Demand Generation, Lead Generation, Inbound Marketing | In Simple Words

 The marketing world has several ways to connect with the audience. Every time the world witnesses new strategies and logic introduced by the top leaders and marketing strategists, they respond to the current challenges.

Among all the marketing world terms, there is a significant hype created around demand generation, lead generation, and inbound marketing.

To many of us, the difference between these terms is unclear. Let me help you understand in simple words.

When marketing a product or service to the audience, it all comes down to solving a problem. In a condition where your audience is aware of the problem, and you are giving the solution, there is a pre-existing demand for your product or service.

However, when your audience doesn’t realize a problem while you make them know it by telling the problem, the solution is demand generation. It helps understand the pain points, why they matter, and ultimately why your answer is the best fit.

The best demand generation company shows its audience a potential challenge they face in life and work or otherwise and positions their brand as the answer.

 

For example, a company organizes an event wherein people are supposed to give opinions, feedbacks, and suggestions related to their products. Every customer who participates gets free socks with the company’s logo on it. Now, the demand is generated when these developers or customers wear those same socks. It works as a walking-talking advertisement of the brand.

Now, let us understand lead generation. It differs from demand generation services, conceptually and strategically.

In lead generation, the audience recognizes that they have a problem and actively seek a viable solution. The solution is a product or a service.

When a customer reaches the brand in lead generation, he is not being told about the problem. He already knows the problem, and hence is waiting to meet the right solution. The lead generation company or B2B lead generation agency helps the brand meet this solution by conducting market research, surveys, calls, or creating focus groups. When the company runs a campaign, its objective is to obtain the prospect’s information.

The campaign’s success depends on using customer information to nurture the relationship through the rest of the marketing funnel. The campaign owners use the information for ultimately selling the product or service to the customer.

The next term is inbound marketing, which differs from lead generation and demand generation. A lead generation company that creates information or content for the public to use goes through inbound marketing.

The audience seeks out information or product and comes across your brand as a potential solution. Therefore, inbound marketing can create higher quality prospects when it is implemented effectively. With optimized SEO (search engine optimization) and the right keywords, a marketing agency can easily bridge the gap between the users’ problems and potential solutions.

Quick recap

If you still think there is hotchpotch in your mind regarding these terms, let me quickly do a small recap to make it even simpler for you to understand.

Demand generation is the first stage wherein customers are informed about their potential problem along with its solution. And lead generation assumes that the audience already knows their pain while processing it and extends the right answer.

Demand generation services require wisdom and tend to work in the inverse of lead generation and inbound marketing. It creates a need to show them their problem until convincing them your solution is the best against their situation. This type of marketing requires a proactive approach to face and deal with the audience.

If you are looking for any of these services for your brand, there are multiple companies in the market offering these services at a reasonable cost. All you have to do is share your exact needs and the demand generation companies will take care of the rest.