Optimizing your website for Demand Generation does not have to be complicated or expensive. Your company’s website is the centerpiece of your online presence, and many prospective customers will come to your site to learn more about your firm. As you begin to implement Demand Generation strategies and develop educational content for your target audience, it’s important to think about how visitors to your website interact and engage with your online content.
Your current website may need a few tweaks to make sure it’s aligned with and supports your Demand Generation strategy. Let’s review the principles of Demand Generation and provide examples of three ways you can optimize your website for Demand Generation.
What Is Demand Generation?
Demand Generation is the process of continuously engaging with a target audience over time so that when prospects have a business need your firm can solve, they think of your company. Demand Generation programs help companies build name recognition and grow an engaged audience of potential buyers. Over time, Demand Generation strategies lead to scalable revenue for companies who have invested in growing and nurturing relationships with their audience of potential customers.
How Can Your Website Support Demand Generation?
Demand Generation programs use a wide variety of channels to engage with and educate your target audience, like niche newsletters, webinars, surveys, and in-person educational and networking events. But don’t underestimate the role that your website plays in the process of building relationships with prospective customers. After all, your website is the one centralized location where your posted content is always accessible to your prospects. So make sure that your website is filled with content that aligns with your Demand Generation goal to engage and educate your audience.
When you optimize your website for Demand Generation, prospective buyers can easily go from online searches directly to the high-value, targeted content they are looking for. Providing high-quality content that resonates with your audience demonstrates that your firm understands the needs and challenges of those prospects. This helps position your company as an expert resource and reinforces to visitors why they should continue to engage with your firm.
Here are three important ways to optimize your website for Demand Generation and increase engagement with your target audience:
1. Make Sure Your Content Specifically Targets Your Prospects
Members of your target audience who visit your website should easily recognize and identify with the educational information they find on your site. It should be easy to tell from your content that your firm is knowledgeable about their particular needs and concerns. Conversely, visitors who are NOT a good fit with your target audience should quickly realize that as well.
Say, for example, that your target audience is small businesses that have never implemented a CRM system before. To optimize your website for Demand Generation, your website content should provide many kinds of specific educational information intended just for this audience.
Topics like “What You Should Know Before Choosing Your First CRM System”, “How To Know When It’s Time To Get A CRM System”, “Five Ways CRM Systems Increase Revenues For Growing Firms”, or “Which CRM System Works Best For Small Companies?” would all help website visitors realize your firm is knowledgeable about their specific situation and a valuable information resource. Visitors who can easily identify with your content are likely to continue to engage with your firm to learn more about these topics and how you might help them. This is what Demand Generation is all about.
In this scenario, your website would NOT contain content that describes the CRM needs of larger companies, profiles the top providers of enterprise CRM systems, or discusses what is required to transition from one CRM system to another. If website visitors are looking for that kind of information, they can quickly see that your site does NOT contain content that is relevant to them and they can move on to other sources. By clearly targeting your website content and messaging to your prospects, you can attract a pre-qualified pool of potential customers into your target audience. This is one way to harness the power of your website for Demand Generation activities.
2. Provide Content In A Variety of Formats
Another way to optimize your website for Demand Generation is to provide visitors with many different ways to take in your informative content. Offering limited content formats on your website, like blog posts and text-heavy webpages, is not the best way to meet the unique needs and learning preferences of your target audience. Differentiate your website content from your competitors by including targeted, highly relevant content that can be watched, read, listened to, or downloaded.
It’s important to remember that different people prefer to consume content in different ways. People who like to watch videos or listen to podcasts will be looking for video and audio content on your site like recorded webinars, interviews, and instructional videos. Those who value research will be drawn to your site’s case studies, whitepapers, and surveys. Visitors who learn best by reading will gravitate toward your blog posts and downloadable eBook. People who prefer in-person interaction will want to know about the next educational event in their area. Your website for Demand Generation can provide education, increase engagement, and support Demand Generation strategies by offering a wide variety of content formats.
In addition, content types can also be made available to consume in a way that works best for each website visitor. This could mean offering the ability to read or watch online, print or download to review later, receive content or links via email, or any other creative way that lets your target audience choose how to receive information from you. Optimize your website for Demand Generation by providing multiple types of content that are available for delivery in multiple ways to best meet the needs of your target audience.
3. Offer Multiple Ways To Engage
Much more than a traditional Contact Us Form or a newsletter sign-up link, a website for Demand Generation contains content and features that are specifically designed to maximize engagement and interaction with the audience. This means providing multiple ways for prospective customers to engage with your website content depending on where they are in the buying process.
Once a visitor gets to your site, they should be able to find targeted content that is relevant to where they are on their journey through the buying process. Are they just conducting initial research? Perhaps they are ready to subscribe to your educational newsletter to learn more. Are they anticipating a future business need? Maybe they would like to attend a webinar or an in-person speaker panel to hear how their peers found solutions to the same concerns they are facing. Visitors might be interested in taking a short survey and then receiving a report of the consolidated findings to understand how their peers view an important topic.
Other ways members of your target audience can engage on your website might include taking a short interactive quiz to evaluate whether they are ready for a particular product or service, or completing a checklist to determine if they have considered all the relevant points in a decision-making process. There are many thoughtful and creative ways to give your target audience reasons to engage with your content and your firm.
Your website can play a key role in supporting your Demand Generation strategies. Think like a customer and anticipate how to demonstrate that your firm understands their needs and has valuable expertise to share on topics that interest them. Be sure to include a variety of content and touchpoints when you optimize your website for Demand Generation so you can establish many different ways to nurture and grow an ongoing relationship with your audience.
Want to learn more about how Demand Generation can help grow your business?
FounderScale specializes in Demand Generation and can help you develop and execute programs, campaigns, and events that keep you top-of-mind when your audience is ready to buy. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter Scaling B2B for more information on scaling revenues with Demand Generation.
