Demand Gen 2024: Techniques &
Strategies for Creating and Generating Demand

Featured Speakers:-

Links & Resources

• Master the Art of Conversion: The Ultimate Guide to Lead Management Tools
  
• 15 Rules of Sales Analytics for a Pristine Pipeline: Separating Genuine Opportunities from Illusions
• Taking Your Customer Retention Strategy Up a Notch With Marketing Analytics

Transcription:

0:15
So hello and welcome to another episode of the Revenue Focus Marketer where we discuss anything and everything related to marketing as well as data.

0:24
My name is Hershey and today I am your host.

0:28
I am a lead product manager at D growth, but in my free time, I do really enjoy learning more about what’s really happening in the industry and finding ways to help others grow as well.

0:41
The question that I see a lot of CEO S and CMO S find that they find themselves asking is how will they really stand out from the crowd and what makes them like, you know, step above the rest.

0:53
So thankfully, after doing a lot of research, I have come to realize that the answer to those questions could lie in implementing B to B demand generation demand generation can often be seen as a very complicated subject.

1:09
Some get it confused with lead generation, some kind of confuse it with brand marketing.

1:15
And I know this is something that leaves marketers really confused with when they’re trying to implement their own demandgen strategy.

1:24
So to sort of help us here today, I have two very special guests.

1:28
First off, we have George who is the founder of the B to B playbook, as well as the B to B incubator where he shares his five BS framework for demand generation every week by week.

1:41
It’s his mission to deliver the framework for demand generation that he wishes he had when he first got into the B to B marketing industry, one that delivers revenue and helps the business grow sustainably.

1:53
So welcome, George.

1:55
Thank you Hershey.

1:56
Very excited to be here and lovely to meet you to run.

2:00
Great to meet you as well.

2:01
George.

2:02
Yeah, so perfect.

2:04
The second person that we have here today is Kin, who is our in house expert Tarn has been a serial entrepreneur with over 23 years of experience and he’s held many leadership roles across B to B and ecommerce including I two technologies, trend, micro, weight gain, vite and C.

2:22
Tarn is also currently the co-founder and Ceo of Drow.

2:28
So thank you for tuning in Tarin.

2:31
Thank you for having me and George.

2:33
Thank you for joining us.

2:36
Perfect.

2:37
So I think we can get started when we talk about demand generation.

2:43
I know that a lot of businesses have been trying to use it to, you know, effectively stand out.

2:50
But when you ask marketers, I think what demand generation really means.

2:54
I think there are so many different answers out there.

2:57
So maybe we can start off by establishing like, you know, what demand generation really means to you and maybe George you can start us off.

3:06
Yeah, absolutely.

3:07
You touched on it a little bit in the intro, Hershey look some define demand generation as legion activities.

3:14
Others see it as branding.

3:16
We have our own definition, which is really what we’re trying to hammer home with our five Bs framework.

3:22
And that’s really that demand generation is a go to market strategy that builds an intense desire in your dream customer to purchase from you.

3:32
We really feel that it’s composed of two key components, demand creation and demand capture, demand capture is where most organizations really start their marketing efforts.

3:43
It focuses on those who are ready to buy from you right now, which accounts for roughly, you know, 3% of the total market out of the 100% of people who could buy from you.

3:52
It’s about trying to capture that existing demand as efficiently as possible.

3:57
It’s probably something we’ll get into a little later.

4:00
But the issue with only focusing there on that 3% is that it’s very difficult to scale because as you try and eat up that 3% that’s ready to buy right now.

4:10
So are your competitors?

4:12
So it becomes very, very expensive to compete and difficult to scale.

4:16
That’s why demand creation is the other part to demand generation.

4:19
And I think a part that of demand generation that isn’t really spoken about enough.

4:24
And demand creation looks to the other 97% of the market who are not technically looking to buy right now.

4:32
They’re people who are problem aware or even unaware of the solution that your product or service solves.

4:38
And it’s your job with demand creation to really build a relationship with them, to win their trust, to make them prioritize the problem that you solve and really lead them to the logical conclusion that you’re the best product or service available for fixing the problem that they have.

4:55
One more thing I might add into demand generation is look, demand gen marketers, I think typically pride themselves on optimizing for business impact.

