How do you create consumer demand for your product?
Trust me, it’s a tough question — the very thought of it scares B2B companies away.
But here’s the truth:
Customers don’t care about your product or business, what they care about is a solution to their problems. Funny enough, they can’t quite figure out what they need. This is why you need to help them.
Customers don't care about your product or business, what they care about is a solution to their problem. Click To Tweet
Perhaps, your product is the right fit for them.
Here’s another eye-opener:
If your product is new and you’ve launched it to the marketplace, it’s going to be tough to break through the consumers’ buying habits.
Here’s why:
According to Harvard Business Review, most American consumers repeatedly buy the same 150 items that meet more than 85% of their needs.
You need creative marketing techniques to break into the market and gain traction.
Have you ever wondered why you decided to go for one product instead of another one? Or why you feel comfortable paying for a product on one website but hesitant on another?
Well, basically it’s because that brand learned how to increase customer demand on their product and convinced you enough to trust them, most times, unconsciously.
However, acquiring customers could be quite difficult as brand loyalty isn’t something you can achieve by mind games — but it’s strictly by making an emotional connection to consumers.
As new businesses and startups flood the marketplace, increasing in their numbers, in order to stay in business you need to know how to increase demand for your products and services.
This is because without consumer demand, there will be no sales and without sales, you’re out of business.
So, it a simple straight line equation, you increase the demand of your product, and from this demand, you acquire loyal consumers willing to pay.
The issue though is how to get consumers to want your product more and make them loyal enough to want to pay for your product.
This is done simply by offering the said product or service as the most efficient and effective solution to a specific problem a particular group of consumers have.
Furthermore, when demand increases, you are literally creating interest in your product with consumers and painting a picture of what value your product will offer them.
That’s how powerful and necessary it is. However, there is always confusion between lead generation and demand generation, so let’s clear that out of the way before we continue.
The Difference Between Lead Generation and Demand Generation
As I’ve stated earlier, there’s a lot of mix up between lead generation vs. demand generation and knowing the difference will assist you in adequately achieving your goals.
When it comes to content marketing, both lead generation and demand generation are important.
Now, lead generation is concerned with acquiring the details of potential customers, which is then used to further nurture these prospective clients till they have been fully nurtured for a sale pitch to be made to them.
It usually involves creating valuable content that explains a product and beneath the content or while the potential client is reading, they see a form, requesting for their details such as email address or phone numbers.
And when these details are captured the brand uses them as a means to nurture them and make sales pitches when they are ready. So, it really is just concerned with first getting leads then informing prospects.
However, with demand generation, the inverse is the case. It involves a brand or business informing prospects all about a product and how the particular is beneficial to them as it solves a major problem they have.
It’s basically a much more aggressive way of getting into the heart of your audience. Furthermore, unlike lead generation, it’s a lot more top-of-funnel.
What Does a “Demand Increase Strategy” Do?
Without a strategy, you’re setting up to fail. This is why all demand increase strategies must include certain processes; otherwise, it becomes difficult to transit prospects from one point to the other.
Let’s have a look at some of them:
1. Make Your Product Needed
Could you ever have imagined that in the 80s nobody carried a water bottle into meetings? And no one suffered from dehydration? Well, how did everyone suddenly have the need to always have a water bottle by them?
The answer is simple, you increase the demand for your products when you make it valuable and accessible to the right people. Or you can generate demand by stating the implications.
Water bottling brands utilized frightening health researches by stating you needed to always drink water or you’ll die from dehydration.
What’s more? Others stated that springs are a lot healthier than how any other type of water is gotten.
So basically water bottle brands, made their product look unavoidable by showing with hard facts how it was impossible to solve dehydration and live healthy without their product.
Furthermore, they created the problem. No one ever thought they’d die without having a water bottle by their side till they saw the adverts or read the studies.
So, make your product needed. Even if your prospective customers seem to have no problems, create one and offer the solution.
2. Boost Your Brands Awareness
It might interest you to know that a recent survey showed that 89% of marketers consider brand awareness to be their most important goal.
This isn’t absurd as other data shows that brand awareness done consistently is capable of increasing revenue by 23%.
Now, that’s some interesting fact to get your motor running. When you’re trying to increase demand and ultimately acquire sales, your product needs to be known.
