Demand Generation vs Lead Generation: Key Differences & How to Make Both Work For You

They may share similar tactics, but they’re far from interchangeable. They’re two separate operations that play key, distinct roles in B2B marketing and sales. 

To meet your goals of increasing brand awareness, lead volumes, and lead quality, it’s vital to know the differences between demand and lead generation. And, even more importantly, you need to know how to integrate the two strategies:

What is demand generation vs lead generation?

To kick things off, let’s define demand generation and lead generation to help you understand the core differences between the two approaches:

How to define demand generation

Demand generation is a top-of-the-funnel marketing strategy that aims to boost awareness, spark interest, and ultimately drive demand for your products and services. 

For businesses trying to penetrate new markets and reach new target audiences, demand generation is a go-to strategy. 

It leverages tactics like search engine optimization (SEO), thought-leadership content, and social media marketing to create a buzz around your products and boost brand recognition and credibility. This leads to an influx of interest and awareness at the top of the funnel.

Definition of lead generation

Lead generation identifies potential customers who’ve shown interest in your products and nurtures them through the sales funnel. 

A lead generation strategy targets the mid-to-bottom of the funnel. It aims to collect prospects’ contact information, such as their email address and phone numbers, and then target them with personalized, value-rich messages. 

The goal is to build a meaningful relationship with the prospect and guide them toward becoming a paying customer.

Lead generation vs demand generation: The key differences

Now we’ve defined the two approaches, let’s delve deeper into their differences. Here, we’ll explore how demand generation and lead generation differ in terms of goals, engagement, strategies, impact, and metrics.

Want to see the differences between demand generation and lead generation at a glance? Here’s a table summarizing the key differences:

Objectives

The central difference between demand generation vs lead generation comes down to what they’re trying to achieve. 

Demand generation objectives

“Demand Generation is about activating the 95% of buyers that are not in-market. The goal is to connect the buyer's pains to your solution and to get your brand into the consideration set of the potential buyer. Once they are in-market, they will then reach out proactively to initiate a buying process." - Patrick Schüller, Paid Social Manager, Dealfront

The main goal of demand generation is, in short, to create demand for your products and services. It aims to introduce audiences who don’t know about your brand to new and seasoned products by promoting your solutions and their unique selling points (USPs). 

Demand generation expands your customer base, which is why it’s often used to break into new markets. It uses authoritative content to make audiences aware of a problem that needs solving and pitches your product as the solution. 

So, when a prospect recognizes that they’re experiencing said problem—whether that be immediately or in the future—they know exactly where to go to resolve it. 

Essentially, it’s all about making noise across channels to increase awareness, interest, and desire, along with brand authority. 

Lead generation objectives 

While demand generation tries to attract customers, lead generation attempts to convert them. 

The primary goal of lead generation is to capture the contact information of leads in the middle of the marketing funnel and nurture them through the customer journey to the point of conversion. 

It focuses on engaging prospects and building relationships through the delivery of value, positioning your brand as the solution to their problems.

Effective lead generation is crucial for generating B2B leads. Unlike consumer leads, business leads require extensive trust and relationship building, where continuous nurturing is key to securing conversions. 

Engagement

Demand generation and lead generation strategies include different ways to engage with customers.

Demand generation engagement is awareness-driven. Because the approach targets a wide audience, the content is free, broad, and delivered across multiple channels to maximize reach and traffic. It aims to educate and engage rather than convert, which differentiates it from lead generation engagement.

Lead generation engagement is heavily conversion-driven. Interactions are targeted toward the specific needs and pain points of unique customer segments. It engages with customers who’ve already entered the funnel, using gated content, calls to action (CTAs), and targeted emails and ads to capture contact details before driving conversion with personalized, persuasive messages.

Strategies

Demand generation is a long-term marketing strategy with a broad, educational approach to attracting and engaging customers at scale. Demand generation strategies include:

• Free content: By distributing free, thought-leadership content like blog articles, webinars, case studies, podcasts, and Playbooks, you give your brand a voice and establish your authority as an industry expert. This content can be a huge driver of organic and referral traffic.

• Search engine optimization (SEO): The top result on Google’s results page has a click-through rate of 27%—10% more than the 10th position. Demand marketers target relevant industry keywords to increase visibility on search engines, boost brand presence, and directly drive organic traffic to their content.

