Today we are joined by Deanna Shimota CEO of GrowthMode Marketing and she is talking about demand generation tactics to supercharge your marketing.
Deanna’s Links
Deanna’s Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/deannashimota/
Deanna’s X – https://twitter.com/DeannaShimota
GrowthMode Marketing – https://growthmodemarketing.com/
GrowthMode Marketing Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/company/growthmode-marketing/
GrowthMode Marketing YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6YCnQiGaieDdHPSjRKzrlg
The Demand Gen Fix Podcast – https://open.spotify.com/show/0Ld9tv2TL1ZvJU6xxrvfqH?si=f8c97d66bd01401c
Demand Generation vs Lead Generation: Why B2B Brands Need Both to Grow
Too many B2B businesses are still asking the wrong question.
They ask, “How do we get more leads?”
What they should be asking is, “How do we become the brand buyers already trust before they’re ready to buy?”
That distinction matters. It is the difference between constantly pushing for short-term activity and building a long-term engine for sustainable growth. It is also where many brands lose momentum without realising it.
In a crowded market, lead generation alone is rarely enough. You can capture interest that already exists, but if your brand has not built visibility, trust and relevance before that moment, you are fighting for attention late in the game. And late is expensive.
That was one of the clearest themes in our conversation on the Unified Brand Podcast with Deanna Shimoda, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. Her perspective was sharp, practical and grounded in the reality of modern B2B buying behaviour.
As Deanna put it, “Lead generation and demand generation are two very different strategies.”
That simple distinction opens up a much bigger conversation about how brands grow, why old models are underperforming, and what businesses need to do differently if they want to build real commercial traction.
This article explores that difference, why it matters, and how B2B brands can create a stronger, more unified growth strategy by balancing both.
What is the difference between demand generation and lead generation?
Let’s begin with clarity, because clarity is where growth starts.
Lead generation is about capturing existing demand. It is designed to identify and convert people who are already looking for a solution. These are the prospects who are closer to making a decision. They may be searching for suppliers, comparing options, downloading a guide, booking a demo, or responding to a campaign because the problem is already active in their minds.
Demand generation is broader and earlier. It is about creating awareness, trust and preference before someone enters a buying cycle. It helps your brand become visible and credible to the much larger portion of the market that is not ready to buy right now.
Deanna explained it brilliantly:
“From a lead generation standpoint, basically your marketing programmes are only focused on the 5% of companies that are currently in market.”
Then she contrasted that with the bigger opportunity:
“Demand generation, on the flip side, focuses on driving value, not just with the 5% that are currently in market, but also the 95% of companies that are not looking to buy right now.”
That is the heart of it.
Lead generation helps you convert demand that already exists. Demand generation helps ensure your brand is remembered when that demand eventually appears.
The mistake many businesses make is treating these two ideas as if they are interchangeable. They are not. They are complementary, but they are not the same.
And when you confuse them, you end up overinvesting in short-term capture while underinvesting in the very things that make capture easier, cheaper and more effective later.
Why lead generation alone is no longer enough
There was a time when the classic B2B playbook worked better than it does now.
You created a gated asset. Prospects filled in a form. Marketing passed the lead to sales. Sales followed up. Opportunities entered the pipeline. It felt measurable, manageable and predictable.
But buying behaviour has changed.
Buyers are doing more independent research. They are spending longer educating themselves. They are validating options before speaking to sales. They are forming opinions about who is credible well before they ask for a meeting.
That is why so many businesses are experiencing a familiar frustration: they are generating leads, but not enough quality. Enough form fills, perhaps, but not enough momentum. Enough activity, but not enough belief.
Deanna captured the issue clearly:
“The problem with that is the way that buyers in the B2B space are making purchase decisions today doesn’t fit that model well anymore.”
That shift should force every brand to re-evaluate how it sees growth.
If buyers are making their minds up earlier, then your brand needs to show up earlier. If trust is built before the sales conversation, then marketing has to do more than produce contact details. It has to create confidence.
This is where demand generation becomes commercially powerful.
Not because it replaces lead generation, but because it makes it work harder.
What demand generation really does
Demand generation is often misunderstood because it sounds intangible to businesses under pressure for immediate results.
If a leadership team is staring at pipeline targets, demand generation can feel too soft, too slow, too difficult to measure. But that is usually because they are looking at it through the wrong lens.
Demand generation is not vague brand activity for the sake of visibility. Done well, it is a deliberate commercial strategy.
It builds mental availability. It increases familiarity. It sharpens market understanding. It creates brand preference over time. It gives your audience useful, relevant and confidence-building content before they are in active buying mode.
