Elevate Your Demand & Lead Generation Efforts With Eloqua

As the marketing landscape continues to evolve, it is crucial for marketers to leverage technology to create and launch marketing campaigns that delight customers.

And as customers become information-savvy, it takes the perfect mix of intelligent targeting and calculated marketing strategies to attract, engage, and convert leads into customers.

That’s where strategies like demand generation and lead generation can help. When you combine these two with marketing automation technology, the benefits you reap are bound to multiply.

However, you need high-quality data to succeed with your demand generation & lead generation efforts.

And, if Eloqua is your preferred marketing automation platform (MAP), you are on your way to taking your demand gen and lead gen efforts up a notch. However, you need a clean and well-optimized Eloqua instance to make most of your investment.

In this blog post, we’ll understand the difference between demand generation and lead generation and how bad data in your Eloqua platform can affect your marketing efforts.

Demand Generation and Lead Generation Demystified

Demand generation and lead generation are two different strategies but are often used interchangeably despite being two different practices. Let’s decode how the two differ from each other.

Demand Generation Vs. Lead Generation

• Demand generation is present at every stage of the marketing funnel and every touchpoint in the buyer’s journey. It enables you to attract your target audience.

Lead generation enables you to convert qualified leads into customers. The end goal of lead generation is to convert prospects into customers after convincing them that what you offer will help them meet their goals.

• Demand generation helps you to increase brand awareness, educate your audience, and generate trust along the way.

Lead generation is the process of creating, maintaining, and converting prospect interest in your products and services.

• Demand generation is a top of the funnel action that boosts brand awareness and generates audiences’ interest in your business.

Lead generation is a bottom of the funnel action that captures contact information from qualified leads and nurtures them into customers.

• Demand generation efforts are about directing your message to large groups of people.

Lead generation efforts are about creating personalized messaging and campaigns to nurture your leads.

How Bad Data in Eloqua Can Hinder Your Lead Gen & Demand Gen Efforts

Once you know your buyer’s needs, you can personalize your marketing campaigns based on their needs. As simple as this sounds in theory, it can be a bit complex to achieve in a practical scenario. Why, you ask? Because to succeed with your lead generation and demand generation efforts, you need high-quality data and an optimized Eloqua instance.

Here’s how bad data can hinder your lead and demand generation efforts.

1. Ineffective Targeting: The best lead gen and demand gen strategies are data-driven and if your data is not clean and up to date, there are high chances that you’ll miss potential sales opportunities. If the information in the database fields is inaccurate and inconsistent, you cannot identify the right leads and target them, and ultimately, this will hinder your marketing and sales goals.

2. Inaccurate Lead Scoring & Routing: Effective lead scoring depends on the quality of data. It enables the marketing and sales team to prioritize the leads that are most likely to convert. If your data is not clean and standardized, you cannot score leads in your MAP and understand where they are in the buying cycle and which ones are the right fit for your business. Also, you’ll not be able to identify which behaviors indicate purchase intent. This way, it will lead to inconsistent and inaccurate scoring results which, ultimately, will affect your marketing efforts.

3. Subpar Personalization Efforts: If your data is poorly segmented and not standardized, it can hinder your efforts to create personalized content and targeted campaigns. Also, you cannot make efficient calls, deliver high-impact messages, and manage customer relationships, which ultimately will hinder marketing and personalization efforts.

If left untreated, bad data in your Eloqua instance can lead to unsuccessful campaigns and ineffective use of your marketing dollars. Therefore, it is important to take an in-depth audit of your Eloqua instance to ensure you’re reaping the desired results from your marketing efforts and improving the accuracy of your demand and lead generation initiatives.

The Bottom Line

A solid marketing strategy will include both demand generation and lead generation, backed by a powerful marketing automation platform like Eloqua.To take your lead and demand gen up a notch, make sure that you have a regular audit to get a clean and well-optimized Eloqua instance. And you’d be on your way to generating more pipelines, closing more deals, and fostering meaningful customer relationships.

Wish to Create Robust Demand Gen and Lead Gen Strategies with Eloqua? Let’s talk!