I dislike the term “Demand Generation”, also referred to as “Demand Creation” because it’s misleading.

Surely marketing professionals know better. I hope. You could always look it up on Wikipedia where it’s reasonably explained.

It’s only in several conversations with business owners and C-level executives over the last few months that I realized how misleading the term is.

Think about how the term sounds to non-marketing professionals. I mean really, you get this image of a marketer ripping and tearing peoples clothes off so that clothing would be in demand.  Or perhaps a mafioso showing up and asking you if you might need some fire insurance.

The demand for your product or service should already exist or you wouldn’t have a business, right?

As marketers, we want prospective customers to raise their hands, call, email or pick up the phone and talk to us. We want the opportunity to explain how their demand is met by us supplying our solution. So the objective is to frame our solution, product and/ or service as the answer to the prospective customer’s existing problems, needs or desires.  Therefore the objective is to re-frame the prospective customers questions so that you are answering them. In order to do this you must determine, in advance, what is their angle of approach.

What does that mean for your online marketing? You could have two different prospective customers reading the exact same content with each coming from a different angle of approach.  So that content you created can mean one thing to one person and another thing to the other person. You might convert one into a lead and not the other. The sad part is that both might be demanding exactly what you offer.

If you’re planning a persuasive experience, that’s more than a landing page for complex sales, please remember that people don’t read pages online.  Instead they experience online hyperlink to hyperlink. That’s why you need to plan the persuasive paths of your campaigns, website and lead nurturing material carefully in order to remain relevant and answer the questions they have the way they want them answered; that’s their angle of approach. An early stage buyer and late stage buyer would have different questions and therefore their angle of approach would differ. Plan your content that way, from the persona’s ( please read “Waiting For Your Cat To Bark?” for a more thorough discussion about personas) point of view, not your point of view and you’ll be successful at re-framing demand. Only once you’ve re-framed the prospective customer’s demand will they be willing to discuss your offering.

I hope that helps.

Please share if you think others would benefit.