A coordinated marketing approach used to build awareness, interest, and demand for a company’s products or services.
A broad strategy that creates market interest before and alongside direct lead capture.
Short and sweet:
A coordinated marketing approach used to build awareness, interest, and demand for a company’s products or services.
A broad strategy that creates market interest before and alongside direct lead capture.
See also: Lead Generation, Brand Awareness, Content Marketing
Demand generation focuses on creating genuine awareness and interest in a problem or solution category before a prospect is even ready to be treated as a lead, working further upstream than lead generation, which typically starts once someone is already willing to hand over contact information. Tactics here often include educational content, webinars, and community building aimed at an entire market rather than a specific, ready-to-convert individual. Because it plays the long game of building category awareness and trust, demand generation’s impact is usually judged over a longer time horizon than the more immediate, form-fill-focused metrics used to track lead generation.
Salesforce invests heavily in demand generation through free industry reports and webinars, building broad interest in cloud software long before any single lead ever fills out a form.
A cybersecurity company practicing this same approach might publish research on emerging threats, creating urgency around a problem before ever pitching its specific product as the solution.
Enterprise software firms often blend this strategy with account-based marketing, running broad awareness campaigns alongside laser-focused outreach to a shortlist of dream clients.
