What is the right first steps in setting up a demand generation campaign?

Hi Jeff, very good question.

My strategy for a small business would initially consist of the following steps:
1. define one buyer persona and their role in the buyer cycle;
2. create fitting and remarkable content for this persona;
3. setup a proper landing page;
4. enable lead capturing with the help of basic autoresponder solution or a basic CRM solution (web-to-lead);
5. optimalize and promote your content on social media/blog

Once you've got this system running properly, you could consider expanding your content strategy to more buyer personas across multiple stages of the buying cycle and eventually select a proper marketing-automation solution to nurture and assign scores to leads, coming in from your landing page(s).

SBOs (and even marketingpros in bigger sized companies) in the Netherlands, where I'm from are not yet very aware of their possibilities with inbound marketing/demand generation solutions.

Kind regards,
Robbert

Jeff -

The first step is to clearly and articulately define your buyer(s). The creation of multiple personas to support this definition is critical. The personas need to incorporate your gatekeepers, influencers, decision makers and executives so that you and your team can quickly evaluation the key value propositions for each constituent.

The second step is to establish these value propositions for each constituent in your decision cycle. Be certain to focus closely on the intersection of each of the value propositions so they build 'upward' throughout the organization (e.g. do not disconnect from level to level as the decision process is made). This is a common problem - disconnected values in the decision cycle.

The third step is to test these value props on your target personas. Work with an existing customer or partner and ask them for their feedback. Most companies, I have found, are more than willing to help out their partners when asked.

The fourth step is to re-evaluate the personas and value propositions based upon this feedback. From here you should arrive at your first publicly ready 'pitch'.

How you execute the pitch is then a more detailed set of requirements (is this web, direct mail, direct email, event, etc.?) specific to the execution path you choose.

Listen closely to your test market as your expectation of a web campaign may be best addressed via email or events ... or vice versa.

Thanks for the answers, Robbert and Chris. I agree with both of you. Define your buyers. Develop personas. Establish value propositions.

That's the ideal approach. Thanks for sharing.

Jeff Ogden, President
Find New Customers "Lead Generation Made Simple"
http://www.findnewcustomers.net

Of course we must determine those simple four "P"s of marketing. These are: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

What is the place in the life cycle of your product?

Is this an innovative product? Who is the customer? What is the size of the marketplace? What are the cross-over markets that can be persued? Are we the manufacturers? Is the a B2B or B2C? These are essential to where and when and at what price that we will utilize for the creation of our marketing plan.

I also have a new thing to toss into the mix. I call this the curiousity quotion.