Marketing is people first, yet all campaigns are devoid of this sentiment. Demand generation, when done right, is the antidote to this. Not another lead gen tactic in disguise. There’s a quiet admission happening in marketing circles. One that’s taking place in dark socials and vented about in closed-door meetings. Lead quality is suffering and … Read More "Demand Generation: The People Problem Marketing Refuses to Admit"
Marketing is people first, yet all campaigns are devoid of this sentiment. Demand generation, when done right, is the antidote to this. Not another lead gen tactic in disguise.
There’s a quiet admission happening in marketing circles. One that’s taking place in dark socials and vented about in closed-door meetings.
Lead quality is suffering and there’s a lot of blame to go around. Sales hates the pipeline. Marketing swear that the MQLs not converting isn’t their fault. And everyone’s looking for someone to blame with marketing taking the brunt of it.
But here’s what’s flying under the radar.
The problem isn’t the leads. It’s that we stopped treating them like people.
Marketing became a data extraction game. A numbers racket. And demand generation? The one philosophy that could fix this? It got bastardized into just another lead gen tactic with a fancier name.
Let’s fix that.
What Demand Generation Actually Is
Demand generation is not lead generation with a rebrand.
It’s not about filling the top of the funnel with warm bodies. It’s not about hitting arbitrary MQL targets or gaming intent data.
Real demand generation is about creating genuine interest in what you do before someone is ready to buy. And that takes a lot. It doesn’t end at running an ad campaign and hoping it sticks but rather, building relationships with people who don’t know they need you yet. It’s earning attention instead of renting it.
Here’s the distinction between lead gen and demand gen that matters.
Lead Generation: Captures people who are showing buying and intent-based signals.
Demand Generation: Makes people care before they ever start looking.
One is transactional. The other is relational.
One treats buyers as targets. The other treats them as people with context, problems, and lives outside your sales cycle.
That difference? It’s everything.
Why Lead Quality is Suffering
The lead quality problem is a symptom of a deeper disease.
Agencies deliver lists of contacts who match your ICP. Sales calls them. They’re either confused about who you are or annoyed you’re calling.
The cycle repeats. Trust erodes.
Why does this happen?
Because the qualification process is broken. It assumes that downloading an eBook or attending a webinar means someone is qualified. That hitting a certain lead score makes them ready for sales.
But let’s be honest. Do you remember the last eBook you downloaded? Or the brand that wrote it?
Would you consider yourself a qualified lead just because you consumed their content?
Let that stir.
The answer tells you everything you need to know about why your pipeline is full of confused prospects who ghost your sales team.
The Demand Generation Framework That Actually Works
Since every B2B piece needs actionable takeaways, let’s get practical.
This isn’t a 7-step program. It’s a map of what makes demand generation actually work. Your route will be different, but these are the landmarks that matter.
1. Value Creation (The Foundation)
Your competitors have access to the same data you do. They’re creating similar content, and targeting the same ICPs.
Unless you’re competing on price or place, you’re in a toe-to-toe fight.
So how do you differentiate?
The equation looks something like this:
Audience data + Diverse Opinions + Experimentation + Creative Risk-Taking = tasteful value.
But what does this mean in practice?
Start with audience research that goes beyond firmographics.
You need to understand what your buyers care about when they’re not thinking about your product category. What keeps them up at night? What are they trying to prove to their boss? What would make them a hero in their organization?
Look at Slidebean. Their CEO runs a YouTube channel that delivers genuine value about startups, funding, and business strategy. It has nothing to do with their presentation software half the time.
What’s the difference between them and some other SaaS company?
They capitalized on the charisma of their founder and built a channel that consistently gives value. It worked because that was natural. Go to the channel and see the engagement. Their lead gen pipeline must be insane.
Then add diverse opinions.
Your content shouldn’t sound like everyone else in your space. If you’re in marketing automation, don’t just regurgitate the same “personalization is key” takes.
Have an opinion. Take a stance. Be willing to say something that 30% of your market will disagree with if it resonates deeply with the 70% you actually want to work with.
Finally, take creative risks.
This doesn’t mean being weird for the sake of being weird. It means testing formats, channels, and messages that your competitors aren’t touching.
When everyone in your space is doing webinars, try intimate roundtables. When everyone’s publishing whitepapers, create interactive tools. When everyone’s on LinkedIn, test community-led growth on Reddit or Discord.
2. Trust Building (The Qualification Process)
This is the core of demand generation.
Real qualification isn’t about lead scoring or BANT. It’s about building trust over time so that when someone does enter the market, you’re the obvious choice.
Here’s how you do it.
Adopt reciprocal altruism.
This is a principle from game theory that marketing forgot. If you give to your prospects without strings attached, they will feel obliged to return value to you.
Not because you manipulated them. Because humans are wired for reciprocity.
Practically, this means:
Give away your best insights. Not gated. Not behind a form. Just give them away.
Respond to questions publicly. If someone asks a question on LinkedIn or Twitter that you can answer, answer it. Don’t DM them to get on a call. Just help.
Create tools that solve real problems. Calculators, templates, frameworks. Things people can use immediately without ever talking to you.
For example, imagine this. A SaaS founder sends you a handwritten note and gives you a token of appreciation. She does this because she wants to genuinely understand your problem and solve it. And that’s what you perceive.
You will write to her on LinkedIn or Instagram, whichever channel you prefer.
This has built trust. And you will be more eager to sit with her and discuss business.
This is missing from current qualification practices. Trust-building that requires marketers to move beyond digital practices to concrete forms of connection.
Use multi-channel consistency.
Trust isn’t built in one place. It’s built when someone sees you showing up consistently across channels with the same message and values.
