The Four Pillars of Effective Demand Generation

Note: This is the second of a five-part series of articles examining the discipline of Demand Generation.  Follow this link to read the first article in the series: Why Nearly 60% of Enterprise Demand Generation Programs Underperform. 

"Success doesn't necessarily come from breakthrough innovation but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won't win a game or a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling."
---Naveen Jain (Entrepreneur and Philanthropist)


In a game of American football, two competing teams vie for control of a ball, which can be kicked through a set of goalposts or run into the opponent's goal area to score points.  If you're a fan of the sport, you probably know that the game has evolved dramatically over the years.  In fact, nearly every aspect of football has changed to some degree since the game's inception over a century ago: the rules, the equipment, the venues and even the on field tactics.  The game constantly evolves, innovates and modernizes.   

Despite, the game's ongoing evolution, the end objectives of the contests have always remained consistent.  Score more points than your opponent and you win the match.  Win the most important matches and and you're crowned champion.  Consistently win championships and you solidify your team as a dynasty.  

I doubt that any dynastic football coach would dispute Naveen Jain's quote we cited above.  Having played the game myself, I can tell you that the best teams on paper don't always win the contests on the field. The bottom line is that ongoing success on the gridiron typically requires consistent and near-flawless execution of basic fundamentals in every facet of the game. 

Suffice it to say, the end objectives of nearly every business enterprise are parallel to the game of football: you play to win.  In our first article of this series, we discussed why a high percentage of companies that have adopted Demand Generation practices and principles are ineffective.  In this article, we'll address the four strategic pillars of successful enterprise Demand Generation programs and examine some of the fundamental tactics that distinguish the champions from the also ran's.   

​The First Pillar: Your Process
As we discussed in the first article, Demand Generation defines your organization’s personal relationship with your leads, prospects and customers.  Needless to say, every customer touch-point offers an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your customer. Consequently, your organization needs to be structured around your customer rather than your products or services to fully optimize your Demand Generation efforts.

Unlike traditional Lead Generation programs where interested (warm) prospects were turned over to a sales professional to close deals, Demand Generation programs nurture the relationship through the entirety of the Revenue Funnel.  In other words, you're not just looking to close a deal.  Instead, you're seeking to establish long-term relationships with your buyers; where satisfied customers become loyalists and loyalists become vocal brand advocates.  

​So why is having a dynamic, ongoing relationship with your buyers so important these days?  First and foremost, the digital revolution has dramatically altered buying processes and decision making over the last few years. In effect, buyers are more knowledgeable and better informed than ever before.  They're turning to friends, colleagues and other key influencers to research their purchases long before they ever engage with your sales team.

Recent studies by Forrester Research, DemandGen and CSO Insights all reveal some startling figures that support this claim. For instance:

• 74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase.  – Forrester
• 72% of buyers turn to peers for relevant content when researching purchasing decisions. – DemandGen
• Companies with superior Demand Gen platforms generate 50% more sales-qualified leads and a 33% lower cost per lead – CSO Insights

​These figures indicate that your customers' needs and buying patterns must be at the center of your Demand Generation strategy.  The stats also suggest that you need to actively engage with customers at every point in the revenue funnel principally on their terms. 

An effective demand generation process does just that.  It more closely aligns your Marketing and Sales functions, and it creates a seamless buying process that eliminates the gap between Interest and Desire:

​The Second Pillar: Your People
​Traditional business models typically view Marketing as a cost silo and Sales as a revenue silo. Effective Demand Generation generally requires a blended model approach. In our experiences, we've found that a combined marketing/sales organizational model, built around the touch-points in the revenue funnel, typically works best.   

For startup companies, adopting a blended organizational model is usually a relatively easy task.  Conversely, established businesses with traditional lead generation models seem to experience difficulties.  To be successful, you will most likely need to change the skill-set of your personnel, the reward structure based on changes in goals and performance metrics and the organizational structure to align to the buyers' purchase path.  This requires a shift away from the traditional way of thinking of both marketing and sales.

It's important to remember that organizational change Is difficult and that people sometimes resist the efforts. Your marketing personnel and your sales team need both support and leadership in order to make the strategic shift pay off.  Consequently, clear communication of your overall mission, vision and objectives from the top on down are critical for transition. 

As we mentioned earlier, effective Demand Generation processes bridge the gap between marketing and sales.   Over the years, we've found organizations that appoint a C-Level leader to oversee the whole process are generally more successful than their peers who draw territorial lines between marketing and sales functions.  Therefore, we strongly urge our clients to appoint a "Chief Demand Officer" (or a Chief Revenue Officer if you prefer), who owns the he entire Customer Life Cycle.

The CDO / CRO leads a team that is responsible for meeting the revenue objectives for your products or services,  Their functional org chart generally looks something like this:

The CDO / CRO's functional teams exist to create awareness, nurture prospects, close sales, up sell, cross sell and strengthen relationships.  Support staff (Marketing Ops) support the entire organization.  Along with traditional sales and conversion metrics, two critical financial  measurements tie the teams' activities together:

• $CPC ($ Cost per Customer - The total amount spent to establish, build and maintain a customer relationship)
• $LTV ($ Lifetime Value - Total revenue generated from an individual customer relationship)

Again, we stress that effective Demand Generation is built around customer-centric strategies rather than product-centric strategies.  Customer needs, preferences and behavior should drive activities.  Organizing your people around the customer generally improves your ability to execute and typically streamlines your operating costs in the long run. 

 ​
​The Third Pillar: Your Content
Once you've fully committed to a customer-centric business model, it's time to turn your attention to your content strategy.  Like every marketing program, success is a matter of being in the right place at the right time with the right solution. An ideal Demand Generation program establishes your organization as the expert in your particular line of business. Therefore, each and every interaction with your prospects and customers should affirm and strengthen the perception that you are the leading solution in your category.

First and foremost, you need to find and target the best touch points to engage customers.  This isn't an exact science. Tactics vary by industry and product type. Additionally, every business has varying strengths and deficiencies. Therefore, we strongly suggest you begin with category best practices that seem to fit your model. Test them out for yourself and quickly adapt and expand the ones that seem most promising.  Here are some basic tactics to consider through the various stages of the revenue funnel:

With this model in mind, here are our five fundamental recommendations for developing an effective content strategy:​ ​

1.  Ensure That Your Branding Is Consistent!
​Brand consistency is crucial for success! Consistency is the key to building awareness, and it also builds momentum through the other four stages of the revenue funnel. Effective branding delivers economic, experiential and emotional value to your customers.  It encourages repeat purchases and drives advocacy.

Keep in mind that your company or product logo alone does not equal your brand! Branding is a blend of art and science and includes a number of very important factors.  Among the most important:

• Pitch (what you tell the world about you)
• Voice (purposeful and consistent word / prose styles)
• Visualization (consistency and differentiation)
• Expertise (leadership)
• Execution (quality of your product or service) 

Your brand should resonate through each and every touch point with clarity.  This includes your advertising, your direct marketing materials, your content programs as well as your presentations, product demos and one-on-one interactions with prospects and customers.  

2.  Emphasize Digital Content / Digital Distribution!
The traditional purchase decision journey is losing its relevance. Most customers no longer follow a linear path to purchase. In fact, Google Mobile Insights recently revealed that 76% of people who conduct a product search on their smartphone visit a business within 24 hrs & 28% of those searches result in a purchase!  ​

It's obvious that technology is influencing each stage of the journey.  Furthermore, the rise of social media coupled with mobile and targeted messaging has created new and very influential touch points. The decision journey is now a cyclical loop with customer brand advocates playing a substantial role in the buying process.

​The bottom line: digital largely influences and drives decision making these days!

3.  Target Messaging To EACH Member of The Buyer Team!
Take a step back and examine your company's definition of a customer. If you're focusing your full attention on the Decision Maker, you're likely costing yourself business.

A recent DemandGen survey reveals that nurturing the full Buyer Team relationship produces a 20% increase in overall sales conversions! This means that the person who signs the deal with your company generally pays attention to the thoughts and opinions of their peers, direct reports and outside influences before making their purchase decision. 

In effect, customer behavior is the aggregate of all buyer team interactions.  Audience segmentation and tailored messaging strengthen the overall buyer team relationship and generally improve conversion rates..  