Nobody buys anything they aren’t sure of. People have to know that the product exists first off before you even think of showing them how it is valuable to them. That’s why brand awareness is essential to every demand generation strategy.
When you place your product out there in front of your target audience, the possibility of a prospective customer remembering the benefits of your product when they want to purchase is highly increased.
Hence, ensure that your target audience is aware that your brand exists and has and product to offer that will solve their challenges.
3. Show Potential Customers the Benefit of Choosing You
After you’ve shown your potential customers what your product is all about and revealed the problems it will solve for them, you still need to open their eyes to the benefits they gain in choosing you over your competitors who offer similar solutions.
This is where exactly your product fits into the market.
For instance, Rebecca Minkoff, a fashion designer who stepped into the fashion world as a newbie and sought for a way to differentiate her brand from other fashion brands.
Her idea was simple. In a world where people don’t see the need to go into physical stores anymore but prefer to simply make a purchase online, she did something amazing!
When a consumer walks into her store, they are met with a touchscreen device that enables them to literally get suggestions and recommendations on new collections. This basically hands over the store experience to the customer, just like how an online store would.
This alone increased sales and made her brand stand out from every other physical fashion store she was in competition with.
That’s how to do it!
Show consumers why you’re better than the competition. You may offer the same solutions but you’ve got class with yours and you deliver yours in a better way, whatever it is ensure you stand out.
Now, let’s dive into the various techniques you can utilize when seeking to increase demand for your product and acquire more sales to your website.
Techniques to Increase Demand for Your Products
There are numerous techniques you can use when you’re trying to boost up customer demand. There’s no one fix solution, you basically have to use a technique that links up well to your niche.
However, in order to guide you, here are some of the different techniques you can use to get more customers buying your product:
1. Leverage ‘Scarcity’ to Create Demand
In September 2016, Snap Inc, the parent company of online app Snapchat unveiled the Snapchat Spectacles. This was a Sunglass that had the ability to record 10 seconds video for Snapchat! Pretty cool right?
Well, the awesomeness of the product wasn’t enough for Snap Inc. The company embraced the scarcity principle by making Snapchat Spectacles available only in Snapchat App Lookalike Vending Machines.
So, basically, unlike other products, it wasn’t available online for purchase. And these vending machines were placed around cities of the United States at random locations.
Your guess is good as mine; it created a rush from consumers! People love exclusivity. There were huge queues all around these Snapchat Vending Machines, with customers waiting to get a spectacle before it finishes for the day.
That’s how powerful the scarcity principle is! It creates urgency in the mind of customers that it needs to be gotten as quickly as possible before it runs out.
Keep in mind that no special brand awareness campaign was run for this product. It simply generated a buzz on social media as a result of the fact that it was limited.
So, if you want to increase demand for your product, you may consider offering it as limited for a period of time, as this will create a rush from consumers who want to get it before it runs out.
2. Take Advantage of Video Marketing
You can drive incredible demand for your brand by taking advantage of video marketing through video sites such as YouTube.
By creating videos that contain details of your brand and what it does and sharing these videos on video sites, you can generate massive demand for your product or service.
Creating a video for your business is not as difficult as most people think it is. You don’t need a professional actor or expensive equipment; you can get it done with your personal camera or smartphone.
All you need to do is to clearly pass across your message to your target audience. Ensure that the video is simple to understand and straight to the point, it shouldn’t be unnecessarily long.
Aside from posting videos on video sites like YouTube, you can also include videos on your website, these videos will are meant to help your prospective customers understand your brand more.
Video Marketing does not only increase your organic traffic, but it also boosts the demand for your brand and makes it easier for you to make sales.
You may be wondering how a simple video can make a hundred percent difference, well the thing is that videos are more engaging and have more conversions especially when the content of the video is good.
If you want to increase demand for your brand and achieve the ultimate goal, then you should think of making quality videos for video sites and also for your website or blog.
3. Try Out Partner Marketing
Partner marketing entails collaborating with other brands or companies and co-creating content with then in order to be exposed to their audience and also expose them to your own audience.
This is usually a win-win situation and it is mostly used if you do not have the exposure you desire in the market.
You can partner with trusted and well-known brands in the market and take advantage of their popularity to generate demand for your brand.
It is, however, important to note that you should not partner with just about any company, only partner with companies that have a good reputation in their market because their reputation will rub off on you.
If you partner with a company that is considered to be fraudulent, your brand may be perceived as a fraudulent brand too.
