Know Key Differences Between Lead Generation and Demand Generation

Demand generation is your best bet if you wish to increase brand awareness, but if your goal is to convert the prospects that are aware of your brand into customers, then lead generation should be your go-to approach.

Demand generation helps build interest and awareness in the company’s products and services—various demand generation techniques help reach new audiences. In lead generation, the campaigns should be designed to catch prospects’ attention and persuade them to buy the offerings. Targeting people who have the buying intent is the key.

Considering the transactional level, demand generation is less transactional than lead generation. How? Let’s see.

Different stages of the B2B sales-funnel need various demand generation and lead generation activities. Demand should be created at the top of the funnel as it is this stage where you attract prospects into your buying net. It can be done through various social media or website pages.

When prospects cross the top level of the funnel, the lead generation stage is achieved. When prospects show buying intent, they get ready to exchange their information from different platforms, like through a landing page.

Demand generation encompasses lead generation and is higher up the sales funnel. So if there is a lack of enough SQL leads, it means that you have issues with generating demand.

Brand awareness and recall are essential, so customers know what solutions you offer and converting prospects into customers becomes easy.

Let’s take a look at the critical differences between demand generation and lead generation:

Demand Generation:

  • Make prospects aware of the problem or create a need by showing them the solution.
  • Increase your brand authority by establishing thought leadership online.
  • Use free resources
  • Engage broad audiences with planning

Lead Generation:

  • Offer to solve the prospects’ problem
  • Present the advantages of your solution
  • Use gated resources
  • Focus on capturing high-quality leads

Also read - Amplifying Demand Generation ROI by Building TALs in a Smarter Way