Figuring out what kind of marketing motion you’re going to invest in can be tricky.
There are a ton of different terms, strategies, and approaches, many of which share overlapping boundaries.
Some even sound the same. Demand generation, demand creation, and demand capture all sound pretty similar, right?
While they do share a lot in common — they are intimately connected — they aren’t synonyms.
In this article, we’re going to shed light on the differences. We’ll explain exactly how demand creation differs from demand capture and what the two have to do with the overarching idea of demand gen.
Demand Creation vs. Demand Capture: A quick overview
Demand creation and demand capture are the two components of demand generation, a marketing approach that focuses on educating out-of-market buyers and capturing in-market buyers.
Demand Creation is the first part of the puzzle.
It focuses on raising awareness for a given problem and creating demand for a solution to that problem.
Demand Capture is the second half.
It focuses on capitalizing on the 5% or so of your target market who have demonstrated a need and interest in your product category and converting them into customers.
As such, the question of “demand creation vs. demand capture” is kind of a moot point.
You can’t capture demand if it isn’t first created, and creating demand without a mechanism for turning it into revenue is pretty pointless.
What is Demand Creation?
Demand creation is a marketing strategy that seeks to connect with and educate out-of-market buyers.
Here’s the idea:
95% of your total addressable market isn’t ready to buy. Many of them not only don’t know about your product, they probably aren’t even aware of the problems that your product solves.
That’s the big problem that demand creation seeks to solve.
It's about getting in front of potential buyers and raising awareness about the problem, how serious it is, and the consequences they’re facing as a result.
That conversion naturally leads to one about solutions:
Okay, so here’s this problem. Here’s how you solve it.
This means that the second part of demand creation is about getting your target audience passionate enough about solving the problem (that you’ve educated them about) to build demand for a solution.
That’s where demand creation ends, and demand capture takes over.
What value does Demand Creation provide?
The big win that comes from demand creation activities is that you are literally creating your own market.
Rather than waiting for the 95% of your market to (maybe) identify the problem on their own and then hopefully hear about your solution, you’re bringing both to them.
And since you’re the one helping them learn about the problem and the available solutions, you’re already top of mind once that demand is built and ready to be captured.
Great demand creation efforts also help paint your organization as a trusted brand and industry expert.
For example, in creating content related to the challenge in question, you may also provide some helpful advice and even resources for solving it, such as a free template.
Of course, your actual product does a much better job of solving the issue, which is something that your demand capture efforts will demonstrate.
How do you Create Demand?
For most companies, content creation and distribution make up the bulk of demand creation strategies.
This can include content types as diverse as SEO-focused blog posts, webinars, ebooks, guides, podcasts, and social media marketing campaigns.
What matters is the context of the content.
You’re not pushing out a sales pitch and explaining why your tool is the best in its category (I mean, you are, but you do that outside of your demand creation activities).
Instead, you’re helping prospective customers understand a given issue they didn’t realize they were facing.
This post on LinkedIn from our founder Max Greenwald, is the perfect example of a purely educational piece of demand creation content:
What is Demand Capture?
The demand capture process is all about attracting people in the 5% of the market that are ready to buy and converting them into sales prospects.
This can be considered an alternative to the traditional lead generation approach, though there is a huge amount of similarity here, and the two could easily be considered synonyms.
Demand capture is ambivalent to who created the demand.
Yes, your demand creation campaigns ideally flow into demand capture tactics, as the portion of the market that you’ve educated moves down the marketing funnel and gets closer to buying.
But you’re not exactly going to say no to an opportunity who learned about the problem and solution at hand from a competitor, are you?
In fact, some demand capture campaigns even go as far as poaching the demand that competitors have created, such as “X vs Y” comparison-type blog posts.
What value does Demand Capture provide?
Demand capture isn’t really a “should we or shouldn’t we” situation.
If you’re not capturing demand, you’re not capitalizing on the interest and trust you’ve built through demand gen activities, and you’re not bringing in fresh warm leads to your sales team.
But beyond that simple answer, focusing on demand creation as a practice (vs. a traditional lead generation approach or just patiently and passively waiting for some inbound leads to arrive) is beneficial because:
- It allows you to specifically target audience segments
- You’re capitalizing on the brand affinity and recognition you specifically and purposefully built with demand creation efforts
- It’s highly measurable, which means you can continuously optimize your campaigns
How do you Capture Demand?
Demand capture is all about attracting potential customers and bringing them into a marketing and sales funnel.
There are plenty of ways to do this.
Lead generation content like ebooks and guides that prospects have to exchange an email for are common methods.
Often, however, these aren’t particularly intent-focused. You don’t necessarily know, for example, how close to buying someone who signed up for your webinar is.
There are a few other options, however.
One such method is to use conversational chatbot tools, like Warmly’s AI-powered warm chat feature.
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Using Warmly, you can deanonymize website visitors, pull in firmographic and intent data from best-in-class providers, and have our AI chat engage with website visitors you’ve attracted using educational content or email marketing campaigns.
Some other channels and tactics for capturing demand include:
- Free trials or freemium product tiers
- Warm referrals from your partner network
- Customer referral programs
- Paid search (PPC)
- Social media and display advertising
- Review sites like Capterra and G2
Demand creation and Demand Capture: How they work together
Now that we’ve established that it isn’t really a question of demand creation or demand capture but rather that the two are both important components of demand generation, the question remains:
How do the two work together?
Demand Creation and Demand Capture Tools
Here’s a brief overview of what that process might look like:
- Top-of-funnel marketing efforts, such as blog posts and webinars, educate not-in-market customers about the perils and consequences of a specific problem they’re facing.
- As buyers become problem-aware (they now know about the problem at hand and what it means to them), they start thinking about solutions.
- Middle-of-funnel marketing efforts, such as retargeting ads and email marketing campaigns, guide customers through the process of weeding out potential solutions.
- As solution-aware customers (they know what kind of solution could solve their problem) work through this journey, they learn more about your product and become product-aware.
- Demand creation is complete. You’ve educated the person about the problem and raised demand for a solution. Now, demand capture can take over.
- Bottom-of-funnel marketing efforts (those aimed at attracting and converting purchase-ready buyers) help potential customers understand why your product is the best fit for their needs.
- A demand capture device closes the deal, and the sales process proper can begin.
That demand capture device might be a free trial activation, a personalized demo sign-up, or a customer interaction with an AI-led chat tool that engages the buyer, pre-qualifies them, integrates buying intent data, and ultimately ropes in a sales rep to close the deal via a live video call.
That’s exactly what Warmly, our signal-based revenue orchestration platform, is designed to do, by the way.
Getting started with demand generation
So, where to from here?
A successful demand generation campaign rests on a solid foundation of both software tools and processes.
Let’s start with the prior:
Check out our guide: Our Top 13 Demand Generation Tools For 2024.