7 Mistakes You’re Probably Making in Your Demand Gen Campaigns (and How to Fix Them)
- Adatha Group
- Dec 20, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 15
Let’s face it: demand generation campaigns can either make you look like a marketing genius or
leave you scrambling to explain a disappointing pipeline to your boss. The line between success and disaster is thinner than your patience after a day of back-to-back Zoom calls.
If you’ve ever wondered, “Why aren’t my campaigns working?” - congratulations! You might be unknowingly committing one (or all) of the following cardinal sins. But don’t worry, we’ve got the antidotes to turn things around and get your campaigns humming like a well-oiled marketing machine.
7 Ways to Ruin Your Demand Gen Campaigns
Skipping Audience ResearchWithout a deep understanding of your target audience, your messaging will miss the mark. Generic campaigns fail to resonate, leaving potential leads disengaged.
Focusing on Quantity Over Quality (duh!)Filling your pipeline with unqualified leads might look good on paper, but it wastes time and resources. Sure, the pressure from your boss could make you fill your pipeline with 10,000 leads who wouldn’t buy your product if it came with free donuts. But wouldn't you rather have 10 ready-to-buy customers? Stop wasting your time.
Neglecting Data Hygiene Your campaigns are only as good as your data. Nothing screams "professional marketer" like addressing a lead as "Hi [First Name]!" Messy data is the silent killer of demand gen. If your CRM were a fridge, would you eat anything from it? Clean it up.
Using a One-Size-Fits-All Approach Demand gen campaigns that fail to segment and personalize lose impact. Prospects expect relevant, tailored messaging. Don’t send out the same content to everyone and expect it to resonate. Talk to humans, as if they were humans...
Overloading Prospects With Content Nobody likes a clingy marketer. Bombarding your leads with content is like texting “wyd” ten times in a row—desperate and annoying. Give them some space to breathe (and read).
Ignoring the Buyer’s Journey Match your content to where your buyers are in their journey. Sending top-of-funnel leads bottom-of-funnel offers (or vice versa) is a surefire way to frustrate them. Align your content with where they are in the funnel. (This should be part of your segmentation process)
Not Measuring or Iterating Launching a campaign and letting it run without analyzing performance leads to stagnation. Without iteration, you miss opportunities for improvement.
5 Ways to Do Demand Gen Campaigns Better
Get Laser-Focused on Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Define your ICP and use it to guide everything.From content creation to channel selection. Everything.This ensures your efforts are directed at the right audience.
Leverage Account-Based Marketing (ABM) ABM is the VIP lounge of demand gen. Instead of shouting into the crowd, you’re whispering sweet nothings to the accounts that matter most. It's personalized, exclusive, and oh-so-effective.
Invest in High-Quality Content Content is like pizza—when it’s bad, it’s still kinda okay, but when it’s good, it’s unforgettable. Case studies, whitepapers, and webinars used to be goldmines, but currently videos, infographics, and sassy Linkedin posts are trending. Keep up!
Automate Wisely Automation done wrong feels like talking to a robot. Automation done right feels like magic. Keep it human—your prospects shouldn’t be able to tell if it’s a bot or just your genius at work.
Continuously Test and Optimize Run A/B tests, analyze campaign performance, and tweak your approach based on real data. Flexibility is your good friend, however, as tempting as it might be to tweak your strategy mid-campaign, resist the urge. Let the campaign run its full course before making changes. Why? Because incomplete data can lead to misleading conclusions, and you might end up fixing things that aren’t broken. Flexibility is indeed your best friend—but only when it’s backed by the full picture.
Stop Sabotaging, Start Strategizing
Demand gen doesn’t have to feel like an endless game of trial and error. Avoid the classic blunders, embrace the smart moves, and you’ll be crafting campaigns that make your competitors weep (and your sales team cheer). After all, a well-run demand gen campaign is like a perfect soufflé—light, fluffy, and impossible to resist.