5:05
And that might be in contrast to many lead generation marketers who focus on volume of leads without looking at the, the quality and the impact on pipeline.

5:16
Definitely in turn, how would you sort of define you know, demand generation?

5:22
I agree with George.

5:25
You know, I’ve always said that, you know, creating demand is actually making people think about your product or think about buying your product that when they woke up this morning they did not intend to.

5:42
So, you know, I mean, everything that George just said, you know, I can summarize it and I, I think that’s gonna hold true is like, you know, if you can do things where people that could be potential customers and we’re not thinking about you until yesterday and today when they either wake up or see something that they actually have a desire to engage with your brand or, you know, be aware of what you offer and how differentiated you are from the rest of the market.

6:12
I think that’s the key to creating demand.

6:16
I think that that’s really nicely packed it up to run.

6:20
And another kind of saying I like is, you know, awareness is not the same as affinity.

6:26
You know, someone being aware of your brand doesn’t mean that they wanna buy from you.

6:30
It doesn’t mean that they care about the problem that you solve.

6:33
It doesn’t even mean that they like you.

6:34
It just means that they’re aware of you.

6:36
But I, I don’t know if you’ll agree.

6:37
I feel like you would that as demand generation marketers or someone who’s into demand gen it’s about building affinity with that person.

6:46
So they know like and trust you and they prioritize the problem.

6:50
Absolutely.

6:51
100% agree.

6:52
I mean, that’s what I use the word engagement.

6:54
Like, you know, they want to engage with you and when they engage with you, you’re building that affinity closeness.

7:00
You know, if you’re kind of transitioning from that opinion, they’re aware of you.

7:05
But now they’re kind of testing the waters with you and they’re trying to build that trust with your brand in terms of, you know, whether what you’re saying is true, whether you, the claims that you make, how does it work?

7:17
You know, is it, I mean, that’s why, you know, you typically have like, you know, you want everything that you do at the end of the day when you’re creating demand translates to like, you know, making them aware, making them sample, you know, your product are offering and then getting them into either trial or why.

7:35
So, you know, telling them about who you are, what you do enough that they are willing to sample it, you know, be it like, you know, downloading something or watching a webinar or like taking a demo from you.

7:52
But then like the eventual goal is that you want them to test the waters by actually either doing a trial or by actually buying it.

8:02
And guys, why do you think like, you know, creating and generating new demand?

8:07
Is that important?

8:08
Like should marketers primarily focus more on capturing the existing demand that exists or should they invest like, you know, their time in generating new demand?

8:19
Look, it’s essential to do both, right?

8:21
I mean, you’re a business, you’ve got to eat right now.

8:24
You’ve got to go after people who are in market to buy from you right now.

8:28
And so we always encourage businesses to do that.

8:30
Don’t turn your back on it.

8:32
You have to go after that 3% that is in buy mode.

8:35
And to be honest, I before I fully really understood demand generation, I was a performance marketer.

8:42
And so I operated in that 3% all the time and I worked with quite large organizations and I didn’t quite appreciate that this 3% would eventually run out of steam.

8:54
And after a few B to B roles, I was the marketer that just kept trying to push the 3% further and further and further and just kept hitting that pain of not being able to scale beyond a certain point, you know, cost per lead, kept going up, cost per acquisition, kept going up as we tried to steal more and more of the market.

9:14
And to be honest, it was a pretty horrible experience for me.

9:17
You got to that stage where you’re checking your campaigns on the weekend, you’re praying to God that, you know, things convert and that the numbers go in your favor.

9:25
But it’s really only once I got deeper into it.

9:27
And I did the research that I realized, look, there’s just that many people in the market to buy right now.

9:33
And so we have to look at actually creating demand, which is focusing on those who aren’t ready to buy right now and ushering them into that buying mode.

9:41
And when they do hit that buy mode, they’ve built that relationship with us and it’s gonna be a lot cheaper for us to then capture that demand.

9:50
probably something which was quite interesting.

9:52
because I always like to research this, this problem of demand generation and demand creation, demand capture was there is research that shows that, you know, only 3 to 5% of the market is in by mode at any given time.

10:06
There’s also further research that shows that 81% of companies will not buy from you unless you’re top of mind before they start looking for a solution.

10:16
So if they haven’t heard of you before, most won’t buy from you, even if they discover you at the point where they’re ready to buy.

