4 Tips For Successful Demand Generation

I have been writing about Demand Generaton and Demand Management since I started blogging a few years ago. Successful and effective marketing creates value for the business.

And so, occasionally, my colleague Rob Krekstein, who is a Senior Director of Global Inside Sales here at SAP, provides his amazing perspective on how to create successful demand generation programs that produce real business results. The following article is a guest post from Rob'

Demand Generation is critical to every company bottom line, and is often managed through various groups within your company. Here are 4 tips to help you create and manage a 'Best In Class' Demand Generation program'

1. Understand online behavior, or 'Digital Body Language' of the Prospects. You must focus on the needs of the buyer and facilitate their buying process, rather than pushing messages at them. With an understanding of the buyer's behavior, we can determine through advanced analytic models, which of those buyers are at a stage in their buying process where they are ready to engage with sales.
2. Data quality and data management are necessary: As companies are interacting with buyers over a longer period of time, they need to ensure that they keep their data on those prospective buyers clean and up to date. Analytics can aid in prescribing the 'right' companies to target, inclusive of the 'right' contacts to call, but require clean and up to date data to provide. This data will allow for a more 'laser focused' and targeted campaign, which will yield a higher ROI.
3. Campaigns must be focused, relevant and multi-touch: Too often companies implement 'generic' campaigns, which do not provide needed ROI. Utilizing the various tips above you can focus and personalize your campaigns on relevant topics for prospects and engage them at the right time in their sales cycle. This will alleviate wasted calling and allow sales people to 'sell'. With a 'multi-touch' approach (creative email blast / call / email blast / nurture) you can prioritize calling as well as increase your results in the short and long term.
4. Campaign analysis is critical:. In any buying process there may be multiple campaigns, multiple buyers, and many months involved. By analyzing the results of each campaign you can begin to understand how each of those campaigns influenced buyer behavior, and how the revenue achieved can be attributed across the many campaigns involved. This new approach provides a much clearer view into campaign effectiveness and allows for specific direction to your future campaigns and spend.

Demand Generation is a discipline that is necessary in today's environment, in which buyers are in control of their own buying process and have access to all the information they require to make a buying decision. Utilizing these tips, you will not only create a sustainable Demand Generation Program, but increase your marketing ROI.