Lead pot exhausted? – Time for Demand Generation!
Currently, a turnaround can be seen in the B2B marketing market. Many B2B companies that previously used Lead Generation (Lead Gen for short) now want to focus more on the “new trend” Demand Generation (Demand Gen for short). A new awareness that previously exhausted lead pots are not infinite and thus lead numbers are decreasing is often the reason. But what exactly does Demand Gen mean and how does it lead to new leads?
What is demand gen vs. lead gen?
Demand Generation is about building long-term relationships between customers and a brand. It starts with creating awareness of a product or company. The goal is to increase demand even among people who previously had no contact at all with the solutions offered. Demand Generation thus focuses on the top-of-the-funnel.
Classic lead generation, on the other hand, starts deeper in the sales funnel (middle-of-the-funnel). Here, leads are intercepted from people who already have a certain interest in a product. This means that the hurdle is much lower for them to hand over their contact data for more information in order to be contacted in the next step and, at best, converted into a paying customer.
Different funnel stages require different advertising measures
Here, both approaches represent different types of advertising measures. Classic lead gen works with landing pages, pay-per-click ads, and social media campaigns that promote the download of a white paper, participation in a webinar, or similar content. The conversion goal is the focus here.
Demand Generation instead relies on content marketing, organic social media posts, corporate influencer and PR activities. This type of freely accessible content is used to support the research process for a solution, instead of directly dropping in with a conversion message when the users are often not even ready yet.
Focus on customer relationships and brand building
The important thing here is to focus on building a brand relationship. And as in interpersonal relationships, nothing works without trust. Doing demand gen right means entering into a dialog with your target group, understanding the problems of the target group, and only then developing high-quality content that delivers real added value. In the long term, building a relationship with (potential) customers also means continuously providing them with the right information.
According to demand gen expert Tim Rath, in most B2B markets about 95% are not actively in the buying process – so with pure lead gen, only 5% of the target group is addressed. What helps here is steady audience-focused content in the form of socials, articles, or videos that play to this 95% until they have received enough information to enter into a buyer journey.
It becomes even more targeted when demand generation content is offered collectively in Content Hubs so that users can more easily draw the right information from the entire content arsenal.
Only together are we strong
But one does not exclude the other – in fact, they should complement each other much more.
And this is precisely the point why many marketing decision-makers are just realizing that classic lead gen alone can no longer work at some point if new demand is not also constantly created in order to inspire potential interested parties with their own solutions who previously knew nothing about them.
What has always been part of a holistic campaign strategy in our campaign process at Evernine is now also being implemented by many companies. Namely, a two-phase process in which lead gen activities are only started when the necessary interest in a target group has previously been generated by demand gen activities – especially when trying to get a new target group excited about a product that is still unknown.
What exactly does the “new trend” bring now?
In summary, Demand Gen is not a completely new approach, but an already proven concept under a new name, which is receiving more attention due to current events – for the benefit of a more sustainable structure of marketing activities and a stronger focus on customer relationship building.
In addition, the concept of demand generation increases the value of content in a marketing strategy, which is often difficult to express in KPIs. It provides marketing managers with new arguments for high-quality content and thus fuels discussions about expansion in this area in favor of an optimized customer journey.
Questions? Our campaign team will be happy to help you – not only with short-term campaigns, but also with the development of a holistic demand generation strategy. Together with our experienced content & pr team, we can design a long-term, customized roadmap with high-quality content.
Source title image: Adobe Stock / reddeer_art.