10:23
So that means that that 3% of the market that’s ready to buy it right now, that’s actually not even available to you.

10:30
If you’re a brand that’s not trying to get in front of people that’s only available if you’re getting in front of them.

10:35
So it’s really 20% of that 3% that would actually consider purchasing it from you using that research, which is something like apologies for my math, but at less than a percent, it’s like 0.6% or something, which is why I think for so many marketers in those early phases before they invest in demand creation, why it feels like trying to find a needle in a haystack and why it can be so difficult to scale in those initial stages?

11:03
But I I would love to hear Taran your your view as well would capture the number one challenges you start hitting the laws of diminishing their marginal returns very quickly.

11:16
So, you know, as you can acquire more customers, the cost of acquiring those customers keeps getting heavier and heavier.

11:24
you know, as you kind of the the pool of available prospects that are ready to buy, get smaller, gets tougher, more competitive, that means you’re ending up spending more, you know, in economics, there’s the law of diminishing marginal returns and that’s exactly what it is about.

11:43
You’re entering into a scarce market basically and not enough.

11:48
There’s more suppliers and very low demand.

11:52
So creating a demand is extremely, extremely important.

11:56
And while you’re creating that demand to George’s point, you’re also creating that brand awareness in the market that is ready to be captured as well.

12:06
So anything that you do be it advertising, be it content, be it any other channels of marketing that you’re leveraging, you are actually creating that brand, the market that is ready to buy, you’re there and you’re also building a future pipeline that eventually is gonna like, you know, help you succeed in the wrong Duran.

12:30
I might also add something a a as you know, someone who like yourself, you know, have worked internally in organizations and you look at a business plan or you know, like a a quarterly budget and you have your targets there very often beyond that initial stage of growth, the forecasts are all based on the cost per acquisition, getting cheaper over time but they don’t account for the fact that as you try and capture more of that 3% at least in my experience, the cost always goes up until you have really good brand awareness, you know, down the road, which takes time.

13:09
Yeah, you have to invest in both and you have to invest in bar.

13:14
the key about demand capture is you got to have a really really great sales process.

13:20
So you know, because you will get the engagement, but how quickly can you convert them and how confidently can you convert them?

13:27
I mean, they that sales motion becomes extremely important.

13:32
you know, marketing is literally kind of the I is getting their foot in the door, the rest of it is very, very much driven by sales.

13:43
Now, when you are creating demand, it’s completely different.

13:46
Their marketing has a much bigger role to play and it’s you know, it’s a much bigger market as well, but there you have to build that trust with the brand there, you have to be pushing create content there.

13:57
You have to always be, you know, making efforts to be on the top of the mind when that person or company decides to make a purchase decision.

14:08
So, you know, when you’re creating demand, the the role of marketing is far, far more important than anything else.

14:17
When it is capturing demand that exists, marketing has definitely got a, you know, very, very important role to play, but it is not as long a duration of you would say it’s not as many steps as you may see when you’re actually creating demand.

14:33
So I think, you know, you gotta do both.

14:35
And at the same time, you you know, the, the marketing teams should focus a lot on creating demand versus just capturing and as a CMO or like someone who is within marketing, how do you sort of, you know, gauge the success of demand creation?

14:58
Like are there any specific metrics or indicators that you prioritize to gauge the success?

15:07
Yeah, look, I think with that going, you know, incredibly specific with it, I think the reason that a lot of demand creation programs fail is they’re not measured properly.

15:17
So the demand creation program is not gonna drive pipeline, you know, in the 1st 30 days, that’s not just not gonna happen.

15:24
We have to build trust with people, we have to guide them along the buying journey and that’s gonna take some time.

15:31
So what we like to do is in those initial stages, we like to look for leading indicators that what we’re doing is working and then once the program’s been running for a few months, look at lagging indicators and say, can we look back and say, hey, the activities that we did, are they actually making an impact?

15:50
And so I in terms of leading indicators, some things that we like to look at is you know, are we getting more traffic and more engagement from our ideal customers that these brand creation activities are targeting, you know, are people who are coming to our landing page?

16:07
Are there a A IC P and are so they are also are they engaged viewers?

16:11
Do they care about the content that we’re putting there?

16:15
If we are distributing this content on social, are we getting more followers from our IC P on social?

