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Companies have explored numerous lead generation marketing strategies to increase brand awareness and generate more leads in the last few years.

Of all, demand generation services and lead generation services are the ones that make up for a large chunk of inbound sales.  

But often, marketers tend to use both terms interchangeably when both are different.

The fact is that while both share some similar traits, the way they approach things is different. However, having a clear understanding of both terms helps create better campaigns and thus generate more leads.

So, let’s get to know some of the major differences between lead generation and demand generation and how a demand generation company that provides the best lead generation services can help generate B2B sales leads.

What is demand generation?

Demand generation is all about creating demand for your product in the market before gathering leads or pushing for conversion. Organizations wanting to expand their customer base can leverage this strategy. It’s not a one-step strategy but a process in itself.

Demand generation makes use of data-driven strategies to create awareness.

It helps introduce new visitors to your business, who mostly qualify as high-quality leads when done perfectly.  

In fact, lead generation is one of the many available demand generation strategies.

Some of the best examples of demand generation services are: Content syndication, thought leadership content, brand awareness campaigns, event promotion, display ads etc.

Some of the best demand generation companies will help you reach a vast audience, creates buzz, and drives traffic to convert to a particular website.

What is lead generation?

Lead generation focuses on converting audiences into prospects who might be interested in your company’s product and services.

It is ultimately the result of good demand generation campaigns.

There are multiple ways to convert leads into customers. The actual ideas that demand generation companies implement depend on the company’s needs and the type of business it is into.

Some of the best examples of lead generation include gated content, social media, white papers and case studies, webinars and infographics etc.

What’s the difference between demand generation and lead generation?

It can be said that while demand generation is based on marketing campaigns and helps create demand for your company, lead generation is based on campaigns that help collect information about potential customers and then turns them into leads.

They differ in purpose as well. While the purpose of demand generation is to create excitement about your company’s product or service and make people want to buy from you, lead generation aims to capture information about potential buyers to generate high quality leads for your company.

One of the major differences between them is that demand generation is a top of the funnel activity, while lead generation is a the bottom of the funnel activity.

Demand generation is a marketing strategy that contributes to bringing awareness before the B2B marketing lead generation kicks off. At the same time, B2B lead generation involves attracting, nurturing, generating and converting B2B sales leads.

Who does demand generation?

Generally speaking, both the sales and marketing teams execute demand generation activities, but it all depends on where each activity sits in your sales strategy.

The process involves doing in-depth research about your market, creating and promoting your content, and fine-tuning the customer experience with your brand.

This isn’t it. There are other activities, such as lead nurturing and customer retention, that the sales teams need to take care of.

This is where demand generation companies can help by bringing their expertise in finding ways to align with other teams across your organization to help you conquer new markets.

Who conducts B2B lead generation?

B2B lead generation is a process managed by sales and marketing teams. They either work in tandem or individually.

Though for B2B lead generation service to be effective, it is preferred that the sales and marketing teams are closely aligned, involving both inbound and outbound efforts.

The best lead generation companies help businesses reach the ideal prospect by giving warmed up and qualified leads.

The importance of data in B2B lead generation and demand generation

Be it demand generation or lead generation, launching any of them can be quite tricky. Some of the best lead generation services opt for a data-driven approach as it allows firms to see what works and what does not — and why. This also helps device effective campaigns based on the metrics that matter the most.

Take away

As marketing can never be a one-size-fits-all approach, companies need to identify the best lead generation service or the best demand generation service that can help them with marketing lead generation. Marketers need to understand that demand generation and lead generation services need to walk hand in hand to help an organization grow in the right path and drive sales.  

If demand generation strategies help you attract high-quality leads, lead generation marketing helps nurture them into satisfied customers.

Be it creating brand awareness, demand generation or lead generation, to drive greater B2B sales leads, a well crafted cross-channel marketing strategy is essential. Tying all of this with your People-Based Marketing solutions can enhance the success rate of your marketing campaigns.

A more advanced version of cookie-based marketing is people-based marketing that leverages technology to market to people across channels. Marketers, as well as some of the best lead generation companies, swear by it as it is one of the best B2B marketing lead generation techniques.

Increasingly, companies worldwide are collecting huge amounts buyer behavior data for routine functioning. This offers a great opportunity for B2B marketers to strengthen their marketing campaigns. The collected data is a pool of knowledge and can do wonders if used in the right manner. Marketers who have access to this data can use intent-driven marketing to generate high quality leads. The following write-up will explain what intent-driven marketing means and how it can prove helpful for businesses.

