"Marketing's dirty secret is that what we call demand gen is really putting together offers and content that we put out on the internet like landmines. When someone trips over them, we bring them in and call them a lead. The conversion rates are terrible, the funnel is broken, and the customer experience is poor." Overheard yesterday from a CMO. And she's right. We've built a demand gen system that is destroying the customer experience: ☑️ Every whitepaper download triggers an SDR barrage ☑️ Basic pricing info sits behind aggressive forms ☑️ Email sequences that won't take no for an answer Yet data shows 69% of B2B buying happens anonymously, before any form fill. By the time buyers reach out, 80% already have their preferred vendor — and that vendor wins 80% of the time. The real opportunity? Building preference before buyers know they're in-market. This means: ☑️ Marketing that educates, entertains, and elevates — engagement, not leads ☑️ Content valuable enough that people would pay for it — then giving it away free ☑️ Communities that connect peers and foster genuine relationships The companies winning today aren't optimizing for form fills. They're investing in brand, thought leadership, and customer experience. They're playing the long game while others chase quick wins. The future of B2B marketing isn't about trapping buyers — it's about earning their trust before they even start shopping. #B2Bmarketing #demandgen #marketingstrategy #customerexperience #leadership
This makes a lot of sense and the customer experience part is key here. When people do 70% of their research before identifying, the experience we provide for their research can make a big difference. The question is what should this experience look like. Ungating content is a clear first step. But what other friction points can we remove to make it easier for them to learn? Asking them to search through a topic structure in an ungated resource center to find what they are looking for is still a bad experience.
But isn’t the problem the “explosion” that happens after the “landmine” is stepped on, not the landmine itself?? When a prospects offers up their contact details in exchange for a piece of content (or tool, or what not) then are making an agreement with the vendor. “I’ll give you this, but don’t abuse it” — and this is where 90% of the companies I see fail. Stop treating this like a “lead” to be nurtured. And start thinking of these as members of a community that you need to connect with. From my perspective, the strategy isn’t broken — but the execution is!
Considering nobody in B2B marketing talked about demand generation as a discipline until very recently - the term inbound was coined in 2005 (Inbound begat lead gen which failed miserably which begat demand generation which is also failing miserably), I can safely say this is all just a bunch of tech marketing nonsense which hasn't served any marketer or business well and unfortunately promised CEO's all the wrong things that they now think marketing can do. Basically, we've now got to claw our way back to the right way to do marketing (above) and promise the right things (long term growth) while fighting with the incredibly poor information being circulated for the past 15-20 years.
I definitely agree in principle, but struggle with how to show value of this shift via measurement and ROI. It becomes easier to show value in the long term when you can show the positive impact on pipeline, but what are the near term metrics you counsel to use at the 3 month, 6 month, 12 month marks to help prove this is the right shift to make when the sales cycles are 12+ months? For example, you can give web metrics and conversions to show increased engagement, but connecting that to future pipeline is bit of a leap for the rest of the c-suite. Would appreciate your insights.
When you break it down like this it really is pretty simple. We should be making it as easy as possible for people to become our customers - or at least give us consideration. Desperation is never an appealing look.
Jon Miller, what you describe is what many refer to as demand generation. However, doing it the way you lay it out is bastardizing the term. When demand is executed the right way, it puts the buyer at the center, delivering a sterling experience, connecting brand with demand, and focusing on quality opportunities over leads. There is a right way and a wrong way of executing demand generation and the right way starts with a customer-centric foundation.
I agree with this but I'm also frustrated by it. Creating content people want to read shouldn't be revolutionary. The marketing industry is suffering from self-inflicted wounds. Instead of injecting data, insights, and (dare I say) a bit of humanity into marketing strategies, every campaign had to be a 'tip and trick' but I think the trick is on us. How are marketing leaders going to rewrite the narrative so rising leaders like myself don't have to constantly prove ROI. Giving away good information is a great way to build customer trust. Leveraging community is a great way to keep it.
I've said this for 12-15 years and back then I got hostility from tech B2B people and senior leaders who wanted to gate everything as a form of job security. The customer experience matters more than ego and holding on to bad ideas. Being forward-thinking is often knowing intuitively and with data, what customer behavior is telling us, what is right and wrong as a consumer ourselves, and truly researching and listening to customers.
You're speaking my CMO love language Jon Miller!
B2B Marketing @ Direct Objective | 15+ Years Experience
3wThe key takeaway here is that demand generation should occur, but we should do it with sincere, quality market education, not traps. The big question is whether someone did research if the market education philosophy can bring us to shortened sales cycles. Any data?