What Is Demand Generation?: Definition, Benefits, Examples, And Best Practices

B2B tactics that previously achieved phenomenal results are no longer as effective today. At Leadfeeder, we use a demand generation marketing strategy, distributing ungated content on the platforms that we know our ideal customers are using.

To help you understand everything about this marketing method, we’re going to start with a clear demand generation definition, guide you through how it works, and finally offer examples and best practices to support success.

Let’s get started.

Note: Leadfeeder identifies anonymous site visitors and helps B2B brands track buyer intent data. Sign up for a free two-week trial.

What is demand generation?

Demand generation is an integrated sales and marketing approach that generates interest in a company's products or services before pushing conversions.

The goal of demand generation is not just to gather prospects already interested in what you have to offer (i.e., lead generation). Instead, it uses multiple channels to drive interest in your offering and uncover new opportunities.

As a result, demand generation means your business can be discovered by groups or companies that previously knew nothing about you.

How does demand generation marketing work?

So, what is demand generation in marketing and how does it work? Let’s take a look at the five stages of a typical demand generation campaign.

1. Define your objectives The first step is to establish what your goals are. Be specific. Rather than having a vague aim, such as increasing revenue, quantify your target precisely. This will help you understand exactly what you need to do to meet that goal. For instance, if you’re aiming to boost sales by 20%, that tells you how many leads you need to generate to hit that figure.

2. Know your audience Audience segmentation is key. Developing accurate customer profiles is the best way of understanding what your potential clients’ needs and pain points are. This knowledge will provide a solid foundation for your demand generation tactics, as it will allow you to understand how to target them effectively.

3. Create valuable content Develop content that speaks directly to your intended audience. What will they find interesting and valuable? What will truly engage them? Remember that your audience is not a monolith. You need to create different content tailored to each audience segment. For example, your top-of-funnel content should focus on generating brand awareness, but prospects further along the customer journey may be more interested in content that demonstrates your expertise, such as white papers. You should also provide product-specific content, like third-party reviews or demo offers, for those on the verge of converting.

4. Distribute your content through appropriate channels Not all distribution channels are equal. How you deliver content will also depend on how close the customer is to converting. At the brand awareness stage, channels such as social media sites or display networks work best. As you nurture the customer down the sales funnel, you’ll want to start distributing content in more targeted ways. For instance, you could use email campaigns to deliver content to prospects who have already registered their interest.

5. Analyze and fine-tune Finally, it’s crucial to measure outcomes. Track your preferred key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess whether your demand generation strategy has been successful. Doing this will help you identify what parts of your campaign are working well, as well as areas where there may be room for improvement. Tweak your strategy accordingly.

Demand generation vs. lead generation: Understanding the differences

There’s a certain degree of overlap between demand generation and lead generation. That’s because, ultimately, they have the same goal—to drive conversions.

That said, it’s useful to draw a clear distinction between the two when it comes to building a strategy, as this will help clarify what your focus should be at each stage of your campaign.

In essence, demand generation campaigns are about increasing brand awareness and educating potential customers about what you have to offer. In comparison, lead generation is more directly concerned with acquiring customer information, such as contact details.

Another way to define demand generation is as a project that builds customer knowledge of your brand over the long term. Meanwhile, lead generation is a targeted process that focuses on achieving short-term results.

Why B2B demand generation is beneficial

So, what is it about the demand generation process that makes it so effective as a B2B marketing strategy? Here’s a list of some of the most important benefits you’ll see when you begin to prioritize it:

1) Boosted brand awareness

The core objective of your demand generation efforts should be educating potential customers about your brand. The aim is to raise your company’s profile in the market so that you can reach out to new customers who will now have some knowledge of your company.

Much of what you do during the demand generation process will focus on demonstrating your brand authority. This means that increased awareness of your brand will come with an increased recognition of your expertise, which is an excellent foundation on which to build client trust.

2) Improved lead quality

Another key advantage of demand generation is that it helps improve the quality of the leads you’re getting. Clear messaging about your offering will attract leads who are genuinely interested in your products or services.

Using strategic outreach techniques, you can engage potential clients more effectively. You can then cultivate that engagement over time to strengthen the connection between your target audience and your brand.

3) Accelerated growth

The B2B buying cycle is longer than ever. In fact, while some buying cycles may only be a few months, B2B sales cycles for more complex products can take upwards of six months. This makes driving growth a challenge. 

Demand generation creates demand where none existed, which can drive exponential growth, help you expand to new markets, increase order size, and decrease cost per acquisition.  

Top demand generation strategies for B2B businesses

For businesses operating in the B2B space, there are a few tried-and-tested demand generation strategies that are highly effective. Here’s a list of our favorites:

1) Demonstrate your expertise

Cultivating a reputation as an expert in your field creates an excellent foundation for B2B demand generation. The objective is to foster trust in your brand. The end goal should be that when a potential customer has a question about your area of expertise, your brand’s name pops up first in their head.

There are a number of demand generation tactics you can use to achieve this, including:

• Contributing to discussion panels at industry conferences

• Organizing your own events and seminars

• Developing thought-leadership content

That final one is worth its own entry on this list, so let’s look at it in more detail now.

2) Content marketing

In B2B marketing, creating your own content is one of the best ways of establishing your authority as an industry expert. Combined with a smart SEO strategy, it’s one of the most effective tactics for increasing reach.

In addition to putting blog posts on your own website, consider other approaches. Providing free, useful content, such as how-to guides or white papers, is a terrific way of attracting potential clients. If it’s appropriate, you could also make video content demonstrating how best to use your product.

3) Paid advertising

Don’t overlook the power of paid advertising. It can be an extremely effective way of reaching potential customers you would be unlikely to find via any other route.

