A while back I did an entry on demand generation and facebook’s Beacon experiment.

It got me thinking about whether you can actually generate demand. As my friend David Taber writes: 

“Excluding fads, impulse buys, snake-oil, and vice, it is virtually impossible to profitably create demand. People either need your product / service, or they don’t:  it’s a matter of making people aware they have a need, making them aware that there are solutions and you offer one, and focusing their desire on your offering.”

The idea that you can program someone to need something is far fetched at best. Quite simply: People need it or they don’t. It seems a bit lofty to think that one can actually make someone need something, short of actually creating an event that forces need. However, the problem is the same if they do wake up one morning realizing they need tires because theirs mysteriously went flat. The target with need must be found in a sea of noise.

Again, this is where search excels. You have a need, you conduct a search, you find vendors, you click, you buy. Demand fulfilled.

Creation of demand depends on so many exogenous factors that are beyond the realm of a marketer’s control. So what’s the answer to demand creation?

Its not rocket science. Most of you know this already. You have to get your demand fulfillment game on to satisfy the demand when it occurs. You need to make sure your demand fulfillment is easily discoverable and that you have productized your offering in a way that its easy to learn about and easy to consume. Her are a few things that have proven over time to work:

1. Buy search terms that point people with a need to your product. (Use SEM, SEO and Social Media)
2. Provide simple information to give the people the data they need to make a buy decision. (build an informational area on your website about your product category that positions you as a thought leader in the space and provides the seeds of relationship building. Make sure you have a good listing of user testimonials and recommendations - these travel well in social media if leveraged properly. Also use content/product recommendation engines to stimulate site visitors to look at relevant goods — this helps people find what they are looking for in a helpful, non-intrusive way)
3. Price the product or service in a way that is competitive. (Its important to understand what a product means: Its not just the mp3 player. Its the download service, the simplicity of using the device, the integration with other tools, the cool factor and other product experience attributes). In this case, if your product requires service, you might be able to charge more than a mail order shop because you are local. If you are an instant gratification product marketer, you might be able to charge more than online stores in a retail environment)
4. Continue the dialog after the purchase to ensure you are front of mind when demand strikes again (Use email newsletters, well placed banner ads for branding if you have the budget). Also be sure to arm the customer with any follow on information they need through your service support, follow on contacts, etc. Use blogs, wikis or forums on your site to encourage the community. This will go a long way to help them make a recommendation on your behalf when others smitten by demand ask them where they fulfilled a similar demand earlier.

Having said all of this, there are instances when demand is generated over time through great marketing. I’ll use the iPod again. If you see those white headphone wires enough over time (great product marketing decisions), you will begin to ask yourself why so many other people have them. You’ll do an “ipod’ search. You’ll go to the Apple site, you’ll see from the information (well written, easy to consume words about features and benefits). You’ll realize the benefit of loading 5000 songs in your pocket and listen to anything at the click of a button. You’ll realize that the CD player in your pocket (if you can fit it) is no longer convenient. You are already at the website…why not buy now?

Now most of us don’ have Apple’s budget or cool-factor. So it takes a lot of work to get qualified leads. And the process is not a one time deal. It has to be ongoing. Again, quoting David Taber:

“…most of the marketing strategies do not depend on one-shot tactics or miracles:  the magic is a low cost, repeatable process involving:

• Valuable content that is frequently updated to attract and interest people.
• Web infrastructure to get the users (SEO, widgets, CMS, webinar archives, web analytics).
• Web infrastructure to encourage community development (wikis, blogging engines, forum engines, and web analytics).
• SFA and email blast/drip engines to stimulate conversion.
• eCommerce and recommendation engines to enable an instantaneous transition from audience to customer, and to make upsells frequent.
• Easy access to partner products and services, to make the “whole product” easier to consume.
• For the enterprise, really tight Telemarketing/Telesales to cultivate leads and encourage more serious interest.
• Logistical cleverness, particularly for product customization and returns.  Few, if any “middlemen” should be required — distributors and resellers only make sense when there’s a bulky physical good — as almost anything can be drop-shipped from your warehouse.

Until there is a true demand creation tool, well organized demand fulfillment should be front of mind.

 
Your thoughts?