B2B Marketers Get This Wrong - Lead Generation Vs. Demand Generation

All B2B marketers try to generate as many marketing leads as possible, but does having more leads equal to more sales? Unfortunately it’s not that simple.

Creating more creative marketing campaigns doesn’t mean that the users are ready to become buyers and purchase your products at all. This is where sales and marketing execs wrestle with constantly -- when marketing execs focus on creating leads (Lead Generation) to feed the sales machines but not demand for the product the company sells.

In this article, you’ll learn how to turn things over with Demand Generation and attract the right customers to boost your sales.

Demand Generation is about creating brand awareness and attracting new users to your business. Blog posts, social media posts, podcasts and YouTube videos are examples of Demand Generation.

Lead Generation is used to convert these new users into “leads” by getting them to become more sales-ready. Some Lead Generation examples include eBooks, free pdf workbooks, and webinars etc.

As you see, both Lead Generation and Demand Generation play an important role in the marketing process. They take care of different stages of a user’s experience. Therefore, to make your marketing successful, you need both Lead Generation and Demand Generation. 

Fortune 500 companies understand the importance of this rule and use a consumer insights tool to provide combined marketing & sales insights. 

To boost your sales and not waste your marketing effort, you must acquire the right people who will actually purchase your products/services after getting hooked by your leads. Here’re 4 crucial steps to follow:

Who are your potential buyers? What are their interests? Where do they buy stuff usually? If you can’t answer these questions, you don’t understand your potential customers enough. If you don’t know them enough, how can you ensure that your products/services can accommodate their needs?

Spend some effort in researching and developing the buyers’ persona. This helps you understand your target customers better, so you can produce solutions that they’re interested in and will solve their problems.

Do you know how good or effective your blog content is? What more social media content do you need to answer the commonly asked questions your potential buyers have?

By looking at the buyers’ persona that you’ve completed in step 1, you should be able to answer these questions by reviewing your content.

Start to audit your existing content and find out what you need to focus on developing and improving so as to attract more potential buyers according to their needs.

To ensure your marketing campaigns match with the demand (your potential buyers’ needs), you may need some external indicators to help you.

For example, when it comes to getting more organic search about your solutions online, the volume of SEO keywords is a good indicator to let you know whether something is highly searchable or not. If you generate a new campaign, you’ll need to make good use of SEO keywords to optimize the reach of your campaign. Does your target audience actually care about the campaign you host? Do they search about problems that are related to your campaign?

Or if you consider guest posting on other sites or podcasting in others’ channels so as to gain an audience leverage of these popular platforms, are you sure your target audience actually visit these platforms? 

By keeping in mind your buyers’ persona all the time, you will not waste your marketing effort.

So you know that you should use Demand Generation to create demand for your product or service. With this demand, you can produce Lead Generation marketing strategies that attract a lot of target audience. The great content you created in Step 2, and the enticing campaigns or offers you generated in Step 3 will make your audience stay tuned with your brand.

Then, Demand Generation can be used to create ongoing interest in these existing customers. You can engage with them with upselling content or content that aims to nurture them to buy more.

Generating marketing leads is essential, but Demand Generation is something that marketers cannot neglect during the marketing process. Both Lead Generation and Demand Generation are important to converting sales. With a combined marketing strategy, you will be able to attract more potential buyers and keep them buying in the long-run.