The question is; how best can you do it? According to John Connell, Chief Product Officer at BlueWhale Research, “the smartest, most successful marketers are understanding that attention and engagement are what matters.” That makes understanding the demand generation vs lead generation debate crucial to optimizing your overall B2B sales strategy.
What are the main differences when it comes to lead gen vs demand gen? What are each of those strategies trying to achieve? How can they work together and which—if either—should you prioritize? Those are the main lead generation vs demand generation questions you’ll find the answers to by reading on.
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What is lead generation?
Lead generation is about identifying prospective customers with an interest in your business and capturing their contact information.. This usually involves content marketing, email campaigns, and social media outreach to capture attention. Businesses email data can then nurture and guide these already engaged prospects through the sales funnel.
Once leads are identified, the focus shifts to qualifying them—assessing their level of interest and readiness to make a purchase. Effective lead generation helps ensure the sales team works with high quality leads who genuinely intend to buy, increasing the likelihood of conversions. The goal is to convert these leads into paying customers through tailored follow-ups and targeted offers.
What is demand generation?
Demand generation is a marketing approach focused on creating a demand for a product or service before gathering leads or pushing for conversion.
An effective demand generation strategy heightens brand awareness and drives traffic to your website.
It is ideal for businesses with a new or less-known offering—especially those in the B2B sectors—but any organization looking to expand its pool of potential customers can leverage this strategy.
It might sound a lot like brand awareness, but there is a key difference.
Demand generation marketing doesn’t focus on your exporting and importing phone number files easily brand as a whole. Rather, it focuses on educating potential customers about their problems and possible solutions.
Demand generation is a process, not a one-step strategy. The first step generates demand by informing your audience of your offering and encouraging them to learn more.
The second step is demand capture, where you capture b2c fax intent and push them to convert.
This might still sound pretty similar to lead generation.
So, let’s look at demand gen vs lead gen a little more closely to really get to grips with the differences.