In D2C eCommerce, emphasis is usually placed on lead generation. In fact, in most eCommerce marketing, demand generation is often synonymous with lead generation. But, it’s important to realise that lead generation and demand generation are two different things and should be treated as such.
What is demand generation?
Demand generation is all about how your business gets people excited about what you are offering and how you use this to expand your reach and enter new markets. The process mainly focuses on educating your audience, generating trust with your audience and building a stronger brand.
Demand generation techniques eCommerce stores can use to attract audience interest includes things such as creating blogs, creating YouTube videos and tutorials, and creating E-Books. The idea here is to create content that your audience is interested in consuming outside of any sales. See more details on how eCommerce stores can build a strong brand here.
What is lead generation?
Lead generation is more about increasing your audience's interest to make a purchase as opposed to building their interest around your brand. It’s about increasing consumers' interest with the aim of converting them into customers. Tactics such as nurturing help convince the consumers that what you are offering will meet their needs.
Lead generation tactics usually have the aim of obtaining an audience's contact information. CTA’s with lead gen forms to get people’s contact information that allows you to send further information via email is what helps you later nurture your leads.
One lead gen tactic that eCommerce stores can use is the use of quizzes to get contact information. If you are a beauty store you can quiz your audience to find them the right type of make-up, if you are a health store you can quiz your audience to suggest them the right supplements. Either way, you require the user to provide their email address to receive their results.
What is the difference between lead generation and demand generation?
The main difference between lead gen and demand gen is that demand gen helps you attract your target audience, whereas lead gen allows you to convert your qualified leads into customers.
Now, you may be wondering which strategy is preferable to focus on, but, in reality, neither of them should be used exclusively.
Demand gen directly helps with lead gen. How can you nurture leads and convert them into customers without first attracting them to your business?
The way to think about it is that demand generation will help you grow your business and lead generation helps you convert and make sales. A good way to think about it, is that demand gen is placed at the top of the funnel whereas lead gen is at the bottom of the funnel activity.
What should my business focus on?
In this regard, depending on the stage your business is at, you may want to focus more on demand gen compared to lead gen or vice versa.
The way I see it is you want to go back and forth between spending more effort on demand gen and more efforts on lead gen. It is better to get lead gen right first. You don’t want to be building a lot of demand and awareness but not being able to convert a large proportion of that demand. You will be forgotten quickly. When you are comfortable with the success of your lead gen tactics, then focus more on demand gen and scale scale scale.
How do lead generation and demand generation come together?
As we have discussed it is important to combine demand generation and lead generation together. The most effective way to do this is to have a strong demand generation strategy.
The most important aspect in a strong demand generation strategy is to create good content. You want to create content that people want, content that people share, content that people want more of.
Why is this so important? Because the better your content is and the more your audience demands your content, the more effective your lead generation tactics will be.
If people like your content, then they are likely to give their contact information to receive more content. If someone found your blog compelling, then they are more likely to provide contact information to download your E-Book.
Bazar surveys can be used to find out directly from your target customer what sort of content they are interested in, so you can ensure demand generation strategy is effective. Get in touch with us here to learn more.
