Best PracticesSMB Marketing

What Are the Best Demand Generation Strategies for Startups?

Grasping the optimal demand generation strategies for startups is essential for novel enterprises. The challenge often facing startups is one of creating not just visibility but also interest in their nascent products. Left without a coherent strategy, they could easily find themselves wallowing in the obscurity of a ‘me too’ product that engenders no excitement or momentum. This post will explore the optimal demand generation strategies that can help the new largely untried and untested startups we assist gain the leads they need to drive top-line growth.

Understanding Demand Generation

Generating demand for a company’s products or services is the essence of what a marketing department does. Demand generation is more than just lead generation, which has a very specific connotation and is often confused with what sales does. Lead generation is not the end goal that demand generation should be trying to achieve—and in fact, if it is, then demand generation isn’t really what it is supposed to be. The company exists to do more than just convert leads, and so the marketing department must act in a way that creates not just interest but also awareness on the part of the potential customer.

Furthermore, driving effective demand can enhance customer engagement and solidify credibility. Demand Metric surveyed the marketplace and found that organizations with demand generation strategies in place enjoyed a 50% bump in qualified leads. So, if you’re a startup, this is the best place to put your efforts to build a customer base that can somehow be characterized as sustainable.

What Are the Best Demand Generation Strategies for Startups?

The next set of strategies represents some of the very best that startups can employ to amplify their demand generation work. If you are a founder or marketer at an early-stage company, the ideas that follow can and should inform your approach to demand generation. As with any set of strategies, not every one of them will be a perfect fit for your company, but the following certainly contain a wealth of good ideas and practices from which to draw.

Content Marketing: Offering valuable content can draw in possible customers. Startups should write articles, books, and infographics to enlighten them. In the words of the Content Marketing Institute, the companies that use this form of marketing convert at 6 times the rate of those that don’t.
Social Media Marketing: Using platforms, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, allows startups to engage in direct conversations with their audiences. For instance, Buffer, a social media management startup, saw its blog traffic increase by 200% after it augmented its social media presence.
Email Campaigns: Email remains a powerful tool. Startups can send newsletters, promotional offers, and personalized messages to maintain interest and engagement. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing has an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent.

Optimizing content for search engines makes it more likely for that content to be seen. Startups should do these two things: find out which keywords are relevant to their business and use those keywords in their content, and get other, authoritative websites to link to them. Those two things, mostly, will make a startup’s content more visible.

Additionally, startups may take advantage of retargeting advertisements to target visitors who did not convert at their initial visit. This second chance can greatly boost conversion rates.

The Role of Technology in Demand Generation

Demand generation strategies depend on technology. Startups need tools, such as HubSpot or Marketo, to help with the automation of marketing campaigns. A study from Ascend2 indicates that 63% of marketers have trouble with traffic and lead generation. Startups can use tech to help with that. Automate the processes and place more emphasis on the strategy. Dwell less on the tech but on the tactics.

In addition, advanced analytics allow startups to keep tabs on how well they’re doing and to fine-tune their campaigns. A prime example is Google Analytics, which tells you all sorts of things about what your users are doing and, by extension, not doing. You can also bet that whatever this tool tells you, it doesn’t tell you half as much as it could or should. Now, here’s the other shoe: startups have to know how to use this and other analytics tools sufficiently and effectively.

Building Relationships Through Personalization

The effective demand generation of a startup hinges on a critical element: personalization. Beyond the basic dividing line of business and consumer, startups should segment their audiences by the twin variables of interest and behavior. Epsilon points out that 80% of consumers are much more likely to make a purchase when enticed with experiences tailored to their particular selves.

Employing customer data lets young companies personalize communications and proposals, enhancing involvement. For the past couple of decades, the art and science of using data have actually been American dominated. Turns out, trying to understand the individual customer is more likely to yield success than trying to make a group of customers happy.

Measuring Success and Iterating Strategies

Ultimately, recording the achievements attained with the various demand generation stratagems is critical. Founders of new companies should pay close attention to vital performance indicators (VPIs) that signify a successful demand generation campaign. Some might even say these are the most important indicators to watch. Here are a few of the more commonly cited ones.

Generated leads
Conversion rates
Web traffic
Engagement statistics

Moreover, the use of A/B testing can assist startups in honing their methods. They can determine what is most effective and modify their tactics in line with that information by purposefully and continuously dissecting data. HubSpot has reported that the firms dissecting data in this manner experience growth rates that are 15 percent higher than their non-dissecting counterparts.

Conclusion: Taking Action on Demand Generation

To sum up, grasping what constitutes the optimal demand generation strategies for startups is crucial for their burgeoning. Startups can craft potent demand generation schemata by placing concentrated emphasis on content marketing, an effulgent presence across the various platforms of the social media landscape, and the manifold opportunities afforded by the art and science of personalization. They can, of course, also underpin these stratagems with a technology layer that not only makes the crafting of schemata and their subsequent execution easier but also affords better sightlines to the results being achieved.