AI and Demand Generation

One of the key trends that is revolutionizing demand generation is the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) into marketing strategies. AI-powered tools can analyze vast amounts of data and provide valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and buying patterns. By leveraging AI and ML, businesses can personalize their marketing efforts, deliver targeted messages, and optimize their campaigns for maximum impact.

Chatbots and Demand Generation

Another emerging trend in demand generation is the use of chatbots. Chatbots are computer programs that can simulate human conversation and interact with customers in real-time. They can answer frequently asked questions, provide product recommendations, and even assist with the purchasing process. By incorporating chatbots into their websites or messaging platforms, businesses can provide instant support and enhance the customer experience, ultimately driving demand and increasing conversions.

Voice Search Will Impact Demand Generation

Voice search is also becoming increasingly popular and is expected to have a significant impact on demand generation in the future. With the rise of virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, more and more people are using voice commands to search for information and make purchases. Businesses need to optimize their content and marketing strategies to cater to voice search queries, ensuring that their products or services are easily discoverable and accessible through voice-enabled devices.

Personalized Demand Generation

Furthermore, the future of demand generation will see a greater emphasis on personalized experiences. Customers today expect tailored messaging and offers that resonate with their specific needs and preferences. By leveraging data and analytics, businesses can segment their audience and deliver personalized content across various channels. Whether it’s through personalized emails, targeted social media ads, or customized landing pages, personalization will play a crucial role in driving demand and increasing conversions.

We discussed the need for personalization in-depth in another of our recent articles: The Role of Personalization in Demand Generation.

Embrace the Future of Demand Generation With Modern Marketing Partners

In conclusion, the future of demand generation is filled with exciting possibilities. By embracing emerging trends and technologies such as AI, chatbots, and voice search, businesses can gain a competitive edge and drive sustainable growth. Personalization will continue to be a key factor in demand generation, as customers increasingly expect tailored experiences. By staying ahead of the curve and leveraging these innovative approaches, businesses can navigate the ever-evolving world of demand generation and thrive in the digital age.

If you’re looking to take your demand generation efforts to the future, consider partnering with Modern Marketing Partners. With our expertise in cutting-edge demand generation strategies and technologies, we can help you create personalized and impactful campaigns that drive results.

Contact us today to discuss how we can collaborate and elevate your demand generation game.

Additional Demand Generation Resources

The Ultimate Guide to Demand Generation Strategies

The Role of Personalization in Demand Generation

How to Create a Multichannel Marketing Strategy that Works

The post The Future of Demand Generation: Emerging Trends and Technologies appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Defining Demand Generation

First and foremost, it’s important to understand what demand generation is and why it matters. Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and interest in your offerings among your target audience. It goes beyond traditional marketing tactics and focuses on building relationships and nurturing leads throughout the buyer’s journey. By implementing effective demand generation strategies, you can attract, engage, and convert potential customers into loyal advocates for your brand.

Demand Generation Strategies

One of the most powerful demand generation strategies is content marketing. By creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and attract a steady stream of qualified leads. From blog posts and ebooks to videos and podcasts, there are countless ways to leverage content to educate, entertain, and engage your target audience.

Another effective demand generation strategy is social media advertising. With billions of active users on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, social media provides a vast opportunity to reach and engage your target audience. By leveraging advanced targeting options and compelling ad creatives, you can drive traffic to your website, generate leads, and ultimately increase conversions.

Email campaigns are also a key component of demand generation. By building a segmented email list and sending personalized, relevant messages to your subscribers, you can nurture leads and guide them through the buyer’s journey. From welcome emails and educational newsletters to promotional offers and abandoned cart reminders, email marketing allows you to stay top-of-mind with your audience and drive them towards making a purchase.

Lead nurturing is another critical aspect of demand generation. Once you’ve captured a lead, it’s important to nurture them with relevant content and personalized experiences to keep them engaged and moving towards a purchase decision. By implementing lead scoring, automation, and personalized messaging, you can deliver the right message to the right person at the right time, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Optimize Your Website Before Starting Demand Generation

In addition to these strategies, demand generation also involves optimizing your website for search engines, leveraging influencer marketing, and utilizing data and analytics to measure and optimize your efforts. By continuously testing and refining your demand generation strategies, you can ensure that you’re maximizing your marketing ROI and driving sustainable growth for your business.

