Earning the right to eat cake

In my previous article, Have Your Cake and Eat It, I explored the delicate balancing act between delivering short term wins while building long term brand value. I admitted that the previous article wasn’t what I set out to say and since then, I’ve been working on uncovering what I really intended to communicate. I want to share with other marketers and sales people that brand building leads to demand and demand generation leads to brand value. One begets the next, right? In this article I want to shift the focus toward building a demand generation machine as a continuous process.

When I first started out as a CMO, I found the KPIs and the focus on Leads and MQLs quite overwhelming (I spoke about this in my previous article). I was fortunate enough to have a mentor at the time, the great Rob Pendleton . We discussed how I could actually build out a funnel that fed the pipeline machine while shifting and shaping the marketing operations to also have one eye on longer term goals, such as persona development, content strategy and branding.?

I have to thank Rob for his wisdom in working with me while I built this out.?

In our sessions, we discussed that, at its core, demand generation isn’t just about immediate leads or filling the funnel - it’s about building a foundation that earns you the right to capture longer range intent signals that truly fuel your marketing machine. Let’s dive into that a little more…

The two tilt approach to demand generation

Successful demand generation hinges on striking the right balance between two critical things:

1. Delivering quality leads in the short term (which keeps your sales team happy) and?
2. investing in a marketing engine that captures real, sustainable demand in the long term.

This two tilt approach is designed to do more than just meet weekly, quarterly and annual targets. It lays the groundwork for future success by positioning your brand to attract prospects with genuine intent, rather than merely chasing surface level interest.

Let’s explore both of these components...

Tilt 1: Quality MQLs that convert

We all know the pressure sales teams face to hit their numbers. It’s their wallet at the end of the day and there’s no escaping how much they want it to grow faster and faster. But, for marketers to help them succeed, we have to deliver leads that don’t just look good on paper but are primed for conversion. This is where the first tilt comes in: focusing on short term wins by generating Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) that meet stringent quality criteria and align closely with your ideal customer profile (ICP).

This means embracing a targeted approach to demand generation. My team and I used data driven signals to refine our lead scoring in our CRM so that we could automatically identify leads that were already showing signs of readiness to engage with our sales team.

It’s not just about quantity; it’s about quality. Every lead should earn its place in each stage of the lifecycle.

This is about optimising your CRM to build out a scorecard of intent per lead. For example, requesting a demo shoots a lead to the front of the queue verses someone that’s downloaded a whitepaper. That alone isn’t enough for a Sales team to start reaching out. I download multiple pieces of content every week, and I’m never going to remember which brand, product or service it was attached to. Not with that one interaction alone, anyway.?But a demo request? That's like someone waving to you frantically from the other side of the train tracks. You gotta go to them immediately. Their hands are in the air.

So, by scoring your leads in a way that builds up engaged MQLs keeps your sales team confident in the leads you’re handing off. In turn, you're earning the right to eat your cake because marketing remains a trusted partner in driving the growth or their wallet. Winning!

But while this focus on short term results is critical, it’s only one part of the equation.

Tilt 2: Building a machine that captures real demand

Here’s where the long game comes in. While you're working hard to satisfy sales’ need for instant gratification, it’s just as crucial to invest in a marketing machine that captures demand over time.

This requires a shift from lead generation to demand generation. Instead of simply looking for signs that a lead is a real person - such as form fills or webinar registrations - you want to track deeper intent signals that indicate a genuine interest in solving a problem your product addresses. Rather than checking for “signs of life”, intent data (even in its most rudimentary form) helps you understand when a prospect is moving from casual interest to active consideration, allowing you to prioritise the MQL pipeline and for sales to tailor their outreach more effectively.

Capturing demand involves building a robust content ecosystem that nurtures prospects throughout their buying journey. From educational blog posts and case studies to product demos and in depth whitepapers, you need to be offering value at every stage. But scoring them accordingly. The key is to set up your marketing engine in such a way that it doesn’t just drive interest - it cultivates intent. This isn’t anything new, but in practice, it’s a lot harder than it sounds. I’ve delved deep into persona ascension journeys to understand which triggers will push a lead up through the funnel but there’s never one silver bullet or golden piece of content. It’s a whole umbrella of content that brings them to the conclusion that your product can fix their pain.?

When I’ve combined these short and long term approaches, my marketing team has achieved something worth shouting about: generating demand that not only fills the funnel but leads to higher converting opportunities that bring value and ARR over time.

Earning the right to focus on intent

When you prove your ability to deliver quality leads that convert, you earn the right to take a more sophisticated approach to demand generation - one that focuses on intent rather than just leads. This mindset shift from traditional lead generation actually scales. It’s at this point, that my marketing team was able to begin experimenting with more advanced strategies such as account based marketing, ABM, or as I’d rather advocate, community based marketing (see Tim Bond ).

In my team, we don’t have a huge MarTech stack. We don’t have the budgets that allow for the big intent platforms. But, we’ve managed to achieve something that has turned our marketing engine into a powerful machine that drives actual pipeline and scaleable growth.?

It wasn’t a quick process. But we used the shorter term approaches to buy us the right to experiment with lead scoring, persona based ascension paths and community based thