Not all nurtured leads are always going to be sales ready. But if they aren’t ready to buy now, that doesn’t mean that they won’t ever buy. Sales can return those leads back to marketing for further nurturing. Marketing can re-engage those leads, and try to again reach that benchmark level of interaction to return them back to sales for further conversations.

3 parts to demand generation programs

There are three main parts to successful demand generation programs: the players, the methods, and the goals.

• The players

Demand gen should be a collaborative activity between your company’s sales and marketing teams. Some of the players you can expect to see have job titles such as demand gen marketer, marketing operations, or marketing technologist. On the sales side typical titles include sales operations or sales managers. “The sales people play a key role in helping to define these processes and maintain an open line of communication with the marketing team members, which really makes a huge difference,” Rosin said.

• The methods

Demand generation uses coordinating multi-tiered marketing activities to identify and engage buyers through targeted inbound and outbound activities. There are seven key tactics or methods of demand generation: web insights and inbound marketing, content marketing, social media engagement, lead nurturing, lead scoring, measuring and optimization, and sales and marketing alignment. We’ll dive deeper into each of these methods in a bit.

Your goal should be to have a well-oiled demand generation process that improves lead quality, accelerates the buying cycle, and improves conversion rates from your initial inquiries to qualified opportunities.

“The most important goal, however, is to generate higher revenue from your marketing source leads,” said Janelle Johnson, Act-On’s Senior Director for Global Segment Marketing. “What it all boils down to is quality, not quantity.”

Pumping your pipeline full of high volume with low quality leads, isn’t gonna help your company, especially in the long run. And it can definitely deteriorate your relationship with your sales team. You really have to focus your time and energy on generating those high quality leads that will convert in order to truly achieve demand generation success.

3 challenges for today’s marketer

Generating those high quality leads is made tougher by three challenges for today’s marketer: empowered buyers, high expectations, and pressure to perform.

• Empowered buyers

Consumers are now in the driver’s seat in their buying journey. In fact, 40 percent of buyers wait longer than they did in the past to initiate contact with a vendor, and buyers typically get 60 percent through the buying journey before they engage with a salesperson. Today’s marketers have to find a way to position their companies as trusted advisors to buyers as they move along their journey. With 58 percent of buyers spending more time researching their options than they did in the past, it’s imperative that you engage with your buyers by building relationships and trust. Because if you don’t, you better believe that your competitors will. Read about proven strategies, in this free eBook: 10 Ways to Nurture the Buyer’s Journey.

• Higher expectations

With so much access to information and choices, buyers expect more from the companies with whom they interact. Today’s buyers live in an always-on world, filled with instantly available, highly personalized apps, messages, offers, and services. That’s pretty incredible, but it also challenges us as marketers to anticipate the needs of our consumers and deliver thoughtful content related to their needs. Cookie-cutter marketing content and one-size-fits all communication does not work in this new environment. Check out this infographic to see the new buyer’s funnel.

• Pressure to perform

With all the technology available at our fingertips, we can now tie most of our marketing efforts to revenue. It’s becoming more and more common for marketing to have a revenue goal, just like sales. A well-planned demand gen process can address these challenges by offering an efficient and reliable process to identify and engage these empowered buyers and turn quality leads into revenue that’s measured.

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