That means your LinkedIn content should echo your newsletter. Your podcast should reinforce your blog. Your sales conversations should reflect your marketing positioning.
Inconsistency kills trust faster than silence.
Track engagement, not downloads.
Stop measuring success by how many people filled out a form. Start measuring by how many people keep coming back.
Who’s opening every email? Who’s commenting on your posts? Who’s sharing your content with their network?
Those are your future customers. Not the person who downloaded one eBook six months ago and never engaged again.
3. Community Building (The Accelerant)
Here’s what most demand gen programs miss.
The reason people attend events like Exit Five’s Drive or Comic-Con isn’t networking.
It’s belonging.
They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. A movement. A community of people who think like them, struggle like them, and succeed like them.
Demand generation, done right, creates this.
Position your brand as the nexus of a community.
Take GITEX, one of the events in the UAE. It’s driven by a community of forward thinkers and B2B marketers. It is positioned as a premium event that many should attend.
And it works because it is positioned as a community of elites, forward thinkers, investors, and tech enthusiasts.
It is THE B2B event because of these four associations. You can do this at any scale.
Create spaces for your audience to connect with each other, not just with you.
This could be:
- A Slack community
- Regular virtual roundtables
- An annual event (even a small one)
- A Discord server
- A LinkedIn group that you actively moderate
The key is that the value comes from peer-to-peer connection, not just brand-to-audience.
Build on shared identity.
Your community needs to be about more than your product. It needs to be about a shared belief, challenge, or aspiration.
Marketing Ops professionals aren’t just looking for tools. They’re looking for recognition that their role is strategic, not tactical. That they’re architects, not just executors.
If your demand gen speaks to that identity, you’re not selling software. You’re offering a seat at a table they’ve been fighting to get to.
4. The Myth That Powers Everything
Big brands understand something smaller companies miss.
Value is myth.
Google is SEARCH. Apple is PRODUCTIVITY. OpenAI is AI.
These aren’t taglines. They’re identities. Myths that buyers can attach themselves to.
You don’t need to be a big brand to do this. You need to identify what makes you different and root yourself in that truth.
Find the gap in your market.
What is everyone else saying? What is everyone else promising?
Now look at what they’re actually delivering.
The gap between promise and delivery? That’s where your myth lives.
If everyone in your space promises “AI-powered insights” but delivers basic analytics with a chatbot slapped on, your myth could be “human-led strategy with AI augmentation.”
If everyone promises “enterprise-grade” but makes implementation a nightmare, your myth could be “enterprise power, startup speed.”
Echo that myth in everything.
Your content. Your product. Your sales process. Your customer service.
Every touchpoint should reinforce what you stand for. This isn’t about saying it. It’s about living it so consistently that buyers internalize it without you having to explain.
For example, Ciente delivers leads, but what is the brand’s myth? It is trust. The myth is trust-making. Through content and process, they build an organic pipeline of people that want agencies that operate on trust.
It was right there in the market gap. All they had to do was create the promise and deliver it.
What Demand Generation Leaders Must Do Differently
If you’re leading demand gen in 2025, here’s what needs to change.
Stop optimizing for MQLs.
Start optimizing for engaged audience growth. Track metrics like:
- Repeat content consumers
- Community participation rate
- Share of voice in your category
- Brand search volume growth
These are leading indicators of demand. MQLs are lagging indicators.
Align with sales on qualification criteria.
Sales doesn’t want more leads. They want better conversations.
Work with them to define what “engaged” actually means. Is it someone who’s consumed five pieces of content? Someone who’s attended two events? Someone who’s asked a question in your community?
Define it together. Then build your programs to create those behaviors.
Invest in owned channels.
Paid ads are necessary. But they’re rented attention.
Your email list, your community, your content hub. These are owned. They compound over time. They’re immune to algorithm changes and platform decay.
Shift budget from paid acquisition to owned audience growth. The ROI takes longer, but it’s exponentially better.
Measure impact, not activity.
Stop reporting on downloads, form fills, and MQLs.
Start reporting on pipeline influence, deal velocity for engaged accounts, and customer acquisition cost for community-sourced deals.
These are the metrics that matter to the business. And they’re the metrics that prove demand gen’s value beyond lead volume.
The Hard Truth
If you can’t identify a meaningful difference in what you offer, you don’t have a demand generation problem.
You have a product problem.
No amount of marketing will fix a solution that doesn’t actually solve a problem. No tactic will overcome a value proposition that isn’t compelling.
The buyers have become wary.
They’ve been burned by empty promises and subpar delivery. They’ve learned to spot marketing manipulation a mile away.
The only way to break through is to actually be different. To deliver on what you promise. To treat buyers like the people they are with contexts, constraints, and concerns that extend far beyond your sales cycle.
Demand generation doesn’t get them in the door.
It makes them want to stay.
And they’ll only stay if you add real value to their lives.
Demand Generation Is Marketing’s Return to Sanity
The data helps. The technology enables. The tactics facilitate. But at the end of the day, marketing is about human connection. About understanding what people care about and showing them you care about it too.
That’s what proper demand generation creates. Not a pipeline full of confused prospects who don’t remember filling out your form. But a community of engaged buyers who trust you before they ever need you.
And when they do need you? That’s when they know whom to turn to. Because yes, it is transactional but that doesn’t mean it should be devoid of trust.
The choice is obvious.
Because you didn’t treat them like a lead.
You treated them like a person. That’s the antidote to lead quality problems. Not better scoring models or more aggressive nurture sequences.
Just people talking to people about problems that matter.
The way marketing was always supposed to work.
