User attention is gold today, and businesses are willing to pay a premium. From websites pushing “freebies” to catchy ad campaigns, the battle is on for the soul of every consumer. Behind these activities is the ever-present drive to increase demand for products, ultimately for business growth and profitability.
If your business doesn’t understand how to generate attention on demand, what you have is a business struggling to survive. This article seeks to give an overview of Demand generation, its history, and why it is key to driving business key performance indices.
What is Demand Gen Marketing?
Image courtesy of Nielpatel.com
Demand generation marketing refers to all the activities directed towards creating attention and need for a product or service. These include but are not limited to webinars, video content, blog posts, influencer marketing, newsletters, SEO, Press releases, etc. The idea is to create brand awareness to drive new traffic and acquire targeted leads. It seeks to combine various marketing approaches into a structured sales process.
To further illustrate, consider an individual watching your video or reading your blog post they just stumbled upon. If these mediums are engaging, entertaining, and actionable concerning your brand, it could create trust and awareness, ultimately converting them to buying customers.
A filled funnel of customers is the lifeblood of any business, so you need to take the time to understand the general fundamentals of demand gen marketing and how to apply it to grow your brands’ awareness and boost profitability.
History of Demand Marketing
As long as new products have been pushed into the market, demand generation marketing has been around. Archaeologists have discovered mosaic banner ads in the well-preserved ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii. While this could be the ancient equivalent of the flashy ads on display at times square, most medieval era demand generation marketing mainly relied on word of mouth and referrals.
The Moorish Bazaar, painting by Edwin Lord Weeks
The invention of the printing press in the 1400s introduced a novel way to engage and attract more audiences. Referrals and word of mouth never got out of fashion. However, print ads in magazines and bulletins reached a wider audience and paved the way for direct mail advertising in the 17th century. Direct mail advertising introduced a more targeted approach to demand generation
In the early days, demand generation marketing usually involves door-to-door sales, where salespeople try to educate and convince prospects why a specific product is worth their dollar. The advent of television and radio in the sixties further broadened the scope and reach of businesses seeking to fill their lead funnels. An improvement on the previous manual approach, these broadcast mediums allowed businesses to reach a wider audience and tremendously increased brand awareness and impact.
The birth of the internet and personal computers in the 1990s once again shifted demand generation strategies in new directions. Marketing efforts become more targeted, and strategies such as email marketing and SEO quickly proliferated. Automation entered the mix, allowing demand gen efforts to multiply exponentially with less effort.
Current Demand Generation Landscape
In the most recent iteration of demand generation marketing, the advent of mobile technology revolutionized how businesses attracted customers. Starting with Facebook in 2004, social media changed the demand generation dynamics. Companies begin to build personalized relationships with prospects by leveraging tools in-built into these online platforms.
The ubiquitous nature of smartphones meant that businesses could reach customers anytime and anywhere. Lead generation has become more targeted and personalized; automation also helped enhance the effectiveness of these strategies.
The Future of Demand Generation Marketing
Marketers must adapt and enhance marketing efforts with the rapidly changing technological changes in an increasingly complex environment. They need to unify the different demand generation tools and strategies into a cohesive plan.
The objective is to target prospects more effectively and personally and engage and convert them into buyers. In this new dispensation, the buyer is key, and all demand generation marketing must be buyer-driven. Marketers must find ways to extract clean data that will give deeper insight into customers’ behavior and provide a more personalized experience.
Conclusion
In the long history of demand generation, one thing has remained constant: the need to present your product or services in front of prospective customers with a compelling reason to buy. Most successful companies and brands dominating their industries are those that have mastered the delicate art of generating sustained interest in their product or services.
Businesses must then take the time and effort to understand their customers and properly profile them. Deeper insight into consumers and their behavior are crucial to developing a solid demand generation strategy. Without a good grasp of the general fundamentals of demand generation marketing, no level of technological intervention would be able to keep a business from failing.