What is intent-driven marketing?

Intent-driven marketing is a marketing strategy that helps businesses predict customers' purchase intent through an in-depth analysis of user behavior. It can be described as tailoring marketing campaigns to customers’ needs with specific intentions. Typically, it involves marketing a service or product based on a customer’s online activities that indicate their choice to purchase or consume that particular product or service. With this method, organizations junk the guesswork and make more effective marketing and campaign decisions for their brand.

Gone are the days for days of ‘spray and pray’ marketing as intent-based marketing, aka intent-driven marketing,  has gained traction, and for good reasons. This methodology is beneficial for marketers as it helps them increase the quality of sales leads, landing page conversion rates, which ultimately increases revenue. Marketers have already made the shift from traditional and have included intent-based lead generation solutions into their marketing mix.

Why intent-driven marketing?

Buyer intent is one of the crucial elements of intent-based marketing. It answers three questions - what customers are interested in buying now, what they want, and where they want it. In many organizations, marketing teams focus on giving customers what they want, but intent-driven marketing takes a step ahead: Intent-based networking and intent-based branding help enterprises gather a tremendous amount of information about buyer behavior and activity to get a bigger picture of what they want.

Consumers today no longer follow a linear path to make a purchase. In fact, they are very specific about their choices. They want instant answers on their devices, look for precisely what they want, and expect brands to be able to provide it. Every time consumers search for a particular product; they express their intent.

This form of marketing takes the time factor into account. This means organizations need to be vigilant and take action as soon as someone expresses a strong intent. The key is to understand when someone is taking action that showcases a strong intent to transact with your business. This empowers the marketing teams to focus on the right customers and reach them at that apt moment when they’re most likely to make a purchase.

A good synergy between the sales and the marketing teams is essential for organizational growth. It’s also essential for the marketing teams to win the trust of sales. Intent-based marketing significantly helps with sales prospecting as it ensures only marketing qualified leads trickle down the sales funnel.

With intent-driven marketing, businesses can maximize their spend by driving more conversions than they would with more general tactics like demographics-based targeting alone. Businesses who incorporate data to understand consumer intent better and then align marketing to business outcomes can reach customers at the moment that matters — and drive sales as a result.

Where to reach out for intent marketing data

Some companies analyze the digital footprints of buyers. They gather information related to the content the person is consuming online. The following factors can help gather customer intents effectively -

·         Product reviews;

·         Website visits;

·         Time on pages;

·         The content topic on web pages;

·         Downloads such as whitepapers.

Benefits of intent-driven marketing    

Reduces marketing costs

With intent-based marketing, companies can direct their marketing campaigns to people who have shown intent to make a purchase. This ultimately leads to minimizing the amount spent on broad-based marketing.

This means that enterprises can achieve their commercial goals with less budget. The remaining budget can be directed at other marketing campaigns to overscore their other targets. Many successful B2B marketers are not satisfied with achieving their target. The  focus should be to outperform and generate the most value for the company.    

Makes campaigns more effective

Many marketers are already using a simple form of intent-driven marketing strategy. When selecting the keywords for Search Engine Advertising, organizations want particular ad groups to show when people search for certain keywords. This is a form of intent-based targeting. It is considered one of the simplest forms of intent-based marketing.

The next step, programmatic advertising, is a more advanced way of intent-based targeting. With programmatic advertising, one can place dynamic ads to people depending on the content they are reading, as an example. Moreover, people can see these ads only if they read a certain number of articles.

Here, the buying intent will be higher, and then it might even make sense to increase the bid for the ad space. Programmatic advertising is an automated process and is the best example of intent-based targeting. The money needs to be spent only once for the people with a buying intent.

Intent-driven marketing will help businesses reach greater heights

In today’s competitive environment, businesses need to make extra efforts to attract more customers. They need to state compelling reasons so that audiences trust their products and services.

Intent-based marketing is often challenging, but the results are worth it. It’s essential to follow the data. It must also be ensured that the data is of good quality. Organizations must also have good analytics to ensure sound decision making. Partnering with demand generation companies and or those providing marketing qualified lead services is a great idea, too. hey possess a deep understanding of the buyers' pain points; they can deliver on what they need and at the right time to help cut competition.  

We are a demand generation company working as an HQL service provider and PBM Service provider, we provide B2B companies, like yours, with lead generation solutions.