Demand gen is the full-funnel marketing strategy designed to create awareness, generate interest, and drive pipeline for your product. It's broader than lead gen — it includes brand building, content marketing, events, and paid acquisition, all working together to move buyers from 'never heard of you' to 'ready to talk.' Great demand gen builds category awareness, not just captures existing demand from people already looking for a solution.
For example, a demand gen program for a B2B analytics tool might include LinkedIn thought leadership content, weekly newsletters, targeted paid ads, and a webinar series — working together to create pipeline from multiple sources.
Demand gen is our core service — we build integrated programs that combine paid, content, and outbound to create sustainable pipeline for B2B startups.
Related Terms
Relevant Cactus Services
We implement Demand Generation 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 →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.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
LTV is the total revenue you expect from a customer over their entire relationship with you.