Or, in Deanna’s words:
“At the end of the day, it’s about prospects inviting you into their buying process versus lead gen, where you’re trying to pull them into your sales process.”
That is a profound difference.
One approach interrupts. The other earns attention.
One asks for action before trust exists. The other builds trust so that action feels natural when the time is right.
This is especially important in crowded B2B sectors where products and services can look increasingly similar. When feature sets blur together, buyers lean more heavily on confidence cues. They choose the brand that feels clearer, safer, more credible and more aligned with their needs.
That is why demand generation is not separate from brand strategy. It depends on it.
Why brand is central to demand generation
At Elements, we often say that brand is not decoration. It is not just visual identity. It is not the layer you add once the “real marketing” is finished.
Brand is how people understand you, remember you and decide whether you are worth paying attention to.
That is why demand generation without brand clarity quickly becomes noise.
If your message sounds like everyone else in the market, more content will not solve the problem. If your positioning is vague, increased visibility will only expose that vagueness more widely. If your perspective lacks substance, content distribution will not create trust.
Deanna touched on this from a demand generation perspective when she said:
“Brand plays a huge role in demand generation today.”
She also highlighted one of the biggest challenges brands face in crowded markets:
“You build this demand generation engine where you’re trying to be everything to everyone, which really works against you.”
That is exactly right.
The strongest brands do not try to appeal to everyone. They become highly relevant to the right people. They narrow their focus, sharpen their point of view, and create a message that cuts through the sea of sameness.
That is luminary work. It requires conviction. It requires strategic discipline. It requires the confidence to stop sounding generic and start sounding true.
The three pillars of an effective demand generation engine
One of the most useful parts of the conversation was Deanna’s practical framework for building demand generation. She described it as three pillars:
“We look at demand generation and building out an engine as having three pillars. The pillars are strategy, content and distribution.”
This framework is valuable because it turns demand generation from an abstract idea into something businesses can operationalise.
1. Strategy
Without strategy, content becomes volume without direction.
Deanna stressed the importance of identifying your ideal customer profile first. If you do not know exactly who you are trying to reach, your messaging broadens, your content weakens, and your distribution becomes inefficient.
She said:
“If you don’t have that piece and you don’t have it well defined, what happens is you build this demand generation engine where you’re trying to be everything to everyone.”
This is one of the clearest signs of a brand with diluted power.
Strategy also includes building a unique point of view. Not a slogan. Not a recycled statement about quality, service or innovation. A true perspective. A way of seeing the market that helps your audience frame their challenge differently.
As Deanna explained:
“You start to have a story that resonates with a subset of your total addressable market so that you can actually get some traction.”
That is the role of brand positioning in real commercial terms. It gives your audience a reason to notice you, remember you and prefer you.
2. Content
Once strategy is clear, content becomes the vehicle that carries your perspective into the market.
But not all content is equal.
The best demand generation content is not created to fill a calendar. It is created to answer real questions, reduce uncertainty, challenge stale thinking and build confidence over time.
Deanna described the importance of producing content for different formats and stages of the funnel, and not relying on one channel alone:
“Not everybody listens to a podcast. How do you take that content and repurpose it out? Create bite-sized chunks, print blog posts, infographics, webinars.”
This is a critical shift for businesses that still see content as one-off assets instead of connected systems.
At Elements, we would call this a unified content ecosystem. One strong idea should not live in one place. It should travel. It should educate through multiple formats. It should create repeated moments of relevance.
3. Distribution
Even strong content underperforms if nobody sees it.
That sounds obvious, but many brands still treat publishing as distribution, and the two are not the same.
Deanna broke distribution into three areas: your website, your managed channels and third-party channels. That is a smart way to think about it because it forces you to look beyond isolated campaigns.
Your website is your digital home. Your managed channels are the platforms you control. Third-party channels help you borrow trust and reach audiences you do not yet own.
What matters is not simply being present across these spaces, but creating connected experiences between them.
That leads to one of the strongest lines from the whole episode.
Your digital footprint should become your best sales rep
This is the idea that deserves to travel furthest.
Deanna said:
“Making sure that your digital footprint becomes your best sales rep because of the way that buyers and prospects look at the purchase decision these days.”
That is exactly how modern B2B brands should think.
Your website is not just a brochure. Your LinkedIn presence is not just a channel. Your podcast is not just content. Your articles are not just SEO assets.
Together, they form your digital footprint.
And your digital footprint is working all the time, whether you are paying attention to it or not. It is introducing your brand, shaping perception, answering questions, building trust, and either strengthening or weakening buyer confidence.
