Kick-start 2010 with demand generation best practices

As this year is winding down to an end, the industry experts have started to post their year-end reviews and predictions one by one. There is a ton of great advice out there and companies are listening to these demand generation experts. Businesses large and small have become more open to strategizing and implementing nurturing and engagement programs.

This year companies have become more open to aligning their functional structures and capabilities to support demand generation programs. They devote more resources to lead generation and retention marketing strategies. This is good news for us demand generation practitioners. This means the ground work is underway and executive buy-in is easier to achieve.

According to Aberdeen Group, there are four common traits in firms that successfully deploy demand generation and nurturing programs:
1. They implement initiatives to monitor and improve lead to sales conversion
2. They instill an organizational focus on lead generation and measurement
3. They adopt technologies to automate lead generation and lead management
4. They segment and target specific geographies and demographics

An effective demand generation and lead nurturing program tracks everything from number of inquiries generated, website traffic, lead to conversion ratio, page view duration, lead to close ratios and lead to close time frame. All of these indicators are measurable therefore subject to improvement.

The direct effect of the proliferation of demand generation and nurturing practices is that sales and marketing functions move closer and closer to each other. Sales and marketing will never overlap but I look forward to the day turf wars become a non-issue. That day is closer than ever in my view.