16:24
When sales have conversations with prospects, are they mentioning any of our helpful content in feedback?

16:31
And look unless you’re marketing to the marketers, marketers tend to be pretty good about telling you how they first heard about you.

16:37
Everyone else is terrible.

16:39
Sales need to try and pride out of them and directly ask them.

16:44
and then occasionally look, you will get some engagement from your IC P on ads if you’re running ads or content because if it’s incredibly helpful, people will tag each other in it.

16:54
So they’re just some leading indicators to know that you’re on the right track lagging is when you look back and you go, hey, we actually made an effort and that’s where you would look to see more sales qualified opportunities, more high intent revenue opportunities that have come.

17:13
You do wanna see some marketing source pipeline and revenue, you wanna see an improvement in your pipeline velocity and then of course, we still always love self reported attribution as well.

17:26
The classic one is noone will ever, be able to see if they clicked an ad converted to a demo, became a customer.

17:36
The podcast that you did with that person,, six months ago is never gonna show up in your CRM.

17:42
And so self reported attribution just flat out asking people, how did you first hear about us can also play a factor.

17:49
So that’s how we like to think about it in terms of leading and lagging indicators.

17:54
Definitely.

17:55
And I think, I mean, George touched upon a very, very important aspect of B to B marketing, the ideal customer profile, you have to be absolutely centered into, you know, who your ideal customer profile is and then building your demand gen strategy around it.

18:15
And then as far as metrics are concerned, I mean, you know, you have your typical awareness and engagement metrics that’s, you know, your traffic or like, you know, the number of downloads or like, you know, we call them leads and I’m talking about not even the marketing qualified leads, but the one ratio that is extremely important at the top of the funnel is the lead to MQL ratio.

18:39
So how many because that tells you if your targeting was right?

18:45
So how many leads did you get?

18:47
How many of them were marketing?

18:49
All you know, what are your criterias for that qualification?

18:53
Usually it is like, you know, it’s the right individual, it is the right kind of company.

18:58
And you know, beyond that, obviously, like, you know, your brand qualification comes in, you know, do they have the budget authority need time frame, all those things gonna come into play.

19:07
But at the in, in just purely the KPIS that I stress upon the number one KP I for me is how many leads and how many qualified leads marketing qualified leads the ratio between the two because that tells you how good your targeting is to begin with.

19:27
And because that’s where you can run some experimentation and do things.

19:31
the second most important for me is the pipeline to revenue ratio.

19:39
So how much pipeline did I create?

19:40
Then how much revenue did I generate?

19:43
again, this metric as well gives you a deep insight into one, what is the bottom line impact that you’re having from your campaigns, you know, in terms of the revenue that you’re driving.

19:57
And secondly, it also tells you if you’re driving the right kind of opportunities to everything that you’re doing at the top in the middle of it.

20:06
So I think these two for me and I think it’s kind of the same thing that George attributed.

20:11
And then obviously for every channel, the metrics could be different and social, it could be like, you know, how many people engaged like shared and you know, emails, it could be how many people that open and click through and then eventually came to your website.

20:27
But at the end of the day, what we’re looking for is like, is it the right audience that we are going after?

20:36
Are they engaging with us at certain levels that we want?

20:40
And then are they converting into revenue?

20:42
Which is the eventual goal for every?

20:46
Yeah, I think with so many different types of metrics out there also, it’s very common for a lot of marketers to keep focusing on the vanity metrics.

20:55
But a lot of times people don’t focus on the attribution to revenue.

20:59
So I’m glad that you sort of mentioned that and like, you know, I definitely do see the importance of that.

21:04
I think, you know, like there are like other sophisticated metrics like, you know, what is the customer acquisition cost?

21:12
What is the customer lifetime value?

21:14
And again, all of these actually really point towards the efficiency of your funnel, you know, how efficient is your funnel and a as a marketer.

21:23
In fact, it’s more like, you know, a joint sales and marketing effort that how do you continuously optimize that?

21:31
Definitely.

21:33
And I know we talked a lot about success right now in measuring that success, but I’m sure there must be some common challenges that you might have faced or seen while helping other businesses.

21:46
So George, maybe you could start us off and share some of the challenges, common challenges that you might have seen.

