Most B2B companies spend thousands on marketing every month and still struggle to fill their pipeline. They run ads, publish content, attend events, and yet the sales team keeps asking: where are the leads?
The answer, more often than not, is a missing demand generation strategy. Not lead generation. Not brand awareness. Demand generation: the systematic process of creating genuine interest in your product or service before you ever ask for a meeting.
In this guide, we break down everything you need to know about B2B demand generation in 2026, from what it actually means to the specific tactics that work, the metrics that matter, and the mistakes that kill pipeline before it starts.
What Is Demand Generation?
Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and interest in your product or service across your target market. Unlike traditional advertising, which pushes a message and hopes for a response, demand generation builds trust, educates buyers, and positions your brand as the obvious choice before a prospect ever fills in a form.
Think of it this way: lead generation captures existing demand. Demand generation creates it.
In the current B2B landscape, this distinction matters more than ever. Buyers are doing more research independently. According to recent studies, the average B2B purchase now involves six to ten decision makers, and most of them are 70% through their buying journey before they speak to a sales rep. If your brand isn't part of that research phase, you're invisible when it counts.
A strong demand generation programme ensures that when those buyers are ready to take action, your company is already on their shortlist.
Demand Generation vs Lead Generation: What's the Difference?
This is one of the most common questions in B2B marketing, and getting it wrong is expensive.
Demand generation focuses on the top and middle of the funnel. It's about creating awareness, building trust, and educating your target audience. The goal is to make potential buyers aware that they have a problem and that your company can solve it.
Lead generation focuses on the bottom of the funnel. It's about capturing interest that already exists and converting it into actionable sales opportunities: form fills, meeting bookings, and qualified pipeline.
Here's where most companies go wrong: they skip demand generation entirely and jump straight to lead generation. They run gated content campaigns, buy lead lists, and blast cold emails at people who have never heard of them. The result? Low conversion rates, wasted budget, and a sales team drowning in unqualified leads.
The most effective B2B companies run demand generation and lead generation as two halves of the same engine. Demand gen warms the market. Lead gen converts it. You need both, and they need to work together.
At ORRJO, we've seen this play out across 30+ client engagements. The companies that invest in building demand before capturing it consistently see higher conversion rates, shorter sales cycles, and better quality pipeline.
The B2B Demand Generation Funnel
Every effective demand generation strategy follows a structured funnel, even if the buyer's journey isn't always linear. Here are the four stages that matter:
1. Awareness
This is where your target audience first encounters your brand. They may not know they have a problem yet, or they may be aware of the challenge but not actively looking for a solution. Your job at this stage is to show up with valuable, relevant content that earns attention.
Tactics: thought leadership content, LinkedIn organic posts, podcast appearances, industry reports, and brand creative that stands out in a crowded feed.
2. Engagement
Once a prospect is aware of your brand, the next step is deeper engagement. This means they're consuming your content regularly, following your company on social, or interacting with your team. They're not ready to buy, but they're paying attention.
Tactics: webinars, case study content, email newsletters, retargeting campaigns, and community engagement.
3. Consideration
At this stage, the buyer is actively evaluating solutions. They're comparing vendors, reading reviews, and building a business case internally. Your demand generation programme should ensure your brand is part of this evaluation.
Tactics: detailed case studies, comparison content, ROI calculators, product demos, and direct outreach from your sales team.
4. Conversion
This is where demand generation hands off to lead generation. The prospect is ready to talk, book a meeting, or start a trial. Your systems need to make this transition seamless.
Tactics: clear calls to action, frictionless booking pages, fast response times, and personalised outreach sequences.
7 Demand Generation Tactics That Actually Work
Strategy without execution is just a slide deck. Here are seven tactics we use with clients at ORRJO that consistently drive real pipeline:
- Content marketing and thought leadership. Publish content that solves real problems for your target audience. Not gated whitepapers that nobody reads, but genuinely useful insights that position your team as experts. Blog posts, LinkedIn articles, short form video, and original research all work. The key is consistency and quality.
- LinkedIn organic and paid strategy. LinkedIn remains the most effective channel for B2B demand generation. A combination of personal brand content from your leadership team and targeted sponsored content can build significant awareness in your ICP. The organic reach on LinkedIn still outperforms most paid channels when done well.
- Multi channel outbound campaigns. Outbound isn't dead. But the old approach of blasting generic emails to purchased lists is. Modern outbound combines email, LinkedIn, phone, and direct mail into coordinated sequences that feel personal and relevant. When paired with strong demand gen content, outbound response rates increase dramatically.
- Webinars and virtual events. Live events create engagement that static content cannot. A well run webinar with a clear topic, a strong speaker, and genuine value can generate hundreds of engaged prospects in a single session. The recording then becomes evergreen content for months afterwards.
