036 - How good is demand-gen marketing at actually creating demand?

1* How good is demand-gen marketing at actually creating demand?

I found this perspective on demand generation fascinating.

It’s easy to jump on the latest marketing graze, what’s harder is questioning the logic and thinking behind it.

Demand Generation, whilst not new, and seen a resurgence over the last 18 months, largely driven by the smart folks from Refine Labs.

But in his “rant”, Calin Blanc argued some valid and obvious points.

Is our job as B2B marketers really to create new demand, or is there enough pre-existing demand that our job is to simply nurture it?

”I know you already want this, but I know you’re not ready to buy yet, so my job is to stay in front of you until that day comes so that you don’t buy from my competitor.”

We can make our marketing as complicated as we like, but the crux of it really is, when someone is ready to buy, who are they thinking of?

Does creating educational content influence that, yes, of course, hugely, but as Calin quite rightly pointed out, it’s one of many factors influencing buyers to buy.

This is a nice healthy dose of marketing realism.

2* Start your content strategy with the quick wins

Content is hard.

It’s time-consuming, it encourages the most input and opinion, and don’t talk to me about approvals!

But yet, we often create content for what we think our customer wants, not necessarily what the buyer wants or needs.

Content should be built from customer insights, this is customer interviews, community posts, social comments and product reviews.

But sometimes it is simply about creating content for customers who already want to buy something right now.

What piece of content will get someone to choose you over your competitor?

When a buyer is ready to buy, they are researching the problem they have, the brands they know who can fix that problem, and they seek out their peers for advice on that problem.

You need content here that can influence this buyer and the final buying decision.

In marketing, sometimes you need easy wins and points on the board, start your content strategy with content that can help buyers buy.

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