21:54
Yeah, I mean, one of the most common ones with businesses that we deal with is market is actually really struggle to get, buy in for demand creation programs.

22:05
Leadership wants them to stay in demand capture forever.

22:08
Not that they probably even know the the distinction between demand creation and demand capture.

22:14
It’s just that for the last 15 years, we’ve had really, I think tech platforms educate the market to think that marketing is just running a conversion objective on Facebook ads and watching the dollars roll in.

22:28
And you know, marketing is not an on switch, we’re not a machine, we, we, we can’t do that.

22:34
And so I think they find it really difficult to understand that there’s this distinction in that there’s only this certain number of people in market to buy right now.

22:43
And we actually have to dedicate a good chunk of our resources into creating demand.

22:49
And so that’s, that’s a really, really difficult situation for a lot of marketers making that business case for why they need to do this.

22:58
And I think for a lot of them, it really starts with, you know, and, and it goes back to marketers trying to get their seat back at the, at the leadership table of just taking things back to terms that those business leaders understand.

23:13
Look at their goals, look at the what they want to achieve, show them that with what you’re currently doing, you’re not gonna hit those goals that your cost per acquisition is gonna blow out, that your cost per lead is gonna blow out that to, to R’s point.

23:27
You know, maybe your lead to MQL rates are really low and maybe your MQL to SQ SQL rates are really low.

23:34
So something is wrong and we need to fix it and then this is a plan to move forward.

23:42
I think probably another challenge that marketers often have is if there isn’t a dedicated demand generation team is they just don’t have the time to put together a longer term strategy B to B.

23:55
Marketers are so activity heavy.

23:58
We’re always responding to requests from sales.

24:00
We’re just trying to keep things moving that we just don’t have the time to get together this long-term plan and our recommendation and message to marketers, particularly those that are resource strapped is look when it comes to creating demand, you don’t have to go from 0 to 100 overnight.

24:16
You don’t need a big flashy budget, pick one segment of your market, pick one product line, create the plan and just chip away at it over time.

24:27
Find ways with activities that you’re currently doing to double up as demand generation or demand creation activities.

24:35
Yeah.

24:35
So they’re, they’re probably two of the, the biggest challenges that we normally see.

24:40
Yeah, and turn have you experienced any challenges George said it all.

24:47
But I think the one thing I’ve seen is like, you know, the alignment between sales and marketing, which also kind of stems from the, the fact that, you know, there is so much pressure about revenue and revenue like in this quarter, revenue in the next quarter.

25:06
So, you know, it’s, and especially the companies that are funded by, you know, private equity or any kind of other institutions, they push them to get to revenue fast.

25:23
And that creates, you know, the whole motion is driven by that.

25:28
And it’s all about like, you know, how much revenue can I make this quarter?

25:32
It’s never, there’s never a discussion about how much demand can create in the market for next year.

25:40
So very few companies move forward with a long term wish larger companies, they do it becomes a natural process.

25:49
So if you look at like, you know, the Microsoft of the world, I mean, they are purely in the, the demand creation more basic if you think about because anybody who wanted to buy Microsoft Office is already gone every day, like, you know what their challenges like, you know, a new person that is coming out to buy you know, a suite of products for productivity.

26:12
Will they go to Google, will they come to us or will they stick with Apple, please?

26:17
So, I mean, that’s kind of the three spot holders there.

26:20
So that’s but, but that demand is already getting like, you know, I mean, they are just serving that demand.

26:27
And they’re on the top of the mind of those people as they are kind of reaching that stage of maturity.

26:33
That’s why you see, you know, all the time you get trials and free trials and you can like, you know, use the product for free for a certain amount of time you buy a new laptop you to install on your machine.

26:44
All those things are examples of like an OK, create demand and then we capture it please now, but in companies that are in early stage where there’s a lot of pressure on revenue this quarter revenue next quarter, they like the alignment between sales and marketing is missing primarily because of this.

27:06
But sales warrant sales ready leads.

27:09
They don’t care about like, you know, how many people engage with the blog, how many people are like, you know, getting in the top of the funnel and they like, you know, and I see George smiling because that’s the problem he’s trying to solve as well.

27:20
But that’s like, I don’t think that and then, you know, recently a lot of companies trying to solve that problem have brought in the role of like the chief revenue ops.

