Can I Do Marketing and Ignore Demand Gen?

Okay, okay. We’ve pushed this whole demand generation thing a bit the past few months. We know. But that’s your indication that it’s super important. So, grab your favorite cup of joe and jot down this brain knowledge I’m about to spill.

Think about an alternate universe for a moment. One in which you never accomplish a task. Every effort you make falls short of fruition. It feels like walking to and from a destination where both ways are uphill. Kind of disappointing, huh? 

This world is the world of strictly marketing. Not marketing with demand generation, just marketing. All your efforts go towards creating juicy content, enticing newsletters, knee-slapping social posts, and prints so good your parents would hang them on the fridge like you’re still a 7-year-old – but for what?

Demand generation, in it's simplest form, drives awareness and interest to your company's products and services. It's like the magnet that holds your print to your parent's fridge. Without the magnet, your marketing efforts wouldn't be held up. They wouldn't live up to their true potential. Doing the work is only half the battle. If there is no one to see it, if someone isn’t moved by it or doesn’t find help in it, you aren’t fulfilling your product’s or services’ purpose.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like a world I want to live in. That sounds like a real bummer. Good thing I'm about to rain down the positivity and that brain knowledge I was talking about earlier.

Why You Need Demand Generation

That's right, demand generation is here to save the day. Yes, inbound is a vacant hotel bed of information for a prospective customer to snuggle into when they are looking for it. Demand generation, however, is what keeps your customer coming back to your hotel. It’s from top-of-funnel to bottom. It’s the experience, the service, the connection.

Demand generation creates loyalty and optimizes your reach. It’s more efficient – reaching across various channels and spending marketing dollars towards people who have demonstrated, through their actions, they’re on an active buyers journey. 

A common misconception about demand generation is that it is the same thing as lead generation. But for all intents and purposes, let’s clarify. Lead generation is using content (or other marketing efforts) to collect names and contact information with the intent to follow-up in the future. Demand generation comes before that, it’s what makes lead generation possible. It’s like pouring the cereal before the milk - it’s what people do. 

Marketing your product or service without employing demand generation is pointless. It wouldn’t benefit your business and it wouldn’t benefit the customer. But, approaching your marketing campaign with a holistic strategy using demand generation isn’t pointless. Curating your campaign to provide guidance from beginning to end throughout the buyer's journey sets your company apart from the competition. 

This post was chock full of analogies today because the relationship between demand generation and marketing is relatable to just about anything. If you’ve learned anything from this post, take away this: marketing and demand generation work in tandem to produce leads and garner business. That’s why it’s useful. That’s why it’s impactful.