Also, you should partner with companies that have similar audiences to yours whose products complement and not compete with yours.
Partnering with a competitor on the market is a disaster waiting to happen but if you partner with companies whose products or services complement yours, by doing this, you will generate high demand for your brand, gather new prospective customers and also not endanger your current customers.
4. Update Your Blog Regularly
One of the strongest ways you can generate demand for your brand is through your brand’s blog.
A well-updated blog will increase the volume of organic traffic you generate and also increase the sales you make.
The importance of having quality content on your blog cannot be overemphasized.
The quality of your blog is hinged on the quality of the content you publish and how relevant and current the information is. Ensure that the content you publish solves the problems of your customers.
On a daily basis, new discoveries are being made and yesterday’s information may become obsolete today; that is why you need to have a regularly updated blog.
If your blog is not updated you won’t be able to meet the needs of your customers and with the time you will lose them to other current brands.
Updating your blog is a very easy technique you can use to increase demand and ultimately boost sales.
This is a very easy but amazing way that you can increase your reach and increase the demand for your brand. By making guest posts on blogs, creating content for other sites and publications in your niche, you can increase demand for your product or service.
When you are making a guest post you are usually to make mention or reference your brand, this is a way of advertising your brand.
When these posts and publications are shared by authority websites or companies you will gain great exposure.
Danny Iny for instance, grew to notoriety writing guest posts on Copyblogger. And in a few months, he had written up to 80 posts. This grew his audience and also became his business’ customer foundation.
But remember that if you want to be successful with guest blogging, you need little patience because you need to build trust and gain the credibility needed for large websites in your niche or industry to trust you enough to feature your content on their blog/site.
Most popular and trusted brands do not accept publications from just about anybody; they only feature publications from already established writers.
This is why you need to take time to build up your brand and gain trust by writing high-quality content for smaller sites and then you can gradually get the attention of the big guys in your industry.
Even though this does not just happen overnight, it is definitely a sure fire way to get endless demand for your brand.
6. Take Advantage of Social Media
As you already know social media is one of the strongest avenues through which you can boost the awareness and demand for your brand.
With the right strategy, you can gather a large following for your brand and create massive awareness for your brand, and the creation of awareness equals the increase in demand.
One great example of this is when the Hinge dating app linked up with certain social media meme influencers and was able to re-brand the company with just a few posts.
This led to over 100k downloads on Google Play.
Social media also gives you the opportunity to have a one on one relationship with your potential customers by conversing with them at a personal level.
This solid relationship that you establish with your customers through social media will increase the demand for your product or service.
To maximize the opportunity that social media gives you, ensure that you have the right content that can spur the interest of your target audience. Also, have a working schedule for the sharing of the content on social media.
When you publish your posts, don’t forget to get involved in the conversation in the comment section, this will solidify the relationship between you and your customers and motivate new customers to make a demand.
Don’t get stuck up with using just one social media channel, especially if it is no longer working well. Step out of your comfort zone and explore new channels and platforms that will increase your reach and boost your awareness.
How to Turn Demand Into Sales
The goal of generating demand is to eventually turn that demand into sales. Discover 5 ways to generate sales through demand below.
1. Get Consumers to Spread the Word
Think about it deeply, what would you rather believe, your friend introducing a product to you or a Facebook ad telling you about a product? I’m pretty sure you’d go for the first one.
That’s how getting consumers to spread the word about your product increases demand. For example, the fashion brand Girlfriend Collective.
At the time, Girlfriend Collective had just launched their website and was seeking to increase demand generation for their leggings. So what did they do?
The brand simply asked its female customers to spread the word about the leggings and they will dedicate 100% of their advertising budget to leggings production.
That wasn’t all; customers who did this would get to buy $100 worth for only shipping cost, which means they’d basically get it for free!
Well, as you can imagine, it was a riot! The first day of this campaign Girlfriend Collective sold a whopping 10,000 pairs of leggings!
Now, that’s some demand generation and it reveals how effective consumer recommendation is, to the demand increase of any product.
It’s easier to get consumers to trust their friends and family members than a random social network ad.
2. Ensure You Deliver Value
Owning a brand is not enough to give you sales, what matters the most is the quality and value that your brand delivers.
When prospective customers come across your brand, what they are looking for is a product or service that will meet their needs and add value to their lives. If they are convinced that your brand has value, they will go beyond the demand stage and make purchases.