- Strategic partnerships and co marketing. Partnering with complementary brands to co create content, run joint events, or cross promote to each other's audiences is one of the most underused demand gen tactics. It gives you instant credibility and access to a warm audience.
- Account based marketing (ABM). For companies selling into enterprise accounts, ABM is essential. Rather than broadcasting to a broad audience, ABM focuses demand gen efforts on a defined list of target accounts with personalised messaging and content tailored to their specific challenges.
- Brand building and creative. This is the one most B2B companies neglect. Your brand and creative are not nice to haves. They're the foundation of demand generation. If your brand looks forgettable, your demand gen campaigns will be too. Investing in distinctive, professional creative across every touchpoint compounds over time.
How to Measure Demand Generation Success
One of the biggest challenges with demand generation is measurement. Because demand gen operates at the top and middle of the funnel, the results don't always show up immediately in your CRM. That doesn't mean it isn't working. It means you need the right metrics.
Metrics that matter:
- Pipeline generated. The total value of sales opportunities created. This is the north star metric for any demand gen programme. At ORRJO, our clients have generated over £250M in combined pipeline.
- Cost per opportunity. How much are you spending to create each qualified sales opportunity? This is more meaningful than cost per lead because it accounts for quality.
- Marketing qualified accounts (MQAs). Rather than tracking individual leads, track accounts that show buying signals across multiple contacts. This aligns better with how B2B purchasing decisions actually happen.
- Engagement rate. Are your target accounts consuming your content, attending your events, and interacting with your brand? Engagement is a leading indicator that pipeline will follow.
- Time to revenue. How long does it take from first touch to closed deal? Effective demand gen should shorten this cycle by warming prospects before they enter your pipeline.
Metrics to be cautious about:
Impressions, clicks, and raw lead volume can be misleading. A campaign that generates 500 leads but zero pipeline is not working, no matter how impressive the dashboard looks. Always tie your demand gen metrics back to revenue outcomes.
Common Demand Generation Mistakes
After working with dozens of B2B companies on their demand gen strategies, we see the same mistakes repeated:
- Jumping straight to lead gen without building demand. This is the most common and most costly mistake. If nobody knows who you are, gating your content behind a form isn't going to fill your pipeline. It's going to frustrate the few people who find you.
- Treating demand gen as a campaign instead of a programme. Demand generation is not a six week sprint. It's an ongoing investment that compounds over time. The companies that see the best results are the ones who commit to it consistently, month after month.
- Ignoring brand. Your brand is the container for all of your demand gen efforts. If it's inconsistent, unprofessional, or forgettable, every pound you spend on demand gen is working harder than it should. Invest in your creative first.
- Not aligning sales and marketing. Demand gen only works when sales and marketing are aligned on target accounts, messaging, and what constitutes a qualified opportunity. Without this alignment, marketing generates leads that sales ignores, and everyone loses.
- Over relying on a single channel. Demand gen is inherently multi channel. If all your effort is going into LinkedIn ads or email outreach alone, you're missing the majority of your audience. The best programmes use a mix of channels that reinforce each other.
Building Your Demand Generation Team (Or Outsourcing It)
Running an effective demand generation programme requires a range of skills: strategy, content creation, design, paid media, marketing automation, data analysis, and sales development. Very few companies, especially those in the growth stage, have all of this in house.
You generally have three options:
- Build in house. Full control, but expensive. A complete demand gen team (strategist, content writer, designer, paid media specialist, SDR) can easily cost £250,000+ per year in salaries alone, before tools and technology.
- Hire an agency. Access to a full team of specialists without the overhead. The right agency brings proven frameworks, cross industry experience, and the ability to move fast. The trade off is less day to day control.
- Hybrid model. Keep strategy and core brand knowledge in house, and partner with an agency for execution. This is often the sweet spot for growing companies who want the best of both worlds.
When evaluating a demand generation partner, look for:
- A proven track record with measurable results (not vanity metrics)
- Experience in your industry or adjacent sectors
- A clear methodology and framework, not just ad hoc tactics
- The ability to handle creative, content, and execution, not just strategy
- Transparency on reporting and attribution
At ORRJO, we've helped B2B companies book over 10,000 qualified meetings and generate more than £250M in pipeline. Our demand generation service combines creative, content, outbound, and paid media into one integrated programme. If you're serious about building a predictable growth engine, we'd love to talk.
The Bottom Line
Demand generation is not a buzzword. It's the single most important investment a B2B company can make in its growth. It's the difference between chasing leads and having prospects come to you already convinced that you're the right partner.
The companies winning in 2026 are the ones who understood this early: build demand first, then capture it. Invest in your brand. Create content that actually helps your buyers. Show up consistently across the channels that matter. And measure what counts: pipeline, revenue, and growth.
If your current approach isn't delivering the pipeline your business needs, it might be time to rethink your strategy from the ground up. Get in touch with the ORRJO team and let's build your demand generation engine together.
