The role of any marketing specialist is to get as many leads as possible for business. But this is not possible without a well-thought-out demand generation strategy. Only when the company has the right demand generation strategy it can generate quality leads.
Reducing the role of the marketing function to just increasing brand visibility or brand awareness is severely limiting and leads to inefficiencies in the use of the allocated budgets. Against this background, we have approached the three main trends in demand generation, which will help companies understand the importance of this approach.
1. Live streaming
Video content has proved successful and appreciated on all social media platforms. Live streaming on most social media channels has rapidly gained popularity among brands that aim to increase interaction with their current or potential customers.
More and more companies are making live broadcasts, especially webinars and webcasts, to attract customers. A recent study shows that 32% of B2B marketing directors think webinars are essential tactics in content marketing, and 58% say they have already included live broadcasts in the content marketing plan.
In B2B marketing, live streaming and video content generally have the following uses:
- Demand education: Companies use videos as blog posts, engage in live video talks and organize webinars on topics of interest to increase engagement. The positive effect is the positioning as industry experts.
- Brand communication: Through multiple categories of video content (live or recorded), companies can highlight brand values, their mission in business and community, the way employees interact with customers, etc. These types of videos are appreciated to the extent that they give a true image of what's happening inside the company.
- Live events streaming: Companies choose to live stream the conferences or other events they organize. For example, you can live stream new products or services launches.
2. Content syndication and influencer marketing
Collaboration with the influencers and content syndication (eg through user-generated content campaigns) offers to the brands access to potential buyers. Content syndication is the process of sharing content on third-party sites to make it visible to a greater number of followers.
In Romania, 82% of the companies offer content on the services/products of the company to the followers, 66% give information about the company, and 58% provide content as part of the campaigns/promotions to generate direct or indirect sales. Job offers appear on social media of just 41% of companies.
Companies need to identify those publisher websites that are relevant to their field of activity on which to distribute their original content. It is also imperative to prepare a well-thought-out content repurposing process to provide additional exposure while preserving the relevance and quality of the content.
As more and more people begin to be seen as influencers in different niches, collaborating with them can help brands get to the target audience by softer approaches that generate minimal levels of resistance to the promoted messages. In this way, companies can increase their audience and generate demand and leads through very good conversion rates. Influencer marketing tactics drive quite quickly qualified leads as part of the advertising campaigns.
3. Retargeting and native advertising
Retargeting allows traders to gain brand awareness, increase visibility, and increase conversion chances. According to WordStream, conversion rates are rising with each retargeted ads posted to a new visitor of the online store or company site.
In 2019, more and more companies will have a dedicated budget for retargeting. It is a non-disruptive form of paid media advertising. According to a research conducted in Romania, 7 out of 10 Internet users do not feel that their browsing experience is hampered by native ads. Moreover, those who see retargeted ads are 70% more likely to revisit that online store or website. Thus, retargeting proves to be critical to advancing customers through the sales funnel.
