Building the Case for Demand
Are you a small business founder stuck in the “No Grow Zone?” The No Grow Zone is when annual revenue is consistently flat year over year, or only moderately increasing. It’s not a fun place to be, and in fact, stagnant growth is one of the top frustrations of most small business CEOs, along with the ability to find affordable, quality talent.
Businesses can’t grow unless they create demand for their products. Period. If you want to grow profitably, the phone has to ring and the email must bing. Consistently.
Creating demand isn’t just a “build it and they will come” notion. Companies don’t just grow from random activity. And, although there are certainly overnight sensations, they are extremely rare. Most truly successful business owners not only built a great company but figured out how to create a demand generation engine for their brand.
Demand is the key. Demand makes selling your products easier and makes scaling your business less stressful. Demand also makes it easier to plan cash flow and accelerate profitability consistently.
The case for demand isn’t about implementing marketing tools or lead generation programs.
Maybe you’ve already hired a marketing firm and heard that they were successful in driving a lot of traffic to the website, yet your company’s sales remain flat. Advertising, marketing, and lead generation are not the same as demand generation. Here are some of the symptoms of ineffective marketing programs:
Symptom 1: You get plenty of website traffic stats but no concrete lead or revenue results.
Most marketing programs measure web traffic and occasionally leads, not revenue. BIG mistake. If your demand generation program is not tracking performance to REVENUE, you’ll stay stuck in the No Grow Zone.
Symptom 2: There is no clear methodology that directly correlates website traffic to leads, or leads to revenue results.
It’s easy to talk about the sales funnel, or leads going into the sales funnel, but what happens to those leads once you have them? Most lead generation programs fail because there is no methodology to move those valuable leads from awareness to motivated to buy and then to sale closed.
The reason why IGNITE On Purpose offers a Pay-for-Performance program is that we want to align our goals from the start. We only earn a profit for our work, when you’re growing profitably.
The metric that really matters is the amount of revenue generated.
We don’t get excited about website traffic or leads produced until this correlates to revenue generated. Demand generation should correlate activity DIRECTLY with revenue generation, consistently.
Creating demand requires a consistent focus on bringing new people to your website, engaging them with valuable content, cultivating a relationship with them over time, and giving them a reason to buy from you. These are not easy things to do, and most of the time you’ll find professionals are proficient in only 1-2 areas, rather than all of the components of demand.
If you want to make growing your business more fun, more profitable and more consistent, the case for demand is simple: You can’t get out of the No Grow Zone without it.
For more information on how we can help you build a demand generation engine for your business, contact us today.