Demand generation
Demand generation is the focus of targeted marketing programs to drive awareness and interest in a company's products and/or services. Commonly used in business-to-business, business-to-government, or longer business-to-consumer sales cycles, demand generation involves multiple areas of marketing and is really the marriage of marketing programs coupled with a structured sales process.
There are multiple components of a stepped demand generation process that vary based on the size and complexity of a sale. These components include, among other things: building awareness, positioning relevance, supporting validation and mitigating customer evaluation.
The demand generation function in most businesses resides as part of the marketing organization. Demand Generation is a holistic approach to marketing and sales cohesion within the company. Building awareness is a vital component in the demand generation process. Building awareness often takes a continued effort and involves multiple facets of marketing.
Advanced demand generation programs typically rely on some form of proactive Lead Generation activities supported by more traditional market programs and processes. This is because demand generation programs tend to assume that prospective customers are aware that they have a need or problem, and are attempting to solve it when they search for solutions. If the prospect is unaware (consciously or, at least, subconsciously) that they have the problem, then demand generation may not be effective - thus the need for adjunct lead generation activities.
The second key area of focus for a marketer focused on demand generation is ensuring that when a prospect decides to seek a vendor to provide a solution in a given solution category, they discover the vendor that the marketer serves. This is again accomplished with a variety of techniques and tools, often overlapping with the tools used for creating awareness of the category, but with a different emphasis.
Again, in this phase of the demand generation process, many approaches and tools are used and this list is only a selection of the more common approaches.
Often confused with demand generation is the lead process itself. Converting demand into sales is a totally separate task. Many companies, however, will call themselves demand generation organizations when they are really lead generating.
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