your own business

1. How to Create and Optimize Your Own
marketing link >https://oke.io/fPjI
A demand generation funnel is a template that prospective customers will follow
as they go through the different stages of their journey. The purpose of each
stage of this funnel is to provide potential buyers with the information and
experiences they need to move forward and make a purchase.
A demand generation funnel is a template that prospective customers will follow as they go
through the different stages of their journey. The purpose of each stage of this funnel is to
provide potential buyers with the information and experiences they need to move forward
and make a purchase.
It’s important to adopt the right demand generation strategy to target the right prospective
customers, achieve conversion rates for your leads, and generate revenue.
What Is Demand Generation?
It refers to the different activities you engage in to generate interest in the products and
services you offer. It’s a holistic marketing strategy since you’re working with multiple
channels for lead gen and focusing on the entire customer lifecycle.

2. There are different frameworks marketers can use to map the customer journey, such as
the sales or map. With demand generation campaigns, you’re focusing on the activities that
generate awareness for what you offer and create a need for this product or service.
Demand Generation Vs. Lead
Generation: Comparison
The terms demand generation and lead generation are different. You might come across
content that uses these two concepts interchangeably. However, there are some significant
differences to consider when comparing demand generation vs lead generation:
● With a demand generation strategy, you’re focusing on activities that educate
your audience about your products or services. Your goal is to show how your
product or service can solve a pain point to create awareness and generate
demand.
● Lead generation takes a different approach. A lead generation strategy is usually
about targeting a specific profile among your prospects. Marketers often use lead
generation to focus on audience segments that have a higher conversion rate or
on qualified leads that are likely to spend more.
Demand Generation Vs. Lead Generation: Metrics
Demand generation and lead generation are two methods that rely on data. However, you’ll
need to focus on different metrics to develop demand generation marketing efforts or build a
lead generation program.
You’ll need to track metrics tied to content performance. Impressions, clicks, click-through
rates, and conversion rates are critical for your demand generation program.
different channels can also give you an idea of how effective your different strategies are.

3. You’ll also need qualitative data for your demand strategy since customer experience is a
critical aspect of this approach. You can, for instance, use surveys to track your customer
satisfaction index over time.
Key performance indicators like your cost-per-lead, customer acquisition cost per single
paying customer, or your overall customer lifetime value are critical for both approaches.
Combining Demand Generation and Lead Generation
While the philosophy is different, there are some strategies and metrics you can use for
demand generation and lead generation.
A siloed approach can ultimately hurt your marketing efforts, which is why it’s best to
combine demand generation and lead generation for a better marketing strategy.
Designing Your Demand Generation
Funnel
There is no one-size-fits-all in marketing. You need to look at what makes your audience
and your business unique to develop a demand generation campaign that makes sense for
your sales process.
Step One: Get to Know Your Audience
Like any data-driven marketing program, a demand generation funnel requires a solid
foundation with quality data.
Market Research
Market research is a great place to get started. Skipping this step can result in your
marketing or sales team operating on assumptions that turn out to be incorrect or biased.

4. Conducting market research through interviews, and analytics will help you get to know your
audience better. Your sales and customer service representatives should also have some
useful insights to share about who your typical customer is. You can also use this
information to improve your description of a qualified lead and focus on high-quality leads.
Here are some questions to focus on during the market research stage:
● What are the demographics of the typical customer? Can you identify two or
more demographic profiles?
● What are the main pain points they are experiencing? What are their goals for
the purchase?
● Is the buyer making decisions by themselves? It’s important to consider the other
people involved in the purchase decision, especially if you’re offering B2B
products or services.
● How much research goes into a typical purchase? What level of confidence do
prospects need to reach before they feel comfortable with making a purchase
decision?
● Do prospects have a preferred channel for consuming content? Would they
rather read an article or watch a video? Are they researching products on
desktop or mobile?
● Who do your prospects trust? Are they likely to listen to a brand, or do they want
recommendations from industry experts? What is the typical profile of the
influencers they trust?
●
Persona Development and Buyer Journey Alignment
Once you know more about your audience, you can start developing persona A persona is
an archetype that represents your audience or one of your audience segments.
Look for patterns and common data points in your market research to identify your main
audience segments. The personas you create should reflect the main characteristics, goals,
and pain points that the members of an audience segment are likely to share.

