It’s a comforting thought. Just create more demand for your product or service and watch the sales roll in.
Problem is, you can’t do it. Anyone who tells you you can, doesn’t understand what demand really is.
In B2B, your prospects buy things when they need them. They know all about their problems but focus on those that are urgent and important.
No amount of marketing communication will shift them from being out of market (which is about 95% of them), to being active buyers.
Instead of trying to create demand…
- Focus on being more memorable with businesses you’d like to work with.
- Create and reinforce mental associations between their needs and your solution.
- Aim to be the first business that comes to mind when they’re ready to act.
- Be patient and realistic. The ‘problem unaware’ buyer is another dangerous myth.
What triggers demand?
If ‘demand creation’ is a myth and you can’t persuade your prospects into demanding your solution what should you do?
The point about demand is that it’s driven by your prospects’ circumstances and priorities. They’re busy. They’re not actively looking for more ways to spend money. (I guess your business is pretty much the same in this respect).
So you need to understand what factors or events will make finding a solution like yours a priority. Understand what they’re not getting from their current vendor and you might see a profitable positioning opportunity.
Marketers talk about these factors and circumstances as Category Entry Points (CEPs). The better you understand your CEPs the more you’re able to shape your marketing communications to be relevant when it matters.
It might be that they’ve outgrown their current solution, their current supplier is letting them down, or that the deficiencies are limiting their business expansion.
The answers are in your market, not inside your business.
What happens when demand is triggered?
Prospects start with who they know and who they can remember. Big, well-known competitors have a natural upper-hand here. You need to work hard to be remembered by your ideal customers.
Buyers also hate risk.
According to the Harvard Business Review 80% of vendors have a set of vendors in mind before they do any research.
90% of businesses who go on to make a purchase will choose somebody from the day 1 list. Scary!
Add to this the fact that 40% of procurement processes result in no decision and you get a sense of what you’re up against.
Forget demand creation
When it comes to customer demand and winning new business, you can’t shape the world as you’d like it to be. Learn to work with how it really is and ignore those who want to convince you that demand creation is a thing.
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