Demand generation or demand-gen serves as an organization’s inbound or outbound marketing strategy to create results for the long-term. A well-done demand-gen program generates interest in target audiences for your brand and pulls in prospects for further engagement. Lead generation or lead-gen is also an inbound/ outbound strategy but with immediate results in focus. Lead-gen identifies and zeroes in on conversion-ready prospects to generate sales.

Despite this core difference, many organizations view both these strategies as the same. Dig deeper, and one realizes that these strategies are disparate in their core philosophy, approach, and objectives. More importantly, an organization cannot sacrifice one for the other. You need lead-gen and demand-gen for bigger wins.

Discover other major differences between demand-gen and lead-gen and how synchronizing them is the path to powerful marketing.

Demand-Gen vs. Lead-Gen

If your company has been mixing up demand-gen and lead-gen, then you are missing out on leads and spending more on generating leads, opines Jane Deehan, LinkedIn’s award-winning senior content marketing manager. Understanding the differences between these strategies is critical to preventing resource wastage, increasing process efficiency, and achieving better results.

• Demand-gen focuses on generating interest for your business’ solutions. Lead-gen focuses on converting this interest into tangible marketing results such as prospects with names and contact information. These leads are then engaged by your sales teams for possible closures.

• Demand-gen supports your sales funnel at the top where audiences are unaware of your brand but need your solutions. This is the stage where you generate brand awareness. You educate audiences about your solutions and explain how they solve pain points. You engage your audience with free content.

  Lead-gen narrows down your audiences to focus only on prospects that expresses interest in your solutions. You engage these prospects with hyper-targeted gated content that captures their contact information and advances them along the sales funnel for further engagement.

  Thus, demand-gen works at the top of the funnel, setting a base for your lead-gen efforts to take over, in the middle and bottom of the funnel.

• Demand-gen travels a long way, from creating brand awareness to building trust and sparking interest for your solutions. Lead-gen builds upon this trust to provoke a confident action of conversion from prospects, and advancing them toward closures and generating revenue.

• Demand-gen relies on content assets such as whitepapers that showcase your solutions, and thought leadership materials that build your brand authority and authenticity. These assets are delivered free without any expectation of information-sharing from readers.

  Lead-gen works solely to generate leads, which is why forms are used to capture relevant information such as name, job title, and contact details, in exchange for assets.

  Some key reasons that lead marketers to think of lead-gen and demand-gen as alike is their tendency to employ precise targeting and content. Hyper-targeting and hyper-personalized content drive both these strategies. The difference, however, resides in the purpose of targeting and personalization.

Gartner offers an effective diagrammatic explanation of the roles and functions of lead-gen and demand-gen:

Demand-Gen vs. Lead-Gen - Why their Co-Existence is Crucial

Lead-gen often wins the race over demand-gen as marketers are keen to prove ROI. However, according to a Gartner report, 60% of buyers purchasing software, return to the brand they had considered during their early search, for the final purchase.

Long-Term Awareness vs. Short-Term Opportunities

Generating leads in the short-term is crucial. But creating demand by generating brand awareness, igniting interest, and nurturing the interest, for long-term conversions is equally important.

Brand awareness created by demand-gen is futile if it does not convert into sales or other tangible conversions. Similarly, lead generation strategies without the backup of strong brand awareness and trust does not give results.

An Interested Audience vs. Conversion-Ready Prospects

Demand-gen sparks interest and nurtures prospects, preparing them for your lead generation. When these warm leads are handed off to sales, they discover well-informed prospects ready to be persuaded for taking the next best action.

With its approach, demand-gen makes transition through the sales funnel simpler for both prospects and your sales teams.

Streamlined Targeting vs. Improved Process Efficiency

Demand-gen brings all relevant buyers into its fold while simultaneously segregating highly-interested prospects for further nurturing. This streamlined targeting delivers strong qualified leads to your sales teams.

As a result, there is no wastage of leads or resources, leading to improved lead-gen efficiency. Cost, resources, and efforts are well-channeled with an effective mix of demand-gen and lead-gen.

In Conclusion

Marketers that move away from the traditional mindset of viewing demand-gen and lead-gen as the same, are set for success. The best way forward for businesses is to achieve a balance in the implementation of these strategies.

Partnering with a demand generation solutions company like FinalFunnel helps you achieve the right mix of strategies. As b2b demand generation solutions providers with 8+ years of experience, we specialize in prioritization and timing of each strategy for maximized benefits.

Witness a fluid pipeline and achieve higher closures! Discover more by booking a consultation session.