It’s time to take a look at the failings of lead generation and think about how to re-frame demand generation.

For too long, the focus has been on driving high numbers of leads into MarTech funnels, fundamentally at the expense of quality. It’s been a race to the bottom; a race where no-one’s the winner.

We all know that successful demand generation is about finding the right people, at the right moment, in the right mindset. The conventional approach has been to use technology to drive scale and efficiency in generating leads, which has come at the expense of effectiveness and quality.

The problem is that this sort of mass targeting jams brands’ sales funnels with poor quality leads that have to be sifted through and qualified. Many are either rejected, or never even worked on at all, resulting in extremely high levels of wastage. According to research from InsideSales.com, only 27% of Leads ever actually get contacted!

Quantity over quality has been having a detrimental effect on the customer experience. It drives customers into old-fashioned, brand-specific conversion funnels.

In the past it’s been a one-dimensional approach, offering an asset and asking customers to sign-up in return for their permission to be contacted. This has often resulted in a disconnect and a dispiriting experience for potential buyers, which starts to erode trust in the brand itself.

So how can brands and publishers move on from conventional lead generation? What should brands be asking of their publishing partners to maximise their demand generation approaches?

Prospect capture needs to be rethought with an emphasis on context. Too often it is an afterthought in the buying journey. It needs to be about more than just finding people who put their hand up (often very late in the process).

Brands and publishers should be working to actively move people along their buying journeys with more emphasis on engagement, education and nurture.

How can we do this? Where is the best place to capture potential buyers and move them forward in their buying journeys? Simply, when and where they’re already consuming content and looking for information.

By working with forward-thinking publishers, brands can benefit from continued intelligence and insights across the customer journey; from initial interest to conversion. This generates warmer prospects and they begin to filter themselves.

Brands should be asking publishers to combine their editorial credibility with rich customer data and insights.

Tapping into editorial breadth will give brands an in-depth understanding of audiences: what they’re interested in; how they’re looking for information on the products and services that they’re intending to buy; and what, how and when they’ll actually purchase. Brands can then use these insights to stimulate and grow demand beyond merely capturing it.

Marrying editorial credibility and insight with data driven engagement and nurture allows brands to influence prospective customers throughout their buying journeys.

Moving the focus from the brand environment to the publisher environment offers the opportunity to identify leads much earlier, and consequently create longer-term, more sustainable experiences and relationships. In this way, the leads that result are more self-qualified, more understood, and more predisposed to the brand’s offering.

Moving beyond simply identifying and classifying leads, brands can understand, persuade and move audiences to actually grow demand. And spend less time and effort sifting irrelevant leads as a consequence.

Publishers and brands need to refocus on the customer experience to create a natural approach to engagement which enables brands to focus on quality. It’s time to move on from lead generation and look to demand generation as the new operating model for identifying, stimulating, nurturing and converting leads into new customers.

Author: John Webb, managing director, Nowse.