What mean by demand generation and lead generation?

Distinct Features of Demand Generation

Definition: Demand generation covers all marketing activities that create awareness about your product, company and industry. It includes a mix of inbound and outbound marketing.

Goal: Brand awareness, positioning. Create interest and change perspectives.

• It is a marketing-centric activity.
• Demand generation not only focusses on your offering but also on your industry.
• There are dedicated personnel for demand generation with titles such as demand generation manager and VP demand generation.

• Examples:
  • A whitepaper, blogs.
  • A PPC campaign.
  • A product video hosted on YouTube.
  • A booth at an industry event.

  Distinct Features of Lead Generation

  Definition: Lead Generation is the process of collecting leads through form fills or website tracking software to add to your database of leads.

  Goal: Collecting leads to follow up with.

• It is a sales-centric activity.
• Lead generation is a subset of demand generation.
• There are no specialized personnel just for lead generation; the demand generation manager usually takes care of lead generation as well.

• Examples:
  • A form ahead of your whitepaper/webinar.
  • A form on your PPC landing page.
  • Website visitor tracking of all your website visitors.
  • A form kept at your booth in an industry event.
  • A form to receive periodic communication such as newsletters.

The Toss Up Between Demand Generation and Lead Generation

B2B digital marketer, Eric Wittlake believes lead generation is crippling demand generation as lead generation forms act as a barricade to the free distribution and sharing of content. But can you do without forms altogether? Can every content asset be free and ungated?

Forms = contact information, better quality leads and conversion

while

No form = more traffic, social media sharing and inbound links

You can’t do lead generation without demand generation. The two go together. You just need to find the right mix.