In this post we discuss, lead generation vs demand generation. We’ve rounded up a few resources that will expedite your learning process.
Lead Generation vs Demand Generation
[Video Transcript]
John: Good Morning, it’s John Nieuwenburg
with W5 Business Coaching and today we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead
Generation. Mark how are you today? Mark: Good John, thanks.
John: Awesome, so today our question is: what’s the difference between demand generation and
lead generation. Mark: So this is a bit of a maybe a contrived
kind of difference but it’s something that’s out there, so I thought maybe I’d address
it and I for me, and for our business we see it in kind of two buckets that really are
very related and similar but they’re both, um, they use different mechanisms to get to
the same place so actually one of your, um publications talked about the difference between
being a leopard and a spider and I think this is a really good analogy to use so and not
necessarily the way you were using it but it applies to what I want to talk about. So
a leopard when he gets hungry, he goes and eats or he hunts, kills something, drags it
up on the, in the tree, you know, feasts on it and then waits until he gets hungry again,
you know lions etc. all those kind of big cat predators would function the say way so
they, it’s feast or famine, they only will hunt when they need to and that is somewhat
similar to lead generation in my mind; demand generation is more like a spider. You build
that network, you build that web and then you wait for something to come to you and
grab it when it shows up. So that’s more of a long term strategy of creating something
that is evergreen that continually brings you new customers, may take longer to build,
may take longer to actually get fed and you might not control exactly when you’re getting
fed but you’re not actually having to go out there and expend energy on getting those
customer to come to you because you’ve already done that work over time. So you know sort
of specific examples of that would be like what we’re doing right now, where we’re
creating valuable content for people, putting it out there, making sure that it’s going
to be seen in search and people are going to find it and hopefully be attracted to what
we do and talk about and expertise shown, so that they want to contact us, reach out
and do something to move towards creating more business for themselves. Where lead generation
would be more of something along the lines of really knowing your target market, having
an extremely good offer and putting that out there on say social media advertising like
a Facebook Ad, Twitter Ad, using video and video advertising in order to grab people
and say hey, similar to direct response advertising, call this number, this is the place to get
us right now if you want to move forward and so one is really when you’re, when you need
to drive those inquiries, those leads right away. Lead generation is the ticket when you
have more of a, you’re maybe not wanting to push that hard, you’d rather have people
come to you, demand generation is creating content that works long term and brings people
to you. Of course you can do both and that’s what I would recommend strongly and that‘s
what we do in practice every day, is doing both, demand generation and lead generation,
that way you’re always getting fed. John: Yeah, it’s not an either/or it’s
an and; that’s the degree to which you want to do one or the other and it’s a high wire
kind of a balancing act. Well that’s awesome, so do you want to hunt more like a leopard
or hunt more like a spider. It’s kind of ironic Mark, that over your shoulder you’ve
got a picture of what looks like a leopard there. I guess you’re in the leopard business
although today you’re kind of promoting the idea of a spider, um in either case both
work and the, the thing to think about is that it’s more of a blend of the two than
an either or question and if you want some help, to help you figure out how to make that
blend work for you and your business, let me recommend that you give Mark a call or
reach out to him by email at mark@toplocalrankings.com. Thanks Mark.
Mark: Thanks John John: Cheers.