• Social media marketing: Social media posts and ads have huge virality potential and can put your brand in front of millions of new customers. Demand generation strategies use social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to share content and promote their products to the masses. 

• Influencer marketing: With access to thousands of dedicated followers, influencers can promote your product on their social platforms to introduce your brand to a whole new audience. For B2B companies, it’s essential to collaborate with trusted influencers in your niche.

• Event marketing: Hosting and participating in digital and in-person events like industry conferences, trade shows, webinars, and community events can generate demand. Not only do they promise an exclusive, memorable experience for attendees, but they give companies the opportunity to demonstrate their expertise and establish themselves as thought leaders.

“In a world overflowing with digital noise, face-to-face moments stand out more than ever. Events offer a chance to spark real connections, build trust, and have the kind of conversations that are more likely to move the needle.” - Dipak Vadera, Director of Community and Ecosystem Marketing, Dealfront

• Account-based marketing (ABM): ABM is a B2B marketing and sales strategy that involves targeting high-value accounts with hyper-personalized inbound marketing content and outreach messages. It homes in on key decision-makers to generate demand among your most valuable prospects, with the ultimate goal of driving engagement and guiding them toward lead-generation territory. 

Unlike demand generation which promotes to the masses, lead generation strategies are targeted and transactional. 

Here are a few lead generation strategies that you might use:

• Lead magnets: Lead magnets are exclusive resources offered to prospects in exchange for their contact details. B2B lead magnets are typically gated content, such as ebooks, whitepapers, product demos, or webinars. These resources are the key to obtaining email addresses and phone numbers that you can use to interact more dynamically with interested prospects.

• Landing page optimization: Lead generation strategies optimize landing pages for conversion—such as signing up for your email list, downloading your free ebook, or trying out your product demo. Landing page content needs to clearly and concisely communicate the value of your offering, with strong, incentivized CTAs.

• Email nurturing campaigns: Email marketing nurtures customers toward conversions through consistent, personalized communications. Strategies focus on creating email opt-ins to incentivize email sign-ups and then using this open line of communication to send valuable content, build relationships, and encourage purchases.

• Email outreach campaigns: Some lead generation strategies use targeted email outreach. For example, tools like Leadfeeder by Dealfront can reveal the company information—including email addresses—of potential leads who visited your website but didn’t convert. This enables sales teams to reach out to website visitors via email to open lines of communication.

• Lead scoring: Lead scoring involves evaluating and prioritizing leads so that you target customers with the right content at the right time. B2B companies use lead-scoring solutions to access behavioral data that signals interest and purchasing intent, empowering them to accurately score and generate B2B leads for faster, value-added targeting.

• Retargeting campaigns: Retargeting campaigns recapture leads who engaged with demand or lead generation content but didn’t convert. For example, a prospect that bounced from your ebook’s landing page might later see an ad for the same ebook on their social media feed, re-igniting their interest. 

• Running paid ad campaigns: Display ads, paid social ads, and paid search ads can be used to drive traffic to lead-generation landing pages. Some platforms even allow prospects to fill in lead-generation forms right within the platform they’re already using to prevent bounces.

Impact

Demand generation aims to move prospects from unaware to aware using free, educational, and ungated content like blog posts and videos. This has the impact of increasing brand familiarity and credibility across broad audiences. Prospects know who you are, what you do, and how you can help.

Lead generation has a more individualized impact. It helps leads recognize how your product can support their unique needs. Resources are used to draw prospects deeper down the funnel, where they’ll discover the true value of your solution.

Metrics to measure

Metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) measure the success of your marketing strategies. You can observe the difference between demand generation and lead generation by the different metrics that they track.

Let’s take a look at some of the most important metrics to measure:

Demand generation metrics

• Branded search volumes

• Organic website traffic

• Referral traffic

• Branded mentions

• Social media engagement (likes, comments, social shares, etc.)

• Content performance metrics (pageviews, traffic, shares, etc.)

• Cost per acquisition (CPA)

Lead generation metrics

• Number of qualified leads

• Lead value and quality

• Conversion rates

• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs) vs sales qualified leads (SQLs)

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

• Cost per lead (CPL)

• Average lead response time

• Average time to conversion

Demand generation

Demand generation and lead generation are both powerful marketing operations—and neither one should stand alone.

