The new buzzword for improving interest in your products and services is demand generation, which is fast becoming a vital metric for many companies. Not only does good demand generation help the supply chain, it also leads to happier customers and more alignment between sales and marketing. Here are some of the best demand generation strategies that you can use in 2018.
Automate and Centralize
Marketing automation platforms have made processes in the middle of the sales funnel far more efficient than ever before. Over half of all B2B firms are now using automation to nurture leads and, believe it or not, create more personalized content. Around the top of the funnel, centralizing the source of your leads gives you additional efficiency for the automation that you employ around the mid-level processes such as closed-loop reporting, vendor management, and standardization/enhancement.
Using Account Based Marketing Strategies
Email blasting cold contact lists is no longer viable in the modern business landscape. There are plenty of new tools that can precisely target accounts based on directed strategies. Segmenting your accounts from the beginning can help immensely when it is time for your sales and marketing teams to align themselves to go in for the kill.
A New Focus on Data Quality
Big data is so 2014. If you are not properly segmenting and organizing your data, then you will find scaling your demand generation to be a big problem. The tips above can help you avoid wasting money on low-quality leads, which will usually create a higher conversion rate for the business. You must also try to enhance your current leads with more precise data points. The entire subdiscipline of MarTech is focused on this, so get digging and find the right tools.
Your Qualified Lead Velocity Rate (QLVR)
You should be looking at a hard growth in your qualified leads on a month over month basis. This growth should be consistent, as your real-time rate is the best predictor of future growth and revenues. The revenues that you report in the current month usually do not represent the leads that were converted in that month – lead times for B2B firms is usually half a year to a year. The calculation for QLVR: your current month’s MQL (marketing qualified lead) conversion/ last month’s MQL. Multiply by 100 for the final metric.
Customer Service Communications
You can expect a 36% increase in customer retention if you purposefully align your sales and marketing teams. Alignment means that sales and marketing shares vision and metrics, communicate on a regular basis, and share in each other’s successes. Improved communications in your customer service line obviously lead to better customer experiences, and your marketing team will benefit from the input from sales. Marketing can increase demand generation from the additional information about the buyer’s journey, and the department will also have more leverage to support upselling and cross-selling.
Direct Client Interface
Your marketing team must take on the new responsibility of engaging directly with clients. Your frontline salesmen have knowledge about your buyers that is unique. Your marketers need the same sort of vision in order to increase demand generation. Clients may also help your marketing team identify opportunities and industry trends that are difficult to see from high rise offices away from the streets.