5. Personas are a useful tool because they help you relate to your audience. You can also
create a typical buyer’s journey map for each persona since there might be similarities and
differences in how prospects consume content and move along the demand generation
funnel.
Cost Per Acquisition
Now is also a good time to calculate your average cost-per-acquisition. You can divide your
total marketing spend by the number of new customers you got over a certain period.
Your cost-per-acquisition will give you an idea of how effective your current marketing
efforts are. It’s a benchmark you can use to set goals for your demand generation
campaigns.
You can refine this important metric by calculating your CPA for the different channels you
use. It’s a good way to identify the channels that seem to work best.
Customer Lifetime Value
Another metric you should calculate is your average customer lifetime value. This number
reflects the total value of a customer from the moment of their first purchase to the moment
they stop being a customer.
Because retention tends to cost a lot less than acquisition, it’s important to track this metric
and implement strategies that will make customers want to remain loyal to your brand.
You can also connect your findings regarding CLV to the insights you were able to obtain
from doing market research to figure out which prospects are likely to have a higher CLV or
which strategies you can implement during the early awareness stages to boost the overall
CLV of a new customer.
Step Two: Map the Customer Journey

6. Now that you know more about your audience, you can start building a framework that
sums up their different activities and experiences throughout the nurturing process.
Why Should Demand Funnels Be Structured?
Structuring your demand funnel into different stages can seem like an oversimplification.
However, it’s a model that helps your sales and marketing team visualize the progression
from an early awareness stage to the first purchase.
There are different models you can use for structuring your demand gen funnel:
● If you want a simple framework, you can work with three main stages, namely
awareness, consideration, and decision.
● For longer journeys, it makes more sense to adopt a more complex model with
more stages. You can, for instance, label your different stages of awareness,
interest, consideration, purchase, post-purchase, and re-purchase.
● If you want to take a customer-centric approach and focus on experiences, a
good model to use would be a map with four stages, including discovery,
engagement, conversion, and reward.
Marketing Cycle Length
The average marketing cycle length is an important consideration when mapping out the
buyer journey.
While some products are impulse buys and have a short cycle length, other purchases
require a much longer sales cycle length because of the complexity of the decision process.
Having your sales team track the length of your typical marketing cycle can give you a
better idea of the number of stages prospects go through.

7. You can also look for strategies to shorten this cycle or use your findings to identify the
prospects who are getting near the end of the cycle and haven’t made a purchase yet. You
can use re-engagement strategies for these users.
Create Your Map
There are a few ways of representing the buyer’s journey map. Here are some models for
mapping out lead gen, demand gen, and how you generate interest:
● A funnel template makes sense if you want to focus on a demand generation
strategy since this model illustrates how the size of the lead pool gets smaller
with each new stage.
● A linear map can be useful to understand the progression from one stage to
another and focus on the strategies and experiences that result in a conversion
to the next stage.
● For a customer-centric approach, think about creating an empathy map that
shows the key moments where the customer connects with the brand on an
emotional level to highlight the most important lead magnet for each stage.
● A chart can be a good way to convey more information for your map. You can
map out your different stages and list the key goals, pain points, contact points,
content pieces, and influencers for each stage.
Demand Generation Funnel Progression and Conversion Rate
If you decide to develop a demand generation process, a funnel is the best way to represent
your sales processes.
You would have the awareness or discovery stage at the top of the funnel. This stage
represents the initial contact with your brand. Your main goal is to create awareness for
your brand and get prospects to recognize it at this stage.
As the funnel gets narrower, prospects move to an early research or engagement stage.
They start consuming content or connecting with your brand on social media or via another

8. lead magnet. Generating interest for your brand, products, or services is important so you
can begin educating your audience.
The next stage of the funnel gets even narrower as you focus on educating your audience
to generate demand. The prospects who are still in the funnel are now in the research
stage.
You can weed out some of the prospects at this stage and focus on sales accepted leads.
The focus is on delivering quality content and memorable experiences to deepen their
connection to your brand while sharing the information they need to make a purchase
decision.
At the bottom of the funnel, you’ll find the sales or decision stage. This last step represents
a purchase.
However, the journey doesn’t end there. You need to deliver an outstanding experience
during the sale, but you also need to keep engaging the customers acquired to achieve
several goals, including repeat sales, higher customer lifetime value, and word-of-mouth
marketing.
The funnel framework illustrates how a certain percentage of your audience moves on to
the next stage of their journey thanks to your demand generation efforts.
This percentage is your conversion rate. It’s important to track your conversion rate from
one stage to the next and implement strategies to improve your sales cycle, including
focusing on leads that are more likely to become paying customers, delivering high-quality
content, and engaging the right audience through memorable experiences.
Demand Generation Strategies That
Work

