Foundations of demand generation

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What is the quickest method to terminate a long meeting? Begin talking about the procedure. The pupils dilate. Fingers are drawn to cellphones. The world slows down, and everyone feels a sudden desire to wrap things up.

Marketing process isn’t glamorous, but it’s the grease that allows high-performing marketing teams to get the most out of the technology and people they’ve invested in.

“The impact of missing or poor procedure may be tremendous,” says Naylor Gray, Director of Marketing at Frost & Sullivan. “For marketing to play a vital role, it needs to begin with procedure.”

This is why, earlier this month, we proudly launched the Demand Acceleration FrameworkTM, a methodology for scalable, repeatable demand creation created and deployed by Bulldog Solutions and our Growth Partnership Company partner, Frost & Sullivan. The Demand Acceleration Framework is not an unproven academic theory. It is also not a product in and of itself. Rather, it directs how we diagnose marketing program flaws, apply precise remedies to correct them, and track results to validate and improve. It has benefitted clients such as Intel Health, LexisNexis, and Experian, among others.

In this sequence of papers, I’ll lay out the major components of the Demand Acceleration Framework. This month, I’ll go through the fundamentals—without these, it’s nearly difficult to construct a long-lasting program. I’ll go through the practice areas that drive program performance next month. These pieces are intended to provide an overview, and I would also encourage you to listen to the on-demand version of our recent Webinar, A Roadmap to Demand Acceleration.

What happens next? Consider where your organization is strong and where it may benefit from additional strengthening. The Executive Benchmark Assessment, which is mentioned in the box to the right, might be of assistance.

Four Fundamentals

A successful demand generating program is founded on four pillars: strategy, technology, content, and data. Working on complicated pipeline acceleration initiatives with some of the world’s finest business brands, we’ve long recognized that without these characteristics, it’s nearly difficult to construct anything that will survive.

Strategy demands that you point your compass north. You will create program goals and describe an action plan to achieve those goals in this collection of activities. Setting baselines, identifying key performance indicators, outlining the stages of your demand pipeline, and ensuring you have the keys in place to manage change and align process are all part of it.

How can we recognize when there is a lack of strategy? When a marketer is unsure what a certain campaign is attempting to achieve; when the sales and marketing teams fundamentally disagree on what constitutes a good lead; and when no one knows how to determine whether a campaign was effective (high-fives in the corridor do not count).

All of the whiz bang activity required for efficient demand generation is enabled by technology. Data segmentation, lead scoring, dynamic messaging, lead routing, and lead nurturing are the stuff of marketing conferences. These need CRM (think Salesforce.com, SalesLogix) and marketing automation, such as Eloqua, our marketing automation partner. According to SiriusDecisions, 50% of B2B marketers will use marketing automation by 2015, and our own study confirms this.

Not only do you need the technology, but you also need to know how to use it. Which leads to…

Whereas technology is the engine, content is the fuel. If the purpose of demand generation is to attract, engage, and convert prospects, marketers must provide compelling information to support calls to action that drive individuals through those phases. All the technology in the world won’t help you if you don’t have something to say.

“Early adopters of marketing automation highlighted stronger content as a top goal they would improve if they were to oversee a rollout at another firm,” observed industry publication DemandGen Report.

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“Industry experts point out that new users of marketing automation frequently neglect the relevance of content in the success of their campaigns.”

Data is the information that allows you to get insight into your prospects, which is necessary for effective communication with them. Data also provides reporting, which aids in the validation of choices and drives development. As a result, data quality is crucial. Data must be standardized so that reports can be fed with comparable information; it must be enhanced to offer a more complete picture; and it must be sanitary.

What happens when organizations don’t do things right? House lists that perform poorly; difficulty to segment since there is no standard for designating an industry or a title; and a lot of money spent on buying leads that cannot be leveraged.

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