The Relationship Between Demand Gen and Lead Gen Explained

As a marketer or business owner, it’s important to have a clear picture of the difference between demand generation and lead generation. But even if you have the definitions down pat, you may not fully grasp how these two marketing approaches must be coordinated to get the best results.

Demand and Lead Generation Definitions

Demand generation campaigns are designed with the goal of increasing or creating demand for a product or service. Lead generation campaigns are focused on gathering data about prospects that will be used to create leads.

The Purpose of Demand Generation Campaigns

If you want to build a demand generation campaign, your goal will be to create excitement around your products and services, which will eventually motivate consumers to make a purchase.

Demand generation campaigns work by driving awareness through targeted marketing based on consumer interests. These campaigns are usually nurtured through ads, content, and landing pages that are made to capture the attention of consumers by offering additional information or free trials.

Instead of short-term sales, demand generation campaigns tend to be designed for the long term. These efforts are heavily focused on upper marketing funnel activities like awareness and positioning. It is for this reason that the most effective demand generation campaigns cast a wide net in order to connect with a broad audience.

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The Purpose of Lead Generation Campaigns

When you embark on a lead generation campaign, you will take the opposite approach. Now, your objective is to gather information about prospective leads. Once you have that data, you can create a highly targeted marketing campaign by delivering relevant content to nurture those leads. 

While demand generation content is intended to boost awareness and answer high-level inquiries, lead generation is about reaching people with detailed information to help them make a purchasing decision. 

This content is usually gated and might include e-books, case studies, white papers, webinars, in-depth articles, and other detailed materials.

Creating Demand and Lead Generation Campaigns That Work

Demand generation and lead generation campaigns have one important thing in common: You must take a data-driven approach to create and execute your marketing strategies. 

Start with a clear understanding of your audience's personas. To do this, collect information to create a target customer persona. This target persona will allow you to optimize your campaigns and content to get the outcomes you want.

Content Marketing Campaigns for Demand and Lead Generation

Content marketing should have a key place in both demand generation and lead generation campaigns. Content is exceptionally effective at earning leads, and it costs significantly less than other channels for both demand and lead generation.

Content for Demand Generation

Since demand generation is all about brand awareness and positioning, you want to reach as many people as you can. To do that, you should provide an abundance of content and make it as accessible as possible. Publish blog posts, videos, and other content that will answer consumers’ questions and nurture them into leads.

Content for Lead Generation

Your lead generation will usually be gated behind lead capture forms. Prospects will provide their contact information in exchange for content that they believe will be valuable to them. Now that you have their attention, they will hold that content to a higher standard. 

You will get much lower levels of engagement with lead generation campaigns. However, the leads you do obtain will be highly qualified and ready to be passed onto your sales team.

When to Choose Demand Generation vs. Lead Generation

You don’t need to choose between demand and lead generation campaigns. Instead, you should devote your marketing efforts to both types while considering how they coordinate with each other. 

An important part of this coordination is understanding the customer journey as it relates to your focus products or services. The customers you are addressing right now with demand generation campaigns may eventually become interested enough to be targeted with your lead generation efforts.

So the choice is really when to switch from a demand generation approach to a lead generation approach. Making the switch requires running both campaign types in sync with one another.

Improve Demand and Lead Generation Campaigns

The best way to get better results from your demand and lead generation campaigns is to stop treating them as separate entities. Instead, think of them as dedicated efforts to reach customers at different points in the sales funnel, each with its own unique pain points. 

By coordinating these campaign strategies and sharing data, marketing teams can achieve better results. You can support coordination by emphasizing better communication or having teams work on both campaigns simultaneously.