27:34
So now sales and marketing is kind of rolling into one team so that this is, you know, less conflict or there’s like, you know, kind of a unification of goals and what they’re trying to achieve that was a double edged sword because the title itself says that Chief Revenue Officer, that person is very, very revenue focused.

27:53
So, you know, that’s a, that role itself is very, very revenue based.

28:00
what you have to do as a marketer is you have to strike the balance between the short term revenue that you can create and the long term demand that you can create and manage.

28:14
And it’s a slippery slope.

28:16
That’s why the, the CMO S role is the most churned role in the C SUITE.

28:23
The average lifespan of A CMO is less than two years.

28:27
And there are reasons for all the spaces and the major reason is the, the, the CMO is always trying to make sure that he can set up programs that are short term as well as long term success so yet, but sales and leadership and oftentimes your investors are looking for short term gains, You got to strike the right balance.

28:55
I don’t have the magic bullet for it.

28:58
I think we just have to keep striving to educate and aware, make aware the people that are making these decisions that there has to be a healthy split and the companies that do believe in it, there are plenty of them, they have actually succeeded very, very well.

29:16
I mean, look at hubspot, it’s one of the companies that focused heavily, heavily, heavily on creating the demand and then they were eventually able to capture and they changed the game for a lot of other B to B companies and how you actually do marketing and how you have like a long term vision and how you and, and there’s a lot that can be taken from that playbook.

29:46
I’m sure like, there’s like, you know, there’s plenty of other examples that I can give.

29:52
But if there’s one company that I, I really kind of admire for that hubspot is one definitely what I’d like to say that a great mindset for when, for creating demand is, you know, be helpful, be helpful to your IC P, understand them, help them.

30:08
That’s how you develop relationships with people in real life.

30:10
It’s the same in business and that’s what hubspot did.

30:14
I mean, they built the most helpful content for every single persona that they target.

30:20
They went beyond just creating helpful content.

30:22
They almost have like a whole education ecosystem that helps you do better in your job, that helps you get promoted even before you’re a hubspot user.

30:33
And I mean, that’s, that’s next level what they’ve done and that’s a long, long term commitment.

30:38
But look at the impact of creating that demand, I think that is definitely really important.

30:46
And I think hubspot is such a great example.

30:49
is there like a particular proportion or like approach towards that you might have for striking the balance between strategies for demand creation and those for demand capture or is this still a question that hasn’t been that hasn’t, doesn’t have a perfect answer.

31:12
Look, there, there’s, there’s no perfect answer.

31:14
It really depends on the company, the industry, the stage that it’s at whether it’s in an existing category or a new category.

31:22
But look, I mean, typically when a business starts, it’ll be full bent 100% on demand capture, I understand that you’re a small team, you, you need business right now.

31:33
You just have to meet that next quarter’s revenue goals, especially if you wanna get your funding.

31:38
You know, when it comes around again, look what we recommend is once you do have that system that’s capturing demand is you just try and allocate maybe 10 to 20% of your budget to demand creation.

31:54
And over time you wanna see that split shift more in favor of demand creation as that organization scales.

32:02
But in terms of giving you a hard and fast rule, I don’t necessarily have one because I think it really depends on the organization and what they need at that point in time.

32:13
Definitely sir.

32:15
Do you sort of magic bullet?

32:18
There is no bullet that I can offer, but I do think that you have to strike the balance and you have to, I mean, you see capturing demand is extremely important, what you have out there because that’s instance, gratification, that’s revenue that’s in on your books.

32:35
And that has to be solved first.

32:37
There is no doubt about it, but as you’re doing that, you gotta think about it.

32:42
And I think it’s also in the what stage you are at.

32:45
What kind of funding do you have?

32:47
How much can you allocate to like, you know, if, if, if your bootstrapped, you’re probably like 100% focused on just capturing the demand that is up.

32:57
If you have some level of funding, you know, large, like if it’s a smaller round of especially the initial rounds of funding, it will go all into most of it going to capturing the demand and some of it will be towards you know, branding and awareness and you know, but as you are growing, you must allocate more to long term demand creation.

33:22
And it also depends if you are in an industry that is new.

33:28
If you’re creating a revolutionary product, then almost all of your budget is going to be actually in demand creation because that demand doesn’t exist.

33:37
So if you, you know, it, it really depends on the kind of product or offering that you have that you would like to your, your tactics would change based on that.