Let Modern Marketing Partners Assist in Your Demand Generation Strategy

To conclude, demand generation is a multifaceted approach to marketing that focuses on creating awareness, generating interest, and nurturing leads throughout the buyer’s journey. By implementing a combination of content marketing, social media advertising, email campaigns, lead nurturing, and other strategies, you can attract, engage, and convert potential customers, ultimately driving growth for your business. So, take the time to develop a comprehensive demand generation strategy and watch your marketing results soar.

Contact us today to discuss how our demand generation services can help your business thrive.

Additional Demand Generation Resources

The Role of Personalization in Demand Generation

25 Lead Generation Types and Tips

The post The Ultimate Guide to Demand Generation Strategies appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

This is where personalization comes into play. Personalization refers to tailoring your messaging and offers to individual prospects based on their unique preferences, behaviors, and needs. It goes beyond simply addressing someone by their first name in an email; it involves delivering relevant and timely content that resonates with each prospect on a deeper level.

Benefits of Personalization in Demand Generation

One of the key benefits of personalization in demand generation is its ability to significantly impact your marketing results. By understanding your prospects’ pain points, motivations, and preferences, you can create highly targeted campaigns that speak directly to their needs. This not only increases the likelihood of capturing their attention but also enhances their overall experience with your brand.

Implementing personalization at scale can seem like a daunting task, but with the right strategies and tools, it is entirely achievable. One best practice is to leverage data and analytics to gain insights into your prospects’ behaviors and preferences. By tracking their interactions with your website, emails, and other marketing touchpoints, you can gather valuable information that can inform your personalization efforts.

Another effective strategy is to segment your audience based on specific criteria such as industry, job title, or purchase history. This allows you to create tailored messaging and offers for each segment, increasing the relevance and effectiveness of your campaigns. Additionally, you can use marketing automation platforms to automate the delivery of personalized content, ensuring that each prospect receives the right message at the right time.

Personalized Demand Gen in Action

To illustrate the power of personalization in demand generation, let’s look at a real-life example. We work with many ERP software providers that require demand generation and vertical marketing services. For one such company, we implemented a personalized email campaign targeting their top prospects. Instead of sending generic emails to their entire database, they created customized messages based on each prospect’s industry, pain points, and stage in the buying journey.

The results were remarkable. The personalized emails generated a 30% increase in open rates and a 20% increase in click-through rates compared to their previous non-personalized campaigns. Furthermore, the conversion rate from leads to customers doubled, resulting in a significant boost in revenue.

Modern Marketing Partners Can Help You Embrace the Power of Personalization

In conclusion, personalization plays a crucial role in demand generation by enabling you to deliver targeted and relevant content to your prospects. By tailoring your messaging and offers to individual preferences, you can capture their attention, enhance their experience, and ultimately drive demand and increase conversions.

So, if you want to stay ahead in today’s competitive market, it’s time to embrace the power of personalization in your demand generation efforts and Modern Marketing Partners can help!

Contact us to discuss our demand generation services or personalization at scale. You won’t be disappointed.

Additional Demand Generation Resources

The Ultimate Guide to Demand Generation Strategies

25 Lead Generation Types and Tips

The post The Role of Personalization in Demand Generation appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

I can buy from the brand’s physical store, request a return on Facebook, and coordinate the refund with the CS team by email. Multichannel consumption is what the customer wants, and multichannel marketing is how businesses should fulfill these wants.

Let’s look at how you can create a multichannel marketing strategy that works.

Essential elements of multichannel marketing

The goal of multi-channel marketing is to stay connected with customers as they surf across different channels during the day. For online channels, you need visibility across search engines, social networks, email, and blogs, to name a few. Offline channels need your presence through physical stores, print, TV, and radio campaigns. 

However, presence alone won’t be sufficient. You will need to address customer needs across different areas to engage and convert your audience. The way you manage these areas becomes vital as you push towards a multichannel presence. Your online properties are both marketing and sales channels, and keeping track of visitor traffic is just as important as tracking your sales figures. 