When that footprint is thin, inconsistent or generic, you leave growth on the table. Buyers may find you, but they do not feel enough conviction to move forward.
When that footprint is rich, useful and clearly differentiated, it becomes easier for people to self-educate and self-qualify. By the time they speak to you, much of the trust-building work has already been done.
That is not just a marketing advantage. It is a commercial advantage.
Why patience and consistency matter
This is the part many businesses resist.
Demand generation is not a switch you turn on and immediately see results from. It compounds. It gathers weight. It builds over time.
Deanna was candid about that:
“It takes a good six months to 18 months for a demand generation engine to truly start paying off and to start to bring in predictable inbound leads.”
And later:
“You need to set expectations internally because other people are not going to have the patience until they understand, like, this was never intended to be a quick win.”
That is wise counsel.
One of the dangers in B2B growth strategy is expecting long-term assets to perform like short-term tactics. A podcast, a thought leadership series, a content hub, a differentiated point of view, a stronger organic footprint — these things build strategic momentum. They are not instant fixes.
But the brands that stay with them are often the brands that create disproportionate advantage.
Not because they shouted louder, but because they stayed visible, clear and useful long enough to become trusted.
How to know if your brand has a demand generation problem
If you are unsure whether this applies to your business, there are some straightforward signs.
Deanna recommended one particularly practical exercise:
“Do a Google on your company and key topics and see how much you pop up.”
That is a simple but powerful audit.
If your brand barely appears around the problems you solve, your digital footprint is not strong enough.
She also suggested comparing your messaging with competitors:
“Go to competitor websites, pull off key statements from their website, put it all in a spreadsheet, blindly put yours in there too, and look at them and read through it.”
Then ask the uncomfortable question: does your messaging sound distinct, or could it belong to almost anyone in your category?
This is where many B2B brands discover they do not have a lead generation problem at all. They have a differentiation problem. Or a clarity problem. Or a trust problem.
And those issues are rarely solved by pushing harder on the same tactics.
The future of B2B growth is not transactional
Towards the end of the episode, Deanna made an important point about where things are heading:
“More and more companies are going to recognise that lead generation doesn’t work anymore, and I think it’s going to change the playbook.”
That does not mean leads disappear. It means the route to generating better leads changes.
The future belongs to brands that understand community, audience-building, trust and relevance. Brands that create ecosystems, not just campaigns. Brands that know buyers want confidence before commitment.
Deanna put it beautifully when discussing owned audiences:
“I think there is such value in building your own audience that follows and engages in your content, because if you stop and think about it, somebody who continually consumes your content there just builds this level of trust.”
That is the deeper truth behind demand generation.
It is not just about traffic. It is about relationship at scale.
It is about ensuring that when someone is ready, you are not an unknown option. You are the brand that has already helped them think more clearly.
Final thoughts: build for today, but brand for tomorrow
The strongest growth strategies do not choose between demand generation and lead generation.
They understand the role of both.
Lead generation helps you capture current intent. Demand generation helps create future preference. One supports the quarter. The other strengthens the years ahead.
The real opportunity is not to abandon lead generation. It is to stop asking it to do all the work on its own.
Deanna left listeners with a final thought that says it best:
“Don’t get so wrapped up in the short game that you overlook the long game, because if you’re only focused on the short game, it’s going to make growth that much harder for your organisation.”
That is the challenge for every ambitious B2B brand.
Not just to generate more activity, but to build more belief.
Not just to capture demand, but to create it.
Not just to market louder, but to matter more.
That is where luminary brands win.
If your business is generating noise but not enough traction, it may be time to assess whether your brand is truly built for modern buyer behaviour. Explore more insights from Elements Brand Management, take the Brand Power Assessment, or book a Clarity Session to uncover what is really holding growth back.
FAQ
Is demand generation the same as lead generation?
No. Lead generation focuses on converting people who are already in-market. Demand generation focuses on building awareness, trust and preference before buyers are ready to engage.
Why is demand generation important in B2B?
Because many B2B buyers research independently before speaking to sales. If your brand is not visible and credible early, you may never make the shortlist.
How long does demand generation take to work?
It is a longer-term strategy. As Deanna Shimoda explained, it can take six to 18 months for a demand generation engine to begin producing predictable inbound results.
What makes demand generation effective?
A clear ideal customer profile, a differentiated point of view, strong educational content, and consistent distribution across owned and third-party channels.
How can I improve demand generation?
Start by strengthening your positioning, auditing your digital footprint, creating content around buyer questions, and ensuring your brand shows up consistently where your audience is already learning.
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