Demand creation is marketing that generates interest in your category among people who weren't actively looking — thought leadership, community building, events, and content that educates the market about a problem they may not have fully articulated. It's harder to attribute and takes longer to pay off, but it's the only way to expand your total addressable market and build a durable brand. Companies that only capture demand eventually run out of addressable buyers.
For example, publishing weekly LinkedIn content that educates CFOs about unit economics in their industry is demand creation — you're shaping how they think about a problem before they know your product exists.
We run demand creation programs for clients in emerging categories — building the market awareness that eventually feeds our clients' demand capture funnel.
Relevant Cactus Services
We implement Demand Creation strategies for B2B tech startups every day. Book a free 30-minute call to get a concrete plan for your situation.
Book a free strategy call →Demand Generation
Demand gen is the full-funnel marketing strategy designed to create awareness, generate interest, and drive pipeline for your product.
Lead Generation
Lead gen is the tactical activity of capturing contact information from potential buyers — gated content, webinar registrations, demo requests, contact forms.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
ABM flips traditional demand gen: instead of casting wide and filtering, you identify a list of specific target accounts and run personalized marketing just at them.
Intent Data
Intent data tells you which companies are actively researching topics related to your product — reading articles, comparing vendors, downloading relevant content — even before they fill out a form on your site.
Dark Social
Dark social refers to the sharing and discovery that happens in private channels — Slack communities, DMs, WhatsApp groups, private Discord servers, word-of-mouth — that attribution tools can't track.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
CAC is the total cost to acquire a new customer, including all sales and marketing spend.