In its true essence, “Demand Generation” involves the use of targeted marketing programs to drive awareness and interest in a company’s products and/or services. And much more than that, it focuses on turning interest into qualified leads.
Too often, in the race for bigger numbers, demand generation is confused to mean pushing unqualified sales leads. Rather than working on a pull strategy to maximize and nurture true leads, we end up pushing leads that may not even be close to making a buying decision. It’s time to step back and recognize that real demand generation is not “sexy”; it’s a lot of hard work! It’s not just about technology; it’s about people following a process that delivers measurable results and ROI.
So what are some of the questions you must ask as a demand generator?
- Are you a “spike marketer” or do you practice a consistent and sustainable approach to marketing? If you tend to spike, be aware of the reasons why most spike marketing campaigns fail.
- Do you rely heavily on technology and sales automation tools for leads? Remember that technology is only a driver; it’s your people and process that can work the magic or conversion!
- Do you have a systematic and ongoing prospect database maintenance program? How often do you update it?
- Is your lead generation budget spent on simply buying lists or do you make the effort to build and nurture a home-grown prospect database?
- Does your CRM capability dictate how you go to market? Or have you struck a good balance between your outbound and inbound marketing efforts?
- What is your lead dissemination strategy? How much of your effort goes into pushing sales leads to your reps vis-à-vis creating a “pull world”?
- How do you differentiate a qualified lead from a cold one? How complicated is your lead scoring model / system and does it have a lot of moving parts?
- Do you have a clearly defined set of lead objectives within a given period? How do you measure effectiveness against these objectives?
Over the next few blog posts, I will delve deeper into some of these questions. It would be great to know your thoughts and experiences as well. Leave a comment on my blog so we can discuss.