9. marketing link >https://oke.io/fPjI
Now that you have a detailed map for your demand generation funnel, you can work on
identifying the different strategies you can use to get more paying customers through lead
gen.
Brand Awareness
During the early stages of the sales cycle, your focus should be on brand awareness. You
need a strong branding strategy so that prospects will remember and recognize your brand.
Your branding strategy can include web design, a unique color scheme, print marketing,
and the creation of a voice that is unique and engaging.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing strategies will help you capture web traffic from users who are
experiencing a specific pain point. There are many inbound marketing campaigns to explore
for your demand gen strategy:
● Your SEO efforts will help you get clicks from users who are researching topics
related to what you offer. Start optimizing your content with a free tool like
Google Analytics. You can get a free report with useful SEO insights.
● You can also use an inbound marketing strategy like keyword research to
uncover new trends and develop marketing materials aligned with what your
target audience is researching.
● Paid advertising can be a great way to increase brand awareness and get more
clicks.
● Blogging and guest posting are some of the best inbound marketing campaigns if
you want to generate leads. With a content strategy that includes publishing new
blog posts regularly, you can capture more web traffic and help users explore
content that will help them progress on their journey.
● A newsletter or a series of automated emails can help you stay in touch with
prospects who have expressed interest in your brand. An email series is a great

10. way of delivering bite-sized content that will help prospects during the research
or consideration stage and that will help with generating revenue.
● There are other channels to explore, including social media, video, podcasts,
sales calls, and more. Focus on the ones that make the most sense for your
audience.
● Outbound efforts can also help you get more leads. You can capture more sales
opportunities and generate interest with campaigns like sending mailers to
potential customers.
Conversions and Repeat Sales
Mapping your demand generation funnel can help you uncover which strategies result in a
higher conversion rate from one stage to the next.
There are different strategies you can focus on to boost conversions and get repeat sales:
● Developing a logical linking hierarchy will help visitors find more content that is
relevant to their journey and engage with your content longer.
● Many marketers use techniques like contact forms, white papers, and
newsletters to capture leads while delivering valuable content.
● Don’t forget to create strong calls to action. While encouraging users to make a
purchase isn’t a good strategy if you implement it too early in the buyer’s journey,
you can create CTAs that encourage prospects to sign up for your newsletter.
● Lead nurturing is important. Once you get the contact information of a prospect,
keep delivering content at regular intervals. Get their permission to receive phone
calls so you can have a salesperson contact them.
● Focus on engagement after the initial sale with a thank you email or a follow-up
from a salesperson. You can continue to educate customers after their first
purchase for cross-selling or upselling..

11. How to Improve Your Demand
Generation Process
You should aim for continuous improvement and always look for ways of building a better
demand generation funnel.
Close Rate Per Channel
Collecting data about each channel so you can calculate your close rate per channel will
give you a better idea of which channels are the most effective. You can then decide to
adjust your marketing budgets for these channels.
You should also calculate your average profit per channel to identify the best demand
generators and focus on these channels for your demand gen efforts.
How to Measure the Success of a Demand Gen Campaign
You should set some goals for your demand generation campaign and establish a timeline
to track your progress.
If you fail to hit a milestone, think about making some changes to the strategies you use.
Having some clear goals will help you determine what success looks like for your campaign.
Focus on IncrementalImprovements Over Time
Keep in mind that change isn’t going to happen overnight. You might need to implement
some fundamental changes to your sales and marketing processes to build an effective
demand generation funnel.
Be patient since you need to collect data once you have a funnel in place to identify where
there is room for improvement.

12. Conclusion
Using a demand generation funnel as a template for the buyer journey will help you focus
on the strategies that generate awareness for your demand while delivering value to your
audience. It’s also an approach that will help your marketing and sales teams work closely
together to achieve better results.
FAQ
Here are a few additional things you should know about demand gen.
Why is a demand funnel important?
A demand gen funnel is an important tool because it helps you visualize the different stages
your target audience goes through from the moment they become aware of your brand to
the moment they make a purchase decision.
It also helps you identify the channels and strategies that help prospects move from one
stage to the next during this process.
How to design a demand generation funnel?
You can use a template with three or more stages. Marketers often base their map or funnel
on a model with the awareness, consideration, and decision stage but you can adopt a
more complex model.

13. It’s important to conduct market research to get a better idea of what the typical buyer’s
journey looks like for your target audience so you can adopt a model that makes sense for
your industry and the right target audience.
marketing link >https://oke.io/fPjI