33:50
But if it feels like go ahead George, oh I was just gonna add and if you are in that new category or new industry, you’d better have a fair bit of cash to create that demand or you better have some very patient investors because there’s no, there’s no one in market to capture right now.

34:09
And so you need that money to educate the market to make them want to buy for you.

34:15
It has to be an extremely product driven tools like your product is such that the moment you come out, like, you know, think Chat GVD, the moment Chad GVD came out and people don’t realize that it was like probably a decade in the making and billions of dollars in the making as well.

34:34
So that, you know, there’s so much going into the product and the moment that product came out, people were lining up, but it was such an innovative thing, it was such a hyped thing that everybody was waiting, everybody’s talking about it.

34:49
So, you know, then it’s a completely different situation.

34:54
But then you have also have to think that how much effort had gone into building that box.

35:00
Everybody thinks that, you know, look at the interface and seems like very simple.

35:03
But it’s actually like, you know, literally billions of dollars that haven’t gone into research and development.

35:08
This people, there were like thousands of people sitting at their desks for years building this and when it was ready, everybody jumped on it.

35:17
But that’s not every product every day.

35:20
You know, most of the products that are out in the market like 99.99% of the products are not that innovative.

35:28
They’re not like game changer.

35:30
They’re actually trying to solve a problem that exists that other people are also trying to solve.

35:37
Definitely, I think at this point, we have for sure, established the importance of demand generation.

35:45
So I just wanna dive more into, are there any specific strategies that you have found most effective?

35:53
Especially when dealing with the saturated market?

35:58
Like maybe darn you could start us off saturated markets are again, like, you know, that’s where the two things work.

36:06
One is really product led growth wherein you can, because you have to you have to, most of your sales are gonna be displaced.

36:18
That’s where you’re actually coming and replacing an incumbent.

36:23
And for that, your product has to be better, your product has to have new features.

36:28
Your product has to have the ability to do way more than your competitors.

36:32
So there’s like a lot of product led growth there.

36:35
And then a lot of times that product led growth needs a lot of great storytelling.

36:43
So like, you know, if you use an example, you know, hubspot, they started more as a marketing automation platform, but they knew that they have to kind of keep growing, they have to create other solutions.

36:58
They, it’s called the marketing hub.

37:00
And then they created the sales hub and then they created the services hub.

37:04
And they also like, you know, their marketing team did a great job of telling the story how the entire ecosystem works.

37:11
Great.

37:12
It’s where like, you know, you you create demand, you serve that demand and then you also manage the customer lifetime.

37:19
So it’s like, you know, you buy.

37:21
So it’s a great example of product l growth backed by great market.

37:29
I was just gonna add, I, I agree.

37:30
And, and to me that also comes really into them, taking a, a big fish small pond approach to their positioning in the market where rather than trying to take on the incumbents at their own game, they sliced up a part of that market that wasn’t being met.

37:47
Probably that, that marketing automation side, they nailed that they said, hey, for those that really value marketing automation, we are the people for you.

37:56
We had built, you know, four marketers, they won them over and then as they captured that market, they had the resources to then expand their product line and, and, and create that from there.

38:09
And then they constantly kept repositioning themselves until they’ve become as large as they are today.

38:16
And I, I think that’s a really effective strategy for so many businesses that come into the market is to use that big fish, small pond positioning strategy because look the barrier to entry for creating a new product is so low that there’s gonna be competition everywhere.

38:33
And so you have to position yourself as a total no brainer in the eyes of a group of people to get that hit of revenue that you need because you’re not gonna have a huge amount of resources to win over a large market and you need to do it quickly.

38:49
So target the market that is achievable for you to win over, position yourself.

38:54
So you’re no brainer and then move on to, to capture the next slice.

38:59
Yeah.

39:00
And, and I think the other great way to create quick demand and saturated market is like duck in invest duck in acquisitions wherein you know, you have, you find a product that complements your product really well, you know, you acquire that product and you make it available in in a way that the rest of your, your existing customer base can start using this.

39:24
So you know, there there’s a lot of opportunity for doing that as well.

39:29
Now, marketing doesn’t have a great role to play in the acquisition part, but they do have a great role to play in kind of telling the story and kind of making that work.

