What is the demand generation? Today’s buyers have changed, as stated in the article Demand Generation: “Today’s buyer acquires their information online, through various sources, on a timeframe that makes sense to them. Because of this, marketers must focus on understanding the needs of the buyer and facilitating their buying process, rather than pushing marketing messages at them.”
The article goes on to say buyers are in control of their own buying process these days. They have more than enough access to all the information they need to make an informed buying decision.
Modern inbound marketers should be aware of this and be prepared to use marketing tools that help automate this process more effectively. This allows business owners to quickly change campaigns and refocus and retarget as necessary.
Demand Generation Strategy involves creating engaging content that your visitors and subscribers will interact with. Basically you need to match the right type of content to the right person. This can be achieved by creating a variety of content on several topics, and by having the content available in various formats.
For example, some people will happily read your blog posts while other people prefer to watch a video or listen to an MP3 recording. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to create new, different products for each format. What it does entail is repurposing your original content. This is much easier than you might think.
Ways to Repurpose Your Content
Let’s assume that you have a basic 800 word article on a subject. In addition to this you can turn this article into:
- Power point presentation
- PDF format
- Create a video with an audio overlay
- Create an MP3 version
You are not rewriting or adding anything to achieve these new formats you are simply changing the way they look. This is extremely helpful when posting to your blog. You can now publish your main article and then offer the different formats as choices for your readers.
Defining Your Readers
By offering different formats you can discover if there is a popular choice amongst your readers. Do they download the PDF or slides or do they watch the video? This allows you to target these people in the future by offering them more of what they want. This is the basic first step of understanding what your readers and visitors want and learning their habits. To be successful at using this method of demand generation strategy there are some other things that you need to pay attention to.
___________________________________________________
Related article: Inbound Marketing—Targeting the Right Segment
____________________________________________________
You need to look at the different kinds of clients you want to connect to with these different formats. Connecting to your potential clients you could use demographics or psychographics as ways to connect more directly with the specific clients. The drawback of demographics is that it gives too narrow an amount of information. Psychographics comes with a price for the software. So how can a small business create the right target?
There is a third way to look at people that combines both demographics and psychographics and creates a bit wider group, but in ways that can be useful without being expensive. One of the names of this path is segment marketing or segmenting.
How is a segment defined?
Members of a marketing segment of people are in the same age group who are likely to have had similar experiences during their formative years which range from late adolescence to early adulthood (from around 17 to 23).- The experiences they have in common are called defining moments and these moments influence attitudes, preferences, values and buying behaviors. These behaviors tend to stay with the group throughout their entire lives.
Getting into the Minds of Your Readers
No wonder this is a relatively easy way to target your market. You can use this information to create communications to resonate with the segment’s core values on an emotional level or plan how your marketing might be different depending on which target you want to reach. Not all marketers need to look at their potential clients this way, but it is a handy tool for selling food, music, cars, financial services, insurance, and special caregiving services.
The important idea here is that you need to look at your product or service and decide who you want to market to. Then spend some time learning about these different marketing segments and look at how other businesses are targeting your group.
___________________________________________________
Related article: 4 Marketing Help Tips on Getting Information to Create a Persona
____________________________________________________
Once you have this type of strategy in place you have the ability to generate targeted leads for your business. Remember that Demand Generation Strategy is a great way to learn about the people who you want to demand your product. Each of the segments will have their own way to make their demands known. Then make use of the different types of content formats for each group.
Jaco Grobbelaar is the owner of BroadVision Marketing. BroadVision Marketing works with business owners to put in place inbound and outbound marketing strategies that consistently secure new clients. The BroadVision Marketing Training Center is located in Petaluma, CA and primarily serves companies in the San Francisco Bay area.
Jaco can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.766.9778 or connect with Jaco on Facebook - www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing - and LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar. He can also be found at Jaco+.