4.  Don’t Underestimate The importance of Influencers!
As TapInfluence notes, Influencer Marketing is a strategy that "focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand's message to the larger market." Rather than marketing directly to prospects, you instead inspire, hire, and/or pay key Influencers to advocate on your behalf.

Influencer marketing generally pays substantial dividends on a relatively modest investment.  A recent Nielson / TapInfluence study indicates that Influencer marketing content delivers a Return on Investment (ROI) 11 times higher than traditional forms of digital marketing.  Additionally, Influencers generally create their own content and/or integrate your talking points into their delivery feeds.  This means that Influencers expand your organization's digital content capabilities and, to help with SEO (search engine optimization)  to a certain degree.

5.  Ensure That Campaign Tracking / Performance Measurement Is a Top Priority!
Demand Generation is an outcome-driven discipline. It’s about pipeline contribution, customer lifetime value and increasing your company's market share. If you're spending time or money to create content, we presume you want to spend both wisely. Therefore, be certain that you track and measure all of your related marketing and sales activities to a granular level.

An additional note on the subject of performance measurement: it's a myth that content programs cannot be quantified or effectively analyzed. Frankly, digital content offers a wealth of data when the programs are executed properly.  As a result, Demand Generation is an ideal pairing for predictive analytics. 

Remember that we now live in an era where Big Data is now accessible and actionable to a great degree.  That said, it takes the right tools and the right skill sets to organize, access and analyze the wealth of information that content programs create. 

​​The Fourth Pillar: Analytics
Although it doesn't directly appear on your balance sheet, your company's structured data is an extremely important and valuable business asset. To a large degree, your ability to access, analyze and interpret the data generated through all of your customer interactions drives the effectiveness of your Demand Generation campaigns.  As a recent report by DemandMetric / Radius demonstrates:

• Over 50% of companies with an ineffective Demand Generation process indicate their customer data richness is lacking.
• 47% of ineffective companies reported severe data accuracy issues.
• Marketers who have adopted predictive analytics are much more likely to also have an effective Demand Generation process.
• Over 90% percent of companies with effective Demand Generation processes are able to use their customer and prospect data to execute various marketing campaigns.

We recommend that you take stock of your data as early as possible! Missing, inaccurate or poor quality data impedes effective Demand Generation as well as the successful application of predictive analytics. You may wish to consider a full audit of your CRM applications, gathering and storage systems, personnel, as well as the depth, accuracy and quality of your structured data.   That way, you can quickly begin to harness your assets and pull together an action plan to address your deficiencies. 

A real opportunity exists in most industries to develop a sizable competitive advantage through structured data.  Believe it or not, the DemandMetric / Radius report suggests that only 44% of CMO’s understand predictive analytics well; and only 11% of those that do understand are actually implementing or using predictive analytics for Demand Generation activities.  Even more surprising, only 55% of companies that employ predictive modeling are using their data to find new revenue opportunities!

We'll state once again: Demand Generation programs are an ideal pairing for predictive analytics.  Even if you're a very lean organization, commercial solutions do exist to help integrate predictive analytics into the process.  If your current Demand Generation campaigns are yielding less than desired results, chances are there's room for improvement if you unlock the full power stored within your enterprise data systems. 


Conclusions
Effective Demand Generation is an enterprise-wide endeavor. It requires a firm foundation built upon each of the four strategic pillars we described above. Whether your company is new to the discipline or you're a seasoned player, you need to ensure that you're executing the fundamentals efficiently and effectively. Otherwise, you're likely to be steamrolled by your competition.

You may be wondering why we haven't listed technology (e.g. automation systems, adaptive control technology, CRM systems, etc.) as a fifth pillar. While the right technology certainly speeds delivery, improves effectiveness and can also lower costs, we'd argue that technology systems are complementary tools to each of the four pillars we've described above.  In our next article in this series, 12 Things to Consider Before You Automate Your Demand Generation Processes, we'll discuss the benefits of several Demand Generation technologies as well as  some serious technological pitfalls you'll want to avoid.       


​Author: Erik Gagnon - Managing Partner, Chi Rho Consulting
 
Note:  This is the second of a five-part series of Jumpstart Strategies articles examining the discipline of Demand Generation. Here are links to the other live articles in the series: 

• PART 1: Why Nearly 60% of Enterprise Demand Generation Programs Underperform