Demand and Lead Generation Facts

Marketing companies often use demand and lead generation interchangeably, when in reality they are two different types of marketing that serve different purposes.

Demand Generation: Creates demand for a product, hence “demand” generation. This style of marketing seeks to shape the audience’s perspective.

Lead Generation: Collects information about potential clients, giving companies potential sales leads.

Though the differences may seem subtle, they are not the same thing. This means that every customer interaction you have needs to be focused on either demand or lead generation, not both at the same time. But in order to have the most successful marketing strategy possible, you need both.

Demand Generation

The goal with demand generation is to position your brand in front of as many eyes as possible. This means removing any barriers that might prevent potential customers from seeing your content—things like registration and other online forms to fill out.

Examples of demand generation:

• Blogs
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Newsletters
• ebooks

The goal is to get the content out there and shape the audience’s perspective. This takes time and persistence.

Lead Generation

With lead generation, you’re still casting a wide net, but the goal is to drive people to gated content. This means in order to access your content, customers will need to register or fill out a form.

This often turns people away, so to minimize that you want to make accessing the content as easy as possible. On top of that, you want to make the content worth it. If you opt to ask for info ahead of reading, whatever you give them in return should be more detailed, informative, and interesting than something they could see through demand generation. Webinars, panels, reports, and other long-form content are common forms of lead generation content.

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