1. Brand Reach: The more channels you’re present on, the greater the visibility of your brand. Greater visibility helps in creating brand awareness. Your range of channels should give you maximum visibility and awareness within your audience. 
2. Message: The success of your multi-channel marketing efforts depends on how relevant your message is to your audience and how well it resonates with your target customer. 
3. Consistency: Another critical aspect of multi-channel marketing is giving the customer similar messaging across channels to ensure a consistent brand experience. 
4. Engagement: If your content focuses solely on selling, your audience will quickly lose interest in your brand. Social media, in particular, requires a high level of engagement to build an audience. 

The four cornerstones of multichannel marketing are building awareness, delivering consistent messaging, providing a seamless experience, and building engagement with your audience. 

1. Identify your customers

Start by identifying your customers and creating buyer personas for each segment of your audience. For example, a fitness brand catering to customers ranging from Gen Z to the baby boomers will need different approaches as its customers have a wide variety of needs. 

Hence, segment the broad audience into smaller, more cohesive segments—Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X—and create separate personas for each segment. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer’s demographic and behavioral characteristics. Look at the example shown below: 

Source

Alex’s buyer persona represents older millennials and tells us about their demographic details like their income levels, education level, and income levels. It also tells us about their interests and behavioral patterns. The customer persona tells us that customers like Alex are into fitness and their purchase decisions are value-driven by discounts and sales. 

A buyer persona is also helpful while using sales funnel tools to track the buyer’s journey. It can help you figure out the content that speaks to the customer at each stage of the funnel. 

The more details you pack into your persona, the more you can focus your marketing message to try and trigger a purchase with Alex. Ideally, you will need to tap into multiple resources to build the personas. These could range from customer focus groups, your CRM data, published industry data, and Google Analytics of your online store. 

2. Select the channels used by your audience

Multichannel marketing doesn’t imply that you need to be present on every conceivable channel. Just focus on the ones your customers use, as highlighted in the personas. 

If you target the late boomers active on social media, you need to be present on Facebook rather than Instagram. 

Of course, you would need to use Instagram for millennials and the GenZ as they tend to be active and engaged on this platform. Just make sure you gain more followers on Instagram so you can reach more people. 

The channels you use will also change as you grow and acquire new customers. A digital store is a must-have today, even if the bulk of your sales come from physical stores. Evaluate if you want online sales to be exclusive to your brand store or if you need to list yourself on marketplace platforms like Amazon as well. 

3. Create engaging content and a seamless experience

To effectively engage customers and boost sales through your digital channels, your eCommerce or SaaS content should be tailored to suit each customer segment while maintaining a distinct style for each platform. The ultimate goal of your content strategy should be to foster a unified brand identity that provides a seamless experience to customers across all touchpoints.

Fashion retailer, Forever 21 recently ran a Black History Month campaign across all its marketing channels. Here’s a look at their website:

The messaging extended to the physical stores for a seamless and cohesive message.

Source

Your messaging should be consistent across all channels. However, that does not mean that your content should be the same for each channel. A channel like Instagram would require more visual content, while your Facebook page would allow for a combination of visual and text-based content. Tailor your content for each channel.However, your content cannot afford to focus heavily on sales. 

Ensure you respond to every comment, both positive and negative. By creating non-sales content and responding to comments, you engage with your customers and involve them in the conversation, resulting in higher sales.

4. Invest in retargeting

Let’s say a customer checks one of your products and maybe even adds it to the cart before bouncing away. Retargeting that customer enables you to show the same product to them on multiple other platforms they browse. Retargeting follows your customer and enables you to engage them with unique messaging, like offering them a special purchase discount.

We live in a customer-first world, and if the customer surfs and consumes through multiple channels, we also need to service the customer through multiple channels. Retargeting allows you to keep your brand at the top of the customer’s mind, regardless of the channel they’re currently using.

5. Bring your data to one platform

For best results on your multichannel marketing strategy, you need to track all your campaigns. That means bringing all your campaigns to one platform so that you can generate and interpret analytic results. 

Tools such as Improvado and Zoho can help you here. 

Improvado has dashboard templates you can use if you have no time to create one. The tool enables you to track data across social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn and across other marketing channels. All in all, the platform has over 500 integrations. It also automates reporting, and can show you data at many granular dimensions, from the campaign level to the ad and keyword levels.

With Zoho, you can build your own dashboard with a drag-and-drop editor. You can also choose the best visualization type for your reports. Choose among pie charts, maps, and pivot tables to visualize your data.

