The key differences between demand generation and lead generation are not always clear to marketers. More often, they use these terms interchangeably. But this can become a huge hurdle when choosing the right fit for their current marketing strategy. It is critical to consider the difference between demand generation and lead generation in order to ensure your B2B company has an effective brand presence and is generating the right kind of customer lists, messages and follow-up mechanisms.
This article will highlight the difference between lead generation and demand generation.
What is B2b Demand Generation?
Gartner defines demand generation as a data-driven marketing strategy focused on driving awareness and interest in an organization's products and services, with the ultimate goal of developing long-term customer engagement. Demand generation includes lead capture, lead nurturing and pipeline acceleration. It ensures a massive brand awareness, more traffic and better leads. It helps B2B companies to create a predictable sales pipeline for their teams.
Several data-driven strategies come into play to increase customer interest and prompt them to take required actions. In simple terms, demand generation helps you expand your reach, create a buzz, and drive more quality traffic to your brand.
What is B2b Lead Generation?
Lead generation, as the name suggests, is the process of turning potential customers or prospects who have interacted with your brand or its products or services into customers. Lead generation follows demand generation as for the prospect to interact with your brand, there first needs to be effective brand awareness. Once you get your prospects’ attention through your demand generation efforts, it becomes easier to convert them into customers through lead generation.
Demand Generation vs Lead Generation
Now that we have seen what both these concepts mean, let's see the key difference between them.
Simply put, demand generation increases your audience base by attracting more visitors to your website and making them aware of your products and services. Lead generation, on the other hand, goes one step further and helps you convert these visitors into your customers. Apart from this, here are some other differences between the two:
Marketing Funnel:
Speaking in marketing language, demand generation lies at the top of the marketing funnel while lead generation lies at the bottom of the funnel. In demand generation, activities, like increasing your brand awareness, educating your target audience, and establishing trust for your brand, are involved. These result in sparking the interest of your target audience.
In lead generation, you get to know your potential customers better by getting their contact details, segregating the qualified leads from this information and nurturing them. This leads to the conversion of highly qualified leads into customers.
Strategies:
Some demand generation strategies include blogging, downloadable content, webinars, podcasts, videos, influencer content marketing, PR campaigns, and SEO, among others. B2B lead generation, on the other hand, has endless implementation strategies. Lead generation is actually dynamic in nature, and depending on the goal of your campaign, you can finalise the strategy that you want to implement.
Messaging:
Although both demand and lead generation benefit from compelling and appropriate use of the content, the way they use this content and the purpose behind it differs greatly. Demand generation uses content to inform, educate and make the target audience aware of your brand and its offerings. The content is informative in nature. Once the audience is aware of your brand, lead generation comes into play. It uses content to push your brand further and encourage the user to buy your product or services. The content used here will be more salesy and tactical in nature.
Final Thoughts:
Now that you know the key differences between demand generation and lead generation, it's time to start thinking about which one is right for your business. If you're not sure where to start, consider taking an expert’s advice to develop a plan that will work the best for your unique business. And we at Amura Technologies can help you do just that. Being one of the leading B2B lead generation companies in India, we can add value to your overall B2B marketing strategy by implementing both demand generation and lead generation approaches as required.
Ready to rethink your B2B marketing approach with Amura? Get in touch with us today!
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