The reason why some people don’t go through to make a purchase is mostly because they get attracted to your site probably through your ads and when they land on your site, they discover that you have no value to offer, which more or less, discourages them from taking an action.
And this will make it impossible for you to get sales.
If however you offer enough value and your customers can testify to it they will reward your great quality by referring your brand to other people, this will increase your reach and also increase the number of sales you make.
3. Engage Your Customers
Getting your customers committed to your brand will increase the chances of their demands being turned to sales. This is most important if you have a one on one relationship with your consumer.
Engaging with them on an individual level and not treating them as a group will endear them more to you. Let the emails and messages you send to them be personalized.
Instead of sending a bulk mail with Hello, send one with the names of the customers, you can say “Hello John” this makes it more personal and makes the consumer feel like he knows you more and can trust you more.
AT&T emails are an example of quality customer engagement, by sending out individualized emails beginning with the customer’s first name.
For every relationship to thrive well, you must understand the needs of the other person, the same is applicable in this case, for demands to be turned into sales, you need to know what your customers want, cater to those needs and also get them to cater to your own needs.
You may have one or two things you want your customers to do which subtly nudges them to make purchases or increasing the reach of your brand.
Such actions you want them to take may be giving you their contact information, sharing your message or even making a purchase.
Allowing customers to come to your website and leaving without a commitment won’t get you any sales this is why you should tell them exactly what you need them to do and then you can follow up the action you make sure that they purchase from you.
This may sound a bit selfish to you but it isn’t, customers like being cajoled to make decisions and when you clearly place your call to action or what you want them to do, they tend to perceive your brand as a serious, business-minded brand that can be trusted.
4. Constantly Woo Your Target Audience
Keeping the spark alive is not only beneficial to romantic relationships, but it is also important in business relations.
Don’t ever get too relaxed to the point that you are not doing anything to keep your target audience interested in your brand.
In business, there is no room for arrival syndrome, the fact that there is demand does not mean that you will automatically make a sale, you have to make conscious and deliberate efforts to make the sales to happen.
One way to keep your audience captivated in your brand and easily get them to make purchases is by creating target campaigns that will re-engage your loyal customers and also attract new customers to your brand.
Have a key message and constantly spice it up and emphasize the relevance of your brand to the consumer. When you do this on a regular basis, they won’t have issues making up their mind to go through with purchasing.
5. Regularly Evaluate Your Performance
Regular evaluation will help you not to lose your value to the customer and will also make you stay abreast with new ideas and answer new questions of your customers.
Change is a constant thing especially in the world of business and to make sure you are not left behind, you need to regularly gauge your performance and make sure that you are still relevant to your customers.
Take, for instance the #TFWGuccifro campaign, when Gucci decided to change things up a bit and reach out to young people and this got the brand 200 million new potential customers interested in their products.
Hence, evaluate your goals and make sure that they are being met, check your traffic, engagement, and conversions and see how well you’re doing and how beneficial your brand is in the market.
When you do this on a regular basis, you will be abreast with the ever-changing needs of the consumers and you will be able to stay relevant to them at every step of the sales funnel.
This will, of course, increase your sales.
But if you decide to get stuck in one spot without making an improvement, you will most likely not make any sales because you will be of little or no value.
Conclusion
One of the hardest things for any brand to achieve is customer acquisition. You need to be able to create demand for your product. If people do not see a need to want your product, they won’t desire it.
Increasing product demand all has to do with unveiling a problem and offering your product as the solution to the problem. The problem doesn’t even have to be obvious to consumers. It’s your job to make it obvious.
Furthermore, it goes beyond this, you have to keep in mind that you have competitors who are most likely offering the same solutions as you.
Hence, you’ve got to find a way to stand out. This is what makes customers loyal, and loyal customers are paying customers.
Such consumers are getting something different from what everyone offers and hence they are willing to pay for it. Never forget how vital product demand increase is to making quality sales.
So, simply follow the tips outlined in this article and you’ll see a rapid increase in demand and sales.
Related Posts:
- Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Manufacturers
- What is Demand Generation and Why is it Important for Your B2B Business?
- Demand Creation & Lead Generation
- B2B Demand Generation: The Complete Guide With 8 Strategies and Examples
- How to Increase Demand and Capture an Audience on Your Website
