Marketers excel at coming up with new terms.
Usually, these new terms are a way to set a company or product apart, and sometimes, they become part of the language of an industry.
For example, “demand generation” is everywhere on LinkedIn and B2B (Business-to-Business) posts.
I first became aware of it a few years ago and wondered how it differed from “lead generation.”
Lead generation or “lead gen” refers to marketing efforts that bring in leads. The name is clear.
But “demand gen?” What on earth did this mean?
To find out, I started asking myself questions and paying closer attention to the language of LinkedIn ads and the B2B marketers I follow.
Were they different names for the same thing? Or were they different? What’s the story?
Let’s explore the differences and why they matter for helping you land content marketing work by speaking your client’s language.
What Is Demand Generation?
Among marketers, “demand gen” refers to marketing efforts meant to create awareness and interest in a product or service.
When you google “best email marketing strategies” or “best email marketing subject lines,” you discover content created to improve your email marketing efforts. It’s general information, not product specific. That’s demand-gen content.
Many B2B freelance writers write reams of demand-generation content every month. This content focuses on:
- Building credibility — These companies are in it for the long haul. They are industry leaders (or aspire to be), and they have an ambitious publishing schedule. In the B2B world, marketing behemoth HubSpot laid the groundwork for this approach in the late aughts. So did Copyblogger and many others.
- Multi-channel — Most B2B companies are angling to meet their customers’ preferences by publishing via a mix of channels. Email, blog posts, webinars, podcasts, and social media content are different mediums. This way, they show up in different ways and meet different learning styles. For example, some people prefer video, while others gorge on podcasts, and still others want the written word all day long (guilty).
- Educational content — Most, if not all, of this content focuses on educating the prospect. For example, in marketing, there are always new trends. One trend that’s captured the attention of B2B marketers is how to efficiently get the perspectives of subject matter experts in your content. Google’s made it clear it values personal insights, and B2B companies everywhere are scrambling to determine how to fill this need best.
- Measurement — The best marketers measure their results to see what’s working and what’s not. Demand generation leaders usually measure website traffic, social media shares/impressions, and (sometimes) sign-ups.
How Lead Generation Content Differs
A decade ago, lead generation was called “direct response.” Meaning each piece of content has the purpose of generating prospects or leads. Anytime you sign up for a webinar or give your information to download an e-book or checklist, you’ve encountered lead-generation content.
Most companies doing this successfully use various content types and email to nurture and convert people into paying customers.
Effective lead-generation content is highly targeted to solve a particular problem for a specific type of customer. For example, while demand-gen content can encompass an industry such as “email marketing,” lead-gen content aims to find the ready-to-buy customer.
Research shows roughly 3% of your audience is ready to buy at any given time. So, out of every 100 people who read your helpful email marketing article, three are ready to sign up if you show them why your email marketing software is the one for their needs.
Checklists, free trials, case studies, and webinars showing people how to achieve sales (using the software, of course) are all examples of meeting specific needs.
Yet, to get here, you need an audience of people who know who you are, what you do, and who are interested in what you sell.
Such a scenario doesn’t happen overnight. It happens through a slow build of educational, helpful information continuously published, aka, that aforementioned “demand-gen” content.
Marketers measure the success of lead-gen content by the quality and number of leads generated and the number of those leads who buy.
And the two work well together too!
Companies that weave the “action-oriented” lead-generation content after people have come into their orbit through demand-generation content have great results with a documented content strategy.
But, some companies are young and scrappy. They need immediate financial results to stay afloat and build out the bigger picture. Such companies often turn to ads.
How to Jump Start Your Lead Generation
This is your traditional paid ad approach…
A company will create an ad for social media. It’s usually a graphic with a few words of copy. If the company sells B2B software to marketers, they may choose to run ads on LinkedIn and Google. They’ll test the ad performance and tweak as needed.
Paid traffic works if you know exactly who the ideal buyer is, and the ad speaks to those concerns. Then, the ad needs to send the person to a location that offers the same promise as the ad (such as a dedicated landing page, squeeze page, or specific web page).
It’s classic direct response.
Then, as these companies gain more customers and funding, they’ll invest more in content because they know it’s essential for long-term success.
B2B companies have a long sales cycle. To be competitive, they need to create brand recognition. Having plenty of helpful industry-related content establishes a platform. Prospective customers typically engage with at least five pieces of content before buying.
Now that you know the difference between demand generation and lead generation, you have greater insight into how content marketing works and how your work contributes to the overall bottom line.
Here’s an action step for you. Take 20 minutes and browse the websites of five well-known B2B companies. Identify which content is demand gen and which is lead gen. What ideas for additional demand-gen content do you have?
