Intro:
In this article we try to explain the difference between demand creation and demand capture. What are the functions of both, the tactics, the challenges, the mediums and the outcomes.
TABLE OF CONTENT:
- Difference between CREATE VS CAPTURE demand
- Traditional buyer's journey
- What is wrong with the traditional buyer journey?
- Solution
- Execution
What is the difference?
As it is evident from the name Create demand and capture demand are two completely different ways of executing marketing where:
CREATE DEMAND: Focuses on generating buying intent by executing tactics that are not measurable directly and don’t SEEM to produce a direct ROI.
CAPTURE DEMAND: Is the style of marketing commonly known to us. This focuses on converting the demand already created into sales. This marketing method is easily measurable and produces a direct ROI in the marketing analytics.
To get a better understanding of both we need to understand the modern B2B buyer journey.
Traditional buyer's journey
We see a lot of talk about buyers' journeys and sales funnels. Generally the buyer journey is considered to be in the form of a funnel that is segmented into the following sections:
1- Awareness ( Top of funnel - TOFU )
2- Consideration ( Middle of funnel - MOFU )
3- Conversion ( Bottom of funnel - BOFU )
What is wrong with the traditional buyer journey?
This was introduced around the 2011 time by HubSpot as the inbound marketing. It is a capture demand strategy which was very effective at the time of its introduction but there is a key miss here. What is the miss?
“It assumes the buyer is problem aware and needs a solution”.
However that is rarely the case. At any given point in time there are no more than 3% of people who are in the market aware of a problem and looking to purchase a solution.
This means that when you optimize for this model you miss out on 97% of the potential buyers that could buy from you. Not only that, but you are also competing with the rest of the vendors for the same customers.
Solution:
We need to acknowledge that the buyer journey starts above the top of the funnel i.e. outside the funnel. And the buyer journey moves into DARK SOCIAL from
there. This is where the decisions are influenced and shaped.
This is the part of the buyer journey where you “create the demand” which then travels through the funnel to get captured.
EXECUTION
Let’s look at the execution of create demand and capture demand: