For any business, driving sales and revenue growth requires finding and capturing demand for your products or services. This involves a combination of demand generation activities that put your brand in front of new audiences, and demand capture efforts to convert interest into leads and sales. In today’s digital landscape, effective demand generation and capture requires thoughtful coordination of paid media and owned channels.

On the demand generation side, paid media like social ads, SEM, and display advertising enable you to precisely target your ideal customer profile (ICP) and get your brand and offerings in front of those most likely to have interest and intent. These outbound channels send traffic to your owned properties (i.e. your website, marketplace, etc), where inbound efforts take over to nurture interest into leads and sales.

Demand Generation

When using paid media for demand generation, focus on:

• Identifying your ICP – Compile demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data on existing customers to hone in on common attributes of those most likely to buy from you. Target ads precisely to this profile.
• Driving traffic to key landing pages – Send paid traffic to targeted landing pages that speak directly to the intended audience and move them towards conversion.
• Testing and optimizing campaigns – Continuously test ad creative, messaging, landing page design, calls-to-action, and target audience parameters. Iterate based on performance data.
• Expanding reach and frequency – Scale up high-performing ads and target similar audiences to expand reach. Increase frequency to desired levels based on sales cycle length.

Demand Capture

When using paid media to capture demand, focus on:

• Compelling content – Blog posts, guides, video, and other content should address pain points and customer needs focused on moving visitors through the sales funnel.
• Clear calls-to-action – Calls-to-action on pages and content should have a singular purpose and clearly direct visitors to take next steps.
• Reduced friction – Eliminate any friction in capture forms, checkouts, and other conversion processes. More steps and fields equal lower conversions.
• Lead nurturing – Have automated email nurture sequences in place to continue engagement with prospects who are not yet sales-ready.
• Site optimization – Utilize on-site analytics to identify and eliminate website friction points, technical issues, or confusing user flows. Continuously test and iterate.

By coordinating paid media and inbound efforts, you can increase both the quantity and quality of traffic to your site. Paid ads broaden your audience reach, while conversion-focused inbound activities capture and nurture qualified leads over time. Allocate budget and resources across both, regularly assess performance, and shift focus as needed to balance demand generation and capture. With testing and optimization, you can hone in on the right mix to drive sales growth.

Ready to work with a partner that can help you find the right balance of continuously generating demand while increasing your inbound leads? Request a call from Northcast to see if we can help accelerate your revenue through strategic growth marketing.