Demand generation strategies can only pull customers so far down the funnel. Sure, they generate awareness and spark initial interest, but they lack a clear path to conversion which prevents leads from taking action.

Without demand generation, lead generation strategies are hindered by a lack of high-quality leads. Its success relies on an influx of interested prospects whose pain points can be resolved by your product.

Essentially, demand generation and lead generation are interdependent. Combining the two strategies creates a cohesive path from awareness to conversion, where you can attract a wide new audience and smoothly convert them from interested prospects into qualified leads—and then into paying customers.

So, how do you do it? Here are six tips to help you unify demand generation and lead generation:

Create high-quality content

Demand and lead generation content rely on each other to meet their goals, so they both need to be of exceptional quality. 

Demand generation content needs to directly match search intent and communicate the USP of your product or service. Not only does this ensure that your content is relevant and memorable, but it encourages the prospect to delve deeper, which is where they’ll find even more value.

Lead generation content needs to amplify the value offered by demand generation content. Gated content should deliver on its promise of value, and communications should be consistent and personalized to effectively build trusting relationships.

Develop a complete customer journey map

Customer needs change as they progress through your funnel and neglecting any one stage can cause them to drop off. 

Comprehensive customer journey mapping helps you understand and address customer needs at every single touchpoint, from creating free educational content for customers at the top of the funnel to nurturing customers near the bottom of the funnel with targeted emails

Align sales and marketing teams

Demand and lead generation strategies both have a shared goal: To supply sales teams with high-value marketing-qualified leads. 

All teams need to work together to define a unified ICP and develop strategies that effectively generate demand and turn initial interest into qualified leads. 

Nurture customers as they travel down the funnel

Lead generation tactics must maintain the interest delivered by demand generation. 

Your gated content is just the first step—supplement it with email campaigns that deliver fresh, valuable content to leads. This keeps your brand top-of-mind, helps build relationships more naturally, and ensures that customers feel supported as they move from consideration to decision-making.

Use retargeting campaigns

Should a prospect’s interest dwindle, lead generation retargeting campaigns can bring them back into the fold. They capture the initial interest supplied by demand generation and use it to target customers with personalized ads relating to the content they engaged with—throwing in the temptation of your gated content.

B2B companies can use tools like Promote by Dealfront to target entire companies with retargeting ads. This means that you can influence all of the key decision-makers in the buying cycle (rather than just individuals) to maximize awareness and interest potential.

Leverage the right technologies

There are lots of different lead generation and demand generation tools available to help unify your strategies.

For example, website tracking tools can tell you who’s visiting your brand’s website and how they’re engaging with it. This allows you to transform newly aware prospects into qualified leads with optimized strategies. 

Analytics tools deliver key content performance metrics that tell you whether your content is successfully pulling leads into the funnel. This highlights the types of content that truly resonate with your audience at the awareness stage. And, it provides insight into the lead generation content you should be creating to capture and convert leads.

And then there are lead scoring tools that automatically score and qualify leads. They bridge the divide between demand and lead generation by illuminating the quality of leads brought in through free content, enabling you to improve and optimize strategies.

With these tools at your disposal, you can track customer interactions from the minute they enter your funnel to the moment they convert—and beyond.

Generate more demand and more leads with Dealfront’s help

With the right tools in your tech stack, integrating demand generation and lead generation is painless. Dealfront offers a range of solutions to help you close the loop between the two operations, and generate demand and high-quality leads in unison.

With Dealfront solutions you can:

• Turn anonymous website traffic into qualified high-value leads by accessing in-depth behavioral and firmographic data about all of your site visitors—without them even needing to fill out a form. Discover hidden customers effortlessly.

• Get notified whenever prospects express buying intent, fuelling fast, personalized outreach at exactly the right time.

• Leverage IP-based B2B ads that target companies matching your ICP, generating brand awareness and optimizing top-of-the-funnel and mid-funnel advertising campaigns.

• And much more.

Ready to integrate demand generation and lead generation to attract, engage, and convert B2B customers? Take a look at all that Dealfront has to offer today.