The Difference between Lead Gen, Demand Gen and Revenue Marketing for B2B Marketers

In the B2B marketing world, there’s considerable debate about lead generation, demand generation, and an emerging term called revenue marketing. Are the three co-dependent? If yes, what connects them and how does it all come together for the modern B2B marketers faced with increasingly complex buying collectives and longer buying cycles? 

Let’s begin by unpacking what the terms mean and the significance they hold for marketers today.

Lead generation is the process of identifying potential prospects by casting a wide net of content and handing sales a long list of “leads” (those who show some interest in the content and meet basic qualification criteria) to follow-up and possibly close. In theory, the traditional lead generation methods such as content marketing, display ads, and retargeting can lead to a healthy pipeline of qualified prospects for sales to follow-up on. 

For many, outcomes typically involve a high-volume of low-quality leads that make the list based on a single action (e.g., consuming content, clicking on an ad) by a member of the organization, which is inferred as true interest. A siloed lead generation approach can result in inefficiencies as sales chases somewhat qualified (but often uninterested prospects) who may not be truly in-market for a purchase.

Demand generation is typically the process of creating content across a range of credible channels and networks, with the aim of engaging in-market prospects and gathering solid intent signals over time across multiple members of the organization. While the value offered by the content itself helps members of the buying collective move decisively forward in their journey, the intent signals can provide context for the marketing and sales team to craft a more relevant engagement plan that leads to a favorable buying decision. 

The outcome is typically a strong pipeline of high-quality MQLs, with a higher propensity to convert, establish an ongoing relationship, and stay engaged over the customer’s life-cycle. That said, creating strong inbound content and generating more qualified leads by itself may not transformatively move the revenue needle.

Often referred to as growth marketing, revenue marketing is typically the process where the business focus expands beyond short-term tactics (e.g., generating X number of leads or MQLs, quarterly results). 

Instead, the aim of revenue or growth marketing is to create a sustainable ecosystem where marketing and sales work in tandem, leveraging best-in-class intent data and decision intelligence systems (i.e., systems that use data and analytics to augment process and decision efficiency and effectiveness) to inform their demand generation and customer engagement initiatives. The outcome is optimal efficiency and effectiveness in the customer acquisition, retention, and expansion processes. In addition, the organization also sees better quality customers who convert faster and stay longer. 

This approach helps the business measure ROI in terms of longer-term revenue across the customer life cycle, as well as business value delivered by process efficiencies. 

The Way Ahead for B2B Marketers in 2022 and Beyond

If data and technology maturity is low and sales and marketing work in silos, volume-centric lead generation is no guarantee for desired sales outcomes. The process inefficiencies too would be glaring. B2B marketers that evolved to use ABM strategies made considerable progress in the context of better targeting and more data-led decision making. The revenue marketing approach has further evolved it into a seamless process where demand generation is an ongoing process, jointly owned by sales and marketing, informed by credible data, and constantly tweaked for optimal outcomes. 

As a result, with data and technology maturity at an all-time high today, and marketer confidence with using decision intelligence techniques getting stronger, we are moving into an era where B2B marketing outcomes are increasingly being measured in terms of revenue, retention, and longevity of customers. 

In addition, with customer expectations being what they are, no B2B marketer can afford to think of lead generation, demand generation, or growth marketing in silos. The best approach is to build a strong intent data enabled ecosystem from the start, streamlining the people, processes, and technology needed to generate intent data, mine it for insights, and activate those insights with campaigns that deliver revenue-focused results. 

While this is a more scientific approach to customer acquisition and retention, it makes brand experiences more personalized and human. Not only can this approach cement marketing’s place at the business table, it contributes significant value to the larger customer experience (CX) focused goals any progressive enterprise may be aiming for.

A key part of building a strong intent-data led revenue marketing ecosystem is to identify and partner with an intent-data vendor who can support you through the end-to-end process of acquisition, retention, and expansion. 

Data and decision intelligence from vendors such as SWZD help B2B marketers efficiently turn high-quality MQLs into high-quality customers. This is a central consideration in an era where access to trusted and credible third-party data is a growing challenge, and generating first-party data at scale can be prohibitively expensive. 

The Bottomline

Ultimately, no matter what terminology is used, efficient and effective marketing should lead to sustained growth and revenue outcomes for the business. 

More than terminology, what B2B marketers need is a mindset shift where investments across the buying journey and customer lifecycle should be directed towards high-quality customer acquisition, retention, and expansion at scale, designed for optimal customer experiences.