Lead gen is the tactical activity of capturing contact information from potential buyers — gated content, webinar registrations, demo requests, contact forms. It's a subset of demand gen. The mistake many startups make is confusing lead gen with demand gen: lead gen without upstream demand creation produces low-quality leads from people who don't really want your product. Build demand first, then capture it.
For example, running Google Ads to capture demo requests from people already searching for your solution category is lead gen — you're capturing existing demand rather than creating new interest.
We treat lead gen as the capture mechanism at the bottom of a demand gen funnel — not a standalone strategy.
Related Terms
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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.
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.