39:37
Once there’s a lot of acquisitions, they fail because companies do a poor job of telling the story.

39:48
So if you are acquiring a product, you have to or acquiring a company, you have to think about how you’re gonna market it to your existing customers because a lot of time companies will do like a T investment and say, oh, you know, this is great.
40:01
This product fits very well with our ecosystem.

40:05
And I we think our existing customers would buy it.

40:08
So let’s go make the acquisition.

40:10
But then when it comes to integrating the two companies, when it comes to integrating the two products, and when it comes to integrating the wholesales and marketing motion, they fail and they’re just not able to tell a very good story.

40:21
So that, that how will we execute on the sales and marketing plan once you do that acquisition is very, very important.

40:32
And, and I do think that, you know, I mean, obviously, like, you know, there is a if for every saturated market, there is still new buyers that are entering the market every so you can continue, you know, fostering that demand creation as well for people that are on the fringes.

40:54
And again, some of it can go to the product like, you know, if you’re satisfying enterprises in a certain way, you can go down mid market.

41:00
And if you’re very focused on mid market, you could go upstream to enterprises or you could downstream to small businesses, same product.

41:08
But you know, with the limited features or like, you know, more extensive features and more extensive like, you know, approach.

41:18
If you’re trying to move upstream, there’s a lot of ways like, and, and, and, and in every one of them marketing has a great role to play because either you’re going after net new customers or you’re going after a net new market or you’re changing your IC P, they’re all like, you know, only marketers.

41:35
Definitely.

41:36
I think this call has changed my perspective on marketing for sure.

41:42
I love how we started off with just, you know, talking about the definition of demand generation.

41:48
And we sort of went through a lot of different aspects including like, you know, how to get success and also going about like, you know, common challenges that are being faced.

41:59
I know now that like, you know, it’s so important, not just to focus on the short term, like, you know, achievements or things that you get from your marketing, but also long term effects of it so sowing the seeds is for sure, really important.

42:16
And I think this session has been absolutely wonderful.

42:20
So thank you so much to both of you today for joining us, any closing thoughts before we end the session.

42:28
So one thing I would like to add or she is that even once you’ve created demand, the demand capture process is still there.

42:39
So, you know, marketers that are focused on creating demand have to make sure that the, you know, the the plumbing is there to make sure that whatever demand they are creating in the market is moving down the funnel.

42:58
So it could be like, not every lead that you capture is an MQL, not every MQL is an SQL, not every SQL becomes an opportunity and so on and so forth.

43:10
So you gotta have AAA very, very good process.

43:14
A very, very good you know, Martech ecosystem to make sure that the human intervention in taking leads from one stage to the other is very, very strong.

43:30
So I think like, you know, a lot of times they demand is created but it is not well served.

43:39
It could.

43:40
And that’s where like, you know, that whole alignment between sales and marketing and that unification of the process becomes extremely important.

43:47
And that’s why you, like I mentioned earlier, a lot of companies are now bringing in this Chief Revenue Officer.

43:53
That’s the whole purpose of the Chief Revenue Office is to make sure that the whole pipeline, the the the whole funnel is optimized.

44:01
So I do think that, you know, as you are thinking about creating demand, you have to think about how you manage that demands, push one George any closing thoughts from your end.

44:13
I I definitely agree with what Tran has said and I suppose he closed by talking about the importance of capturing demand.

44:20
And I maybe I’ll talk about the importance of creating demand, which is you have to have someone brave enough to do it.

44:28
And a lot of marketers you know, are, are going to need to take this on themselves because the reality is when pipeline dries up, the finger gets pointed at marketing.

44:40
So whether you’re being directed to do it or not, the responsibility relies lies with you.

44:46
And so this is an issue that you need to take to the leadership table, you need to prove that you belong at the leadership table, present it in ways that they understand and then show why you should dedicate some resources to presenting this path forward.

45:03
Definitely, thank you so much guys.

45:05
Again, I know if there’s any marketers or CMO s out there that are struggling to sort of convince their leadership to invest in demand generation, they can definitely share this podcast with them.

45:17
So thank you so much for taking the time today.

45:21
And I hope people tune in to, you know, learn more about marketing as well as data on the revenue focused marketer.

45:27
Thank you.

45:29
Thank you so much.

45:30
It was a real pleasure.

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