The key to making it work is understanding your current customers. Armed with details such as average company size, location, and industry niche, you can create engaging ads and use demand generation services to target ads at new prospects with similar characteristics.

4) Account-based marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing leverages the power of personalization to drive higher engagement from prospects. It encompasses any kind of messaging that’s highly customized to appeal to specific audiences.

Successful account-based marketing campaigns could include creating content that’s tailored to individual accounts based on their particular needs and pain points. Another example would be targeting by role; such as designing ad content to appeal to buyers or decision-makers.

Our favorite demand generation examples 

What does demand generation look like in practice? There's a good chance you consume content created with demand generation in mind every day in the form of informative blog posts, podcasts, videos, and newsletters. 

Here are three examples of demand generation marketing and why they work: 

Video demand generation example from Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder targets sales and marketing professionals in the B2B space. Our video series The B2B Rebellion covers tactics and best practices for B2B businesses. We interview experts in the field and share their strategies. 

While we occasionally mention Leadfeeder, the core goal is to educate users and share solutions for issues all B2B organizations face. These include using video in email marketing, scaling on a budget, and marketing/sales alignment. 

Free version demand generation example from Buffer 

Buffer drives demand by offering users a free version of its social media software. The company uses content from its blog to educate users about social media and then pushes them to sign up for a free plan or two-week trial.

Use of the free version allows users to see how the demand generation might help them. It also allows Buffer to paywall additional features.

Informative newsletter example from Aleyda Solis

Aleyda Solis is an SEO consultant, conference speaker, and owner of Orainti, a boutique digital marketing firm. Her weekly SEO FOMO newsletter shares news, tips, and strategies in the world of SEO. 

Other than in her email signature, Alyeda doesn't really talk about herself or her agency in her emails. Instead, she shares links to top SEO tools, jobs, and industry news.  

Giving away so much information for free generates demand. Companies that sign up to learn about SEO may get overwhelmed and decide to hire an agency. Experienced SEOs view her as an expert, which also helps her land speaking engagements. 

Demand generation best practices to increase marketing ROI

B2B demand generation is a process. It starts by building awareness and demand by creating high-quality resources that solve your audience's issues—not hiding your best content behind lead capture forms. 

Here are three high-level tips to get your demand generation strategy off the ground:

• Drop the gate on content 

A key component of demand generation is education. Instead of focusing on selling right away, you should teach prospects why your product will help them achieve their goals.

And that means dropping the gates on your content. 

Rather than using educational content to gather leads, use educational content to challenge the status quo and introduce new thoughts. 

To be effective, non-gated content must be actionable and well-promoted to reach a wider audience. 

If you're worried about losing insight into the leads consuming your content, our visitor tracking software has you covered. You can track companies visiting your site and the content they consume. It’s also easy to share this info with your sales team.

• Pay close attention to intent signals 

Demand generation strategies aren't just used at the beginning of the funnel. After creating demand, it's important to follow through with prospects likely to convert. 

But, how can you tell which prospects are which? By paying close attention to intent signals. 

Intent signals might include signing up for an email list, engaging with your brand on social media, or more specific actions like visiting your pricing page after watching a webinar. 

Pro tip: Use Leadfeeder's custom feeds to create notifications for high-intent actions. For example, automatically send an email to your sales team when a user reads two blog posts and then visits your pricing page.  

• Track demand generation metrics 

With demand generation, it's important to track metrics throughout the process—not just when a conversion happens. 

While there's a good chance that some of the metrics you're already tracking can inform your demand generation strategy, there might be a few you're not paying attention to. Make sure to consider these three: 

• Lower-funnel conversion: Pay attention to demo and free-trial requests. These are the hand-raisers who are actually interested in your product and provide more value to sales than a content download. 

If you’re doing demand gen right, the targeted, ungated content should filter down to increase demos and trials.

• Cost per acquisition: Ideally, demand generation will bring down your customer acquisition cost (CAC). The only way to know for sure, however, is to track. Consider using demand generation tools to track this metric per channel in addition to overall CAC. 

• Customer lifetime value: Having more customers isn't always a good thing, especially in B2B. Make sure the customers are worth it in the long term, not just on this month's ROI report. 

Traffic, leads, and conversions are industry benchmarks, but demand generation requires you to look deeper than just new email sign-ups and discover which campaigns are driving real growth. 

Streamline your demand generation campaigns with Leadfeeder 

Like any new strategy, demand generation takes time and requires patience. You won’t see results overnight, but a solid demand generation campaign has the potential to achieve an impressive outcome if implemented correctly. 

Start by adjusting your goals—rather than focusing on gated content sign-ups, aim to educate prospects and increase knowledge of your product. Use a tracking tool, like Leadfeeder, to visualize demand generation metrics. This way you can easily and quickly identify what is working, and what isn’t, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

With website visitor tracking and custom feeds, you can identify the companies visiting your page and set up automated alerts for specific actions they take. 

Note: Need help tracking demand generation metrics? Leadfeeder can help. Sign up for a free two-week trial. 

Demand generation FAQs

What is demand generation marketing?

Demand generation marketing is any kind of marketing that’s designed to increase potential customers’ awareness of your brand. 

It focuses on educating your target audience about your product or service and aims to foster trust in your brand authority.

What are the three pillars of demand generation?

Effective demand generation rests on three crucial pillars: 

• Understanding your audience 

• Capturing or creating demand

• Accelerating prospects through the sales pipeline 

Ideally, it should be well integrated with your lead generation process to optimize conversions.

How can I get started with demand generation?

First, decide on your goals and choose specific KPIs to monitor. Then segment your audience and create content tailored to their needs.

From there, you can begin to develop a more sophisticated strategy and leverage personalized elements to appeal to different subgroups of your target market.