Lead magnets are everywhere. Brands use them for lead generation & they’ve always worked.

If you’ve ever given your email address in exchange for a discount code, white paper or ebook, that’s a lead magnet. But people are now more reluctant to give their contact information away for things they can generally find elsewhere, for free.

If lead magnets are becoming less & less effective, what else can you use to drive conversion?

In walks, demand generation.

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💭 What is demand generation?

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Demand generation is a selection of marketing activities that excites your audience about your brand without trying to sell to them explicitly. Essentially, it’s a long-term, education-focused strategy that prioritises reaching & engaging your audience.

The goal of B2B demand generation is to remain top of mind while potential customers aren’t in a buying cycle so that your brand is immediately considered whenever the need arises.

🤔 What is demand generation vs. lead generation?

Demand generation creates awareness & interest in a brand. Whereas lead generation is using content to turn your audience’s attention into leads. They’re both useful as they take place at different stages of the B2B sales funnel.

Demand generation is at the top of the funnel, such as engaging with a piece of social media content. And lead generation happens once your audience passes through that stage. They show enough interest in your brand to exchange their contact info to learn more, like signing up for a webinar.

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⬇️ In the content growth engine below, think about demand generation as “elevate” & lead generation as “build”.

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👀 What does demand generation look like?

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Clearscope’s webinar series

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This is a prime example of using video content as a demand generation channel. There are no sales tactics during these webinars, the focus is solely on adding value for the audience.

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Lemlist’s email templates

The purpose of Lemlist’s email hub is to share successful cold email templates & all the data alongside them for its users. Once again, there are no sales tactics here, they’re purely adding value for the user.

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Copy Club’s podcast

Their podcast focuses on talking to brands about how they’ve got to where they are, what they’ve done & everything in between. Like the previous two examples, they’re adding value tenfold with every episode without asking for anything from the listener.

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This blog (!)

Without blowing our own trumpet, this newsletter is a great demand generation channel. We give you weekly insights on various areas within marketing & we’re not asking for you to give us anything in return. We’ll still come back week-on-week with more content no matter what.

All of these examples have one thing in common. They’re adding value for their target audience with the aim of when they need a product in that area, they’ll be front of mind.

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💡 How to bring demand generation & lead generation together?

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Buyers spend more & more time thinking about their purchases. And you need to be front & centre while they’re in the process of this decision.

Demand generation focuses on always providing your audience with valuable content for free (i.e. without asking for the contact info). This initiative comes way before you hit them with a lead magnet of any sort. You want to really educate them on the solution you have to their problem & why you’re the only solution they should consider.

And then lead gen comes in. Once they’ve realised you’re a viable solution to their problem, it’s time to work on the lead generation side of things.

To ensure they’re working in sync, it’s important to have your sales funnel mapped out (more on this in a couple of weeks!), so you know the right time to transition from demand generation to lead generation.

In conclusion, being able to differentiate demand gen & lead gen helps you focus on a fool-proof strategy, all the way from a prospect's initial recognition of a problem up to being aware of your problem & making a purchase decision.

‍Key takeaways

👉 Demand generation = educating people about problems you can solve through free content.

👉 Lead generation = highlighting your product's features & differentiating from competitors.

👉 Focus on how lead gen & demand gen can complement one another for the best results.