate brand awareness. It could be used as an effective part of the demand generation funnel. The idea is not to look for conversions from the display but rather to boost your online brand. Both of them are strengths for display campaigns. Managed placements let you tap into these benefits and have control over who sees your ads. |
Summing Up
If my job were to find the same audience who don’t have cable now, I can certainly make use of the demand cable generation funnel now and encourage that audience to Google “Cable TV providers in my area”, compare what packages are out there, and make them sign up for Optimum.
Demand generation is a great strategy for those brands that want to take their sales to the next level.
