Demand Generation Marketing for Your Brand in Just 4 Steps

Demand generation or demand gen as it's also known helps build brand awareness and authority and drives interest and cultivates leads for your brand. That’s why it's essential to have in place a strong demand gen strategy. Look no further than here with our guide that shows you how to build a robust demand generation strategy in just four steps. These four steps are your building blocks!

A Little Bit about Demand Generation

Before we dive right into our demand generation strategy, we believe it’s important to make the distinction between demand generation and lead generation which are often used interchangeably. Although there are overlaps between the two, they are not the same thing.

Demand generation is a marketing strategy solely focused on building reliable brand awareness and interest, generating high-quality leads. Whilst lead generation focuses on converting an interested audience into leads through direct outreach using multiple channels. Both can work together though and should work together to bring about great results (high ROI) for your brand.

Step 1: Build Brand Awareness for Demand Generation

With today’s competitive and overly saturated digital landscape, brand awareness is absolutely crucial for a consistent flow of quality leads for your brand both B2B and B2C. There’s so much information on building brand awareness to help you. Just do a Google search and you’ll find so much on the subject! Many brands still think that brand awareness is simply just gaining the attention of prospective buyers. Although this is certainly part of it, it doesn’t tell the full story.

You see to properly build brand awareness you first have to have your four core fundamentals in place:

1. Your purpose for existing (problem/s you solve)
2. What you stand for as a brand (your values)
3. Your unique selling proposition (USP) or point of difference
4. Your target customers including your ideal/dream customers

From here you then have a solid foundation to work from and are now ready to present your solution to your customers. Remember all brands are offering some type of solution/s to a problem/s in one way or another. A fantastic way to not only present your solution as the best or one of the best and also increase visibility for your brand is through customer reviews like Google Reviews, testimonials on your website and even case studies.

These offer excellent social proof. But keep in mind the three R’s – Recent, Relevant and Real for social proof.  That is not out of date, relevant to what your selling, and authentic (not made up).

FACT- buyers these days are more informed and so do their research before making a purchasing decision. So social proof in the form of testimonies and case studies are essential in providing them with high-level insights into your brand that help position you in the best favourable light. You want customers raving about your brand not complaining about it which will only hurt your reputation. If you haven’t already done so, set up a Google Business Profile which is free and a fantastic way of showcasing reviews and helps with your local online visibility.

Step 2: Create Content for Demand Generation

Virtually all brands on the planet (B2B, B2C, B2D and more) are creating content in some form or another as they realise its importance to growing their brand and engaging with their customers. Most brands have invested in some type of content marketing which when done well can help fast track your business success.

Content is the digital currency in 2024 and beyond as it helps position your brand as a subject matter expert in your field and torpedoes your overall brand awareness and authority. So, it’s an important part of any demand generation strategy. In fact, we would argue if your demand generation strategy doesn’t have content, then you don’t have a strategy!

But remember content must be done well. That is, it must be compelling, engaging, relevant and offer solutions to your customers. Poorly done content will just hurt your brand and damage your reputation. Avoid it at all costs!

FACT- Mix up your content to appeal to different consumption types. Audiences want a variety of content – blogs, articles, videos, social media posts, infographics, lead magnets, e-books etc. Don’t forget for each piece of content you produce to incorporate search engine optimisation for ranking.

Then don’t also forget to promote, share, and repurpose content to help amplify its reach. Remember creating content is just one piece of the puzzle, promoting, sharing, and repurposing make up a much bigger piece of the puzzle.

Step 3: Lead Nurturing & Sales Marketing Alignment in Demand Generation

A proper and robust demand generation marketing strategy must include lead nurturing and sales marketing alignment. This can only be achieved when marketing and sales teams work closely together. Traditionally they have worked as silos, but more and more brands are realising that this working arrangement no longer works especially now in a highly competitive and saturated digital landscape. 

For both teams to work well together, they must be on the same page and know what each other is doing. They must regularly check in with each other and play their part in knowing important details like stages of the marketing and sales funnel, the purchase journey, content performance and buyer behaviour (trends, questions, concerns, and attitudes). 

Both teams should regularly monitor lead feedback to see whether outreach strategies are meeting customer needs.  If your budget is too small and won’t allow for a marketing and sales team, then just spread out you’re marketing and sales amongst your current team members.

FACT- Many brands still have their marketing and sales teams working in silos, but more and more brands thankfully are realising this is the wrong strategy and are adjusting accordingly. Account Based Marketing (ABM) can set up you’re marketing and sales teams for success as it requires both teams to strategically select accounts to target and nurture through customised engagement and support.

Step 4: Partner with a Third Party for Demand Generation

There is so much opportunity to be gained by brands partnering up with a third-party provider (ie: influencers, industry experts, organisations etc). You can reach a much bigger and wider curated audience than you could on your own. The truth of the matter is that it is so much easier and simpler to get your message in front of the right people by finding a partner who has already carved out the audience you want.

For just about any service or product, there exists an audience in need of what you have to offer. Third-party partners can get your brand’s services or products in front of the right buyers at the right time. Even long before the digital age brands understood this and were using third party partners like celebrities, prominent people, networking groups, organisations, etc to get their message in front of bigger audiences.

FACT- Third party partners have the potential to develop into great long-term relationships which can lead to collaborations, sponsorships and more. Ask yourself Who is already speaking to my audience? How can we work together to position myself in front of their audience?

Generate the Demand Your Brand Deserves

Building a robust demand generation strategy requires a lot of logistics so it’s always good to get expert help for your demand gen strategy. Book a Time with WORD EMPIRE^® who can fast track your demand gen strategy as well help build your business empire.