Dashboards don’t just keep you from manually switching between channels. They can also give you analytics you can use to make informed marketing decisions. 

Wrapping Up

Consumer consumption today is a mix of physical and digital interactions. Multichannel marketing is catching them wherever they may happen to be. However, just a brand presence on a channel is not sufficient. Multichannel marketing is all identifying, segmenting, and understanding the audience as it is about engaging and converting the segments. 

The success of multichannel marketing depends on your ability to deliver personalized messages to diverse audiences on different channels. You also need to maintain your brand voice and promoting your products. That is how granular and refined multi or omnichannel marketing has become. 

Use the five tips discussed above to create a multichannel marketing strategy that works.

Good luck!

The post How to Create a Multichannel Marketing Strategy that Works appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

So what is lead generation, and how can you improve or maximize lead generation?

Great questions! To answer, Modern Marketing Partners (MMP) will share a Definition of Lead Generation, along with some insight into the differences between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Then, per the title, MMP will provide a list of 25 Lead Generation Types, along with corresponding tips that you can apply to achieve maximum lead generation effectiveness.

Lead Generation Definition

Fundamentally, Lead Generation is defined as the action or process of identifying and cultivating prospective customers (prospects) for a business’s products or services. There are some related terms including Demand Generation and Customer Acquisition that may have some differences, but for now lets drill deeper into two key Lead Generation sub-categories:  Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).   

Marketing Qualified Leads or MQLs are defined as individual contacts that can be identified, and that fit a profile or persona of the ideal prospect. For B2B scenarios, MQLs might be industry, company size (revenue or employees), title or department, and geographic location. For B2C scenarios, MQLs might be demographic or psychographic profiles or personas (age, gender, interests, geographic, etc.) 

In contrast, Sales Qualified Leads or SQLs or Opportunities begin as MQLs and are converted to SQLs with some type or level of qualification. A popular sales qualification is BANT, an acronym for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing. Intuitively, BANT qualification requires a conversation, interview, or meetings with the “MQL” (prospect) to determine SQL status.

SQLs of course are closer to becoming customers, and are more valuable than MQLs. Typically, marketers identify and measure conversion rates of MQLs to SQLs, and ultimately, SQL conversions to sales or closed deals. For more information on conversion rate, check our our Lead Conversion Rates blog here. Marketing Automation tools or software measure conversion rates and/or “score” leads based on actions or qualifications, which “trigger” different communications, e.g. nurture email campaigns. 

So without further ado, following are 25 Lead Generation Types and Tips! (listed from most basic to advanced)

