Demand Generation is a combination of all marketing efforts designed to drive awareness and interest in a firm’s product or service.

Demand Generation is a complex process because of the multiple areas of marketing and sales process that need to converge and communicate messages throughout buyer purchase cycles. Although NuSpark Marketing is branded as a lead generation firm, we really are a demand generation firm.  Using the term “lead” has more universal appeal towards the stakeholders we target and thus the brand, but because of our approach to turning leads into sales, we are indeed in the demand generation business.

We’re not interested in leads; we’re interested in lead quality. 

That’s why we are taking you through this journey.  By combining efforts such as advertising, seminars/webinars, direct mail, email, blogs, and social media with lead nurturing and campaign automation efforts, you’re creating a demand generation engine that grows revenue and shortens sales cycles. By communicating to leads via multiple touch points, and through relationship building that starts with content, you are becoming a trusted adviser to the prospect, giving them constant value and guiding them through the consideration process, until they become customers.

The Demand Generation Checklist

In order to prepare for a brand new demand generation effort, the following elements will guide you through:

• Customer profile: A defined profile of your key audiences and stakeholders
• Buyer personas: A summary of each audience’s needs, issues, and purchase drivers
• Value statement: How do you address your customer’s needs?  A statement on the value you provide
• Message map: The key messages that articulate the value you provide for each customer need and issue
• Lead buying process: The identification and confirmation of how your prospects buy, what steps they take, and what content delivery they prefer
• Content requirements: Matching the specific content topics and vehicles to each prospect/stakeholder buying phase
• Drip map:  Managing the flow of content through marketing automation, whether it be white papers, blogs, webcasts, or other messages, and having a flow strategy to change the flow based on defined criteria and lead score
• Editorial calendar:  The content plan itself, organized by topic, audience, and timeframe
• Content creation plan: A review of the resources, internally and external, assigned to prepare and produce the content
• Marketing automation management:  The implementation of the platform that tracks the lead capture and engagement activity of prospects and leads, including landing page, web form, email template, newsletter development, plus the qualification, scoring, and routing configurations
• Marketing Plan: Pay-per-click, social media, direct marketing, digital media plans in place to attract prospects
• Website/Landing Page plan:  Search engine optimization, landing page testing, and conversion architecture
• Performance Metrics: Having the dashboards in place to track and measure campaign performance

Key Content Statement

Managing a content strategy and being able to consistency test and optimize messages are keys to effective demand generation and sales growth.

Summary of Approach

Sales and Marketing have to work together as one.  The days of traditional sales process is over. Buyers know more, and they expect sales people to help them with their problems, and not aggressively sell them.  Demand generation needs to be an integral part of your lead generation machine, and through our efforts we can make it happen, and ensure that your firm is targeting the buyers of today; not of yesterday.

Next Stop: Lead Nurturing