Demand generation

What is demand generation?

Demand generation is marketing work that creates interest and qualified opportunities for sales. It covers building awareness with buyers who do not know you yet, making sure you are found when a buyer starts looking, and nurturing interest until the buyer is ready to talk. It is most common in business-to-business sales with longer cycles, where marketing programs and a structured sales process have to work together.

Why it matters to a revenue leader

Demand generation feeds pipeline that sellers did not have to prospect themselves, which frees their time for qualified conversations. Forrester has pushed the field to manage demand around buying groups and opportunities instead of single leads, because B2B purchases involve several people. In commercial services, much demand is triggered by events a company can see coming: code changes, failed inspections, contract expirations and budget season. Marketing timed to those events gives sellers better conversations than generic campaigns do, and gives the revenue leader a steadier pipeline.

A backflow testing company whose customers face annual testing deadlines in spring runs reminder campaigns to property managers in January and February. Quote requests in March rise from 60 the year before to 95. Sellers spend the month answering buyers who asked, and less time on cold outreach.