Demand Generation Marketing: 10 Skills Every Marketer Should Know!

Digital marketing can make or break most businesses now. Thanks to technology, consumers have thousands of options available at their fingertips, at any given second. 63% of businesses worldwide have deemed it essential to increase their digital marketing and advertising budgets. Do you know what that means?

It is the best time to be a digital marketer! And the first step to generating demand for your products and services is generating demand for them digitally. That’s right—being a demand generation marketer pays big bucks now, you can help various businesses sell their products and services to customers. Overall, you are working towards making countless lives easier.

So exactly how do you become a demand generation marketer? Or, more importantly, what skills do you need to kick it out of the park? Building hype around a product or service may mean leveling up on content marketing, tracking content analytics, reaching out to new audiences, and starting and maintaining customer connections. Fancy some help? 

This blog will discuss demand generation marketing, how to plan a successful campaign, and which ten skills can help a demand generation marketer do that. These skills can maximize the effectiveness of the organization’s marketing efforts and make the best of sales to boost the company's revenue. Let’s get started!

What is demand generation marketing?

Demand generation marketing is a proactive strategy that defines a digital marketing initiative's objectives and end goals and generates "demand" for a product or service. It is the long game and necessitates integrating all programs across paid, earned, shared, and owned media (also known as PESO) to achieve measurable results for any marketing operation.

Depending on the size of the business and the kinds of products and services it offers, demand generation marketing must be carried out differently. In smaller businesses and startups, audience acquisition is usually given the first emphasis. This implies that businesses will go to great lengths to inform consumers about what they are selling to obtain their contact information (likely, their email address or contact number). It includes:

• offering free trials;
• providing free initial consultations or evaluations;
• allowing for early access to a platform with limited features; 
• discounted deals and offers, and other similar things. 

On the other hand, enterprise businesses can afford to carry out marketing initiatives centered on raising brand awareness because they have the luxury of significantly higher digital marketing budgets. This includes: 

• large media purchases; 
• sponsorships; 
• billboard advertising;
• event gatherings, and other prominent marketing campaigns.

How can you plan a demand-generation marketing campaign?

I will tell you how—by ensuring these three things:

1. Utilize data to figure out what’s working

Now data can come in the form of three sources:

• Basic research: This is perhaps the first and most generic step, but primary research helps you detect your niche industry trends at scale and create content for your demand generation initiative that will appeal to a wide majority of your target audience. It mainly includes reports and surveys relevant to the niche industry. 

• Website analytics: You may use tools in addition to Google Analytics, like Crazy Egg, Hotjar, Amplitude, Mixpanel, etc., to optimize your websites and find out what visitors like and are trying to achieve. Besides keyword research, these tools can turn your landing pages into lead magnets, and what can better generate demand for you than that?
  
  
• Target audience data: You cannot appease everyone, meaning you have a niche audience for your product and service. But if you don’t have a concrete idea about who they are and what they want, you will never be able to put out the best offer to convert prospects into customers. 

One way to uncover intrinsic details about your target audience is through the social media accounts of your ideal prospects. Using social media channels, you may determine your potential customers’ preferred social media platforms, the top publications they read, and their opinions on key issues and stories—that is how you build your prospecting base. 

2. Repeat your message consistently until you are a top-of-mind option

What do we remember classic brands by? Their taglines, of course. Brands that are established as industry leaders have perfected the art of repetition, which drives the demand when they launch something new.

Big brands may have the humongous budget to push their message in front of their consumer base through multiple mediums. Still, many small enterprises have also shown great resourcefulness to get their brand messages heard consistently and build lasting brand awareness. 

One way they have managed to do it is through retargeting with marketing automation that helped them repeatedly reach the same target audience; social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., have proved instrumental to their endeavors.

3. Introduce influencer marketing as part of your demand generation campaign

Influencer marketing may be new, but the concept is as old as they come. It is simple—consumers trust customers. And what could generate more demand for a product or service than a favorite niche influencer conveying its benefits to their cult fan following? 

Including a brand influencer program in demand-generation marketing campaigns can help amplify and supplement existing initiatives. For many reasons mentioned above, brands need to focus on continuous collaboration with relevant influencers instead of one-off deals. Integrating content collaboration is an essential component of every influencer program. This might take the form of a series of YouTube videos, guest posts on the corporate site, or the influencer's blog. 

It must cover more than just Instagram, TikTok, or other short-form video collaborations—this is crucial. It is because long-form content (as well as YouTube) has an infinite shelf life in the Google search result, unlike short-form content channels.

Demand generation marketing takes time and a long-term strategy with specific objectives, aims, and integration points. Influencers are a great way to ensure that the leads you generate are of the highest quality; in other words, they trust in your ability to deliver like their favorite digital community leader.

Now that we have covered that, let’s jump into the 10 skills every demand generation marketer should know about to best benefit their business.

10 skills that every demand generation marketer must master

Let’s dive right in!

Skill #1: Designing a marketing experiment from scratch

As a demand generation marketer, your numero uno priority is to figure out what works (and what doesn’t!) so that you can direct your marketing campaigns in the right direction. But how can you find out all the juicy information without experimenting? Did you know that leading marketers are twice as likely to consider marketing experiments that are riskier and do not cater to mainstream practices? 

Optimizing your existing content can make your demand-generation activities much more effective. But the only way to find out what needs to be optimized is through thorough testing!

Marketing experiments provide you with the data and insights you need to improve the performance of your content, achieve your lead generation targets, and improve user experience. You must remember that testing doesn’t mean throwing what you got at the wall and seeing what sticks. You can end up saving a lot of your time (and your marketing budget!) as you learn how to design marketing experiments efficiently.

Skill #2: Understanding your customer base better

Customers are the people familiar with your product and service and, possibly, the best option you will get when looking for the ideal audience segment to try out something new. If you have been serving them well, they would be your brand’s best advocates, and if you feel that you need to make any improvements, they are the ones who can make the best recommendations based on what they want to satisfy their needs.

Presently, buyers are the drivers for the whole sales process, and as a demand generation marketer, your job is to get to know them better. Besides nailing your buyer personas to the T, you must listen and best understand their pain points to provide customized solutions. It is imperative to not only know about the demographic details but also figure out their morals and backgrounds. Not to mention, you must have a crystal clear idea of your value proposition about the product or service you are trying to sell. 

The key to creating problem-solving products and services that people want to purchase is to understand the requirements and pain points of the customer. When everything is clear, you'll see the wider picture, including the best marketing platform and the ideal message. If you don't know your customers well enough, you'll waste time on marketing initiatives that won't benefit your organization.

Skill #3: Analyzing data (especially with Google Analytics)

Data is the foundation for every business, and it is no different for marketing. The only way you know if your demand marketing campaigns are successful or getting tanked is to study the user data you can access with the help of analytics tools!

Every demand generation marketer should first become proficient in Google Analytics, which is the de facto industry standard for content campaign measuring tools.

Understanding Google Analytics is crucial for monitoring and reporting, even if you eventually switch to another analytics solution like HubSpot. 28% of marketers admit that the analytics data they receive from ongoing marketing campaigns help them to structure future ones better and with more predictable performance results. In other words, most marketers get into the field and perform their activities wearing blinders.

If you are uncertain where to start, the Google Analytics Academy is a fantastic resource for learning the basics.

Skill #4: Creativity and resourcefulness

This is a no-brainer, but being creative and resourceful is intrinsic to marketing.

I name this a skill to master as opposed to a base quality of every marketing mind because—there is a lot of practice and rejection involved. Think about it: how do you feel when some C-level executive shoots down your idea for some inane reason? Annoyed? Sure. But you also realize that the campaign is over and above the judgments of one particular person, and that’s where you have to make your creative juices flow and come up with a solution that both pleases your boss and poises the campaign as a successful masterstroke!

As for being resourceful—when you have to make changes to a demand generation campaign at the last minute, you need to be resourceful and acquire all the help you need (either by delegating parts of your highly demanding job to someone you know would come through, or craftily bring together creative departments to work out the best results!). 

Skill #5: Excelling at Excel

While you may not appreciate the humor, you have to appreciate what Excel can do for marketers—which is to make them 100x better at their job! Now you must be wondering? How does Microsoft Excel factor into all of this?

Well, here’s how. You can use this Microsoft Office tool to make more informed judgments.

Excel enables you to compare and mix data from several sources, provide a more comprehensive picture of your demand generation outcomes, and gain insights that analytics software cannot. With the aid of all that data, it enables you to detect connections, trends, and patterns that you might not have otherwise noticed.

Wouldn’t you like to use data to make judgments that are better informed and, thereby, more powerful as a marketer since you can examine data from numerous systems and perform analyses that aren't possible with other software tools? I know I would!

If you are looking to learn excel, then this Excel for Marketers course by LinkedIn Learning is a great place to start! 

Skill #6: Storytelling

Brand messaging that incorporates storytelling creates lasting impressions. Did you know that if people love a brand’s story, 44% will share it with their friends and acquaintances (thereby generating demand), 15% will buy the product immediately, and 55% will save it for future purchases? 

Everybody loves stories. It helps to position your brand to your audience in a relatable way, evokes emotion, and makes the brand’s values align with their own. That is a great way to cultivate loyalty for your brand amongst your existing and potential customers.

For example, showing that your SaaS software can record billables in record time is not enough; you need to put it as the best solution that helps you save time that you can better spend with your family—this can be achieved through storytelling.

Every demand-generation marketer needs to master the art of selling smart and powerful stories that appeal to various audiences and attitudes, especially as consumers get more intelligent with the times. In order to engage your audience with an engaging brand story, stories may be interwoven into all your content types, including blogs, e-books, whitepapers, and even your "About us" page. You can also teach your sales representatives how to tell the story behind your business or product or utilize your brand story to enthrall investors and make significant money.

Once you master the art of storytelling, your audience will always be looking forward to knowing you better or hearing from you frequently, turning your readers into leads, leads into customers, and customers into brand advocates.

Skill #7: Assessing new technology tools for growth and seamless operations

Marketers have a buffet at their fingertips when choosing the right technology to help make their marketing activities and operations easier. They have a wide range of effective technology tools, like CRMs, marketing and sales automation platforms, and analytics software.

But how do you know which would best help you grow your business? There are many difficult choices to be made, but as a demand generation marketer, it is an important skill to master. 

Smart marketers must be capable of researching and evaluating new technological tools. However, that goes beyond just tool analysis. You also have to think about how the new technology will work with the tools you already have—how it will integrate and affect your customers. 

To demonstrate the ROI of their efforts, B2B demand generation marketers must first feel at ease using their CRM's reporting features. Campaign performance will ultimately depend on tracking qualified leads through conversion points and during the handoff to sales.

You can start with Buffer’s list of 41 of the Best Free Marketing Tools for Smart Marketers; in addition to that, if you want to learn more about new technology you can use to streamline your marketing activities and campaign creation, you may use platforms like HubSpot, Google, and even Coursera.

Skill #8: Collaborative spirit

Marketing is a demanding job, and if you are a marketer worth your salt, you will surely agree that collaboration between the different departments at the company is essential to achieve the best results. In fact, 93% of marketers concur that collaboration between marketing and analytics teams is vital; also, aligning marketing and sales departments can lead to 38% in sales win rates.

Marketing teams frequently have many active initiatives, tools at their disposal, and competing priorities to take into account. To foster an environment where their marketing initiatives can succeed, you should be able to work together and communicate with your team members, key stakeholders, other departments at the company, and, ultimately, customers.

Successful marketers can balance their personal beliefs with the knowledge that their colleagues have to provide by incorporating comments and advice from others. To ensure that their marketing initiatives complement revenue targets and the organization's broader mission, even one-person marketing teams should work with sales, product, and leadership.

Skill #9: Providing clarity about minute aspects of the buyer persona with the help of activity data

And once again, it comes down to analytics. Most marketers don’t know how to analyze data efficiently enough that they can apply the understanding to better their marketing campaigns. Marketers using demand generation need to be adept at detecting opportunities because effective marketers never ignore the data.

You may get a sharper, more complete picture of the buyer and choose the ideal content kind and placement by connecting opportunity and activity data. Naturally, this results in stronger buyer profiles and a better comprehension of the marketing environment. A clear picture also makes it easier to weed out ineffective material, focus on when to make offers, and drop unsuccessful areas from the marketing strategy.

A demand generation marketer who can expertly sift through data can bring many other benefits. These can include keeping track of items such as page visits, time spent on the site, bounce rate, and conversions using platforms like Google Analytics, Marketo, Pardot, and HubSpot. 

You may also need to learn how to pinpoint marketing variables that resulted in purchasing activities. Interpreting data correctly may also empower you to visually convey the story of your influence once you've gathered all those information from the analytics. 

After all, it is always better to have a data-supported answer when your CEO asks why a particular marketing initiative was successful instead of saying, “it was just really creative.”

Skill #10: Marketing automation

With new technology like AI, most marketing and sales functions will inevitably not need a human touch in the future. But instead of fearing one would be out of a job, a great marketer should learn how to maximize the implementation of marketing and sales automation tools to make their own lives easier and make marketing operations and client communication at their company seamless.

Did you know that agencies have seen a 451% increase in qualified leads using marketing automation software? For a demand generation marketer, marketing automation tools can design behavioral email marketing plans, automatically update documents with useful campaign data for quick reference, and much more.

You may improve operational efficiency and free up more time for strategic and creative efforts that directly impact your brand by automating boring marketing tasks. Marketing automation tools are a boon for contemporary marketers today, especially those concerned with demand generation. Using the proper marketing automation software, you can build drip-marketing email campaigns, scrape SEO data using Python and even integrate apps with Zapier.

Lock in high-quality leads through demand generation—with RevenueHero! 

Even marketers who work in the trenches every day can't possibly know some things there is to know about the constantly changing field of digital marketing. And demand generation marketers are unequivocally responsible for conceptualizing top-of-the-funnel (or TOFU) content that pushes other marketing activities toward success. This is why they must practice and exhibit continual learning in their area of expertise and digital marketing.

Demand generation marketers also design the mechanisms that launch the consumer relationship and pave the way for more qualified sales opportunities. But as mentioned above, they need to know the nitty-gritty of marketing automation, such as sales tools. And one sales tool that can convert the qualified leads they get through demand to paying customers is RevenueHero! 

Let’s discuss it in detail. RvenueHero is a sales automation tool that helps you nurture the high-quality leads your successful demand generation campaign brought in to fill your sales pipeline. The platform: 

• assists you in gauging the lead quality and prioritizing them based on high-value offers; and,
• supports you in communicating promptly and effectively by making scheduling instant appointments seamless. 

In other words, you must have this solution to improve your business's customer service and manage all your high-quality leads in one location. Additionally, this SaaS platform provides straightforward integration with every GTM stack product you might own and an effective lead scoring system, both at quite the bargain!

If you master the ten skills listed in this blog, you will quickly dominate demand generation and generate more leads with greater success. And if you want to know more about converting them, check RevenueHero out here!