25 Lead Generation Types and Tips

1. Inbound telephone calls: make your telephone number prominent in website header and footer; use a toll-free number with memorable word references (e.g. 800-Law-Easy)
2. Outbound Telemarketing: no question telemarketing might be less effective than before; but opportunities are plentiful including calling lost or dormant customers, identifying and calling other customer locations, identifying and calling multiple decision-makers at a particular company (dialing for dollars)
3. LinkedIn Connections: connecting with relevant contacts on LinkedIn is an easy way to start a conversation; once connected you can obtain the contacts email address from their profile’s Contact Info
4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator: for a modest monthly fee, upgrade your free LinkedIn profile to Sales Navigator, a tool that allows more robust searches, list exports, and other lead generation features
5. LinkedIn Groups: join/start/manage a specialized LinkedIn Group to access group member contact info; participate in Group discussions with offers and links
6. Website Contact Information: make Contact information (telephone, email, Contact page) prominent including website header and footer
7. Website Registration Forms: use website forms liberally, balance required information fields and optional information fields to minimize form abandonment, use email privacy statements and Captcha, integrate with CRM systems when applicable
8. Website Gated Content: offer valuable, educational resources with the aforementioned registration forms in front of including guides, white papers, how-to-manuals, e-books, podcasts, etc. 
9. Website Resources Page: offer Resources in primary navigation with videos, guides, white papers, training tools with the aforementioned registration forms
10. Use Calls-To-Action (CTAs): use multiple offers or calls-to-action throughout your website, emails, blogs, and related assets; CTA examples include email registrations, educational content, event registrations, and promotional offers
11. Publish Case Studies: case studies are a magnet for prospects, so apply liberally; we recommend not gating case studies, with other calls-to-action to capture MQLs
12. Publish a Study: conduct a survey or study, and create a professional report that can be gated and added to the aforementioned Resources page, offered as a download, and promoted across channels; data-mine survey respondents for our next tactic
13. Email Lists:  in the USA email is still a great lead generation tactic, so internally build email lists via inbound calls, website registrations, the aforementioned LinkedIn options, along with ongoing research and data-mining; externally use databases like Hoovers and D&B, identify list brokers, member associations, trade show lists; use www.emailverifier.com to verify email addresses
14. Email Campaign Best Practices: most brands target multiple profiles or personas, likewise emails should target specific profiles (one-size-does-not-fit-all); next personalize emails with the recipient’s and/or company name; optimize subject lines via short, provocative “hooks”, with a strong sense of urgency, e.g. Register Today; (experiment with a free tool:  www.subjectline.com); email design should include 1-3 topics with brief summaries and “Read More” links or buttons, along with specific CTAs with buttons that go to your website for tracking purposes; resend emails to non-opens with a slightly different subject line
15. Email Follow-Up:  all email service providers (ESPs), Marketing Automation or CRM systems have great email campaign metrics including Opens and Click-Thru reports; MMP recommends telephoning email recipients that had multiple opens or click-thrus as a fast way to identifying SQLs
16. Webcasts: produce a webcast on an interesting subject; get a high-profile customer to be a panelist to attract other customers; promote via PR, blog, social, even PPC; record the webcast to use as on-demand video; data-mine webcast registrants to add to email lists or telemarketing
17. Trade Show Contest: when attending or exhibiting at a live event or trade show, use contests to gather sales leads; something as simple as a fishbowl business card drop to receive a premium or “Tchotchke”; or games (putting contest, roulette wheel, etc.) to participate in a daily drawing for something valuable (drones are big now)
18. Referral program: establish a referral program with new or top customers, business partners, even employees; offer incentives for referrals including gift cards or commissions, if applicable
19. Website Optimization (WO): make sure your website is mobile/responsive, secure (SSL/HTTPS), with “trust” features including Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, Cookies Policy, ad GDPR and trust certifications, if applicable
20. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): lead generation is a fraction of website traffic, and traffic is influenced by SEO (and many other tactics); so perfect SEO with available and mostly free tools including the MMP SEO Guide, Google My Business and other Local Citations 
21. Chatbots or Live Chat: we highly recommend adding to all websites, assign staff to follow-up questions quickly, or employ AI answers; check out Live Chat comparisons
22. IP tracking: there are several solutions that can identify the high percentage of anonymous visitors to your website via thru identification of company IP addresses, and corresponding contact information for key titles or roles; check out Resources below for more information on IP Tracking
23. Offer a Free Tool: depending on your business, offer a Free Assessment, a Cost Calculator, or a report to qualified prospects in exchange for registration information; for example, check out our tool: MMP Free Website Audit
24. Paid Advertising: digital advertising or paid search includes pay-per-click (PPC) including Google AdWords, Remarketing, and display advertising; Social Media Advertising includes Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, and more
25. Syndicated Content: many industries have content syndicators that will publish your guide, ebook, blog, etc., for a fee or even free; payers then receive corresponding registrations or sales leads; see Relevant Resources below for a list of content syndication platforms

Lead Generation Should be a Primary Objective of All Marketing Efforts

No question these 25 Lead Generation Types are just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the Resources below for more. If you have Lead Generation Type or Tip, please share via the Comment tool below.

In the end, Lead Generation is the primary objective of marketing, and ultimately supports sales, contracts, and new customer acquisition. Lead Generation is also the bridge between marketing and sales. And is often accompanied by other tools like Customer Relationship management (CRM) software, Marketing Automation software, or Lead Management software. 

You are likely implementing many of these Lead Generation tactics. Consider adding some other tactics, and don’t forget to measure and report MQLs, SQLs, and the golden ring, sales conversions.  

Relevant Lead Generation Resources 

61 B2B Lead Generation Strategies and Tactics for 2019

Lead Conversion Rates for Software

16 Content Syndication Networks and Platforms That You Need to Know in 2018

Align Marketing and Sales Initiatives to Drive Success

Lead Generation Through Landing Page Development

IP Lead Tracking – Just the Facts

The post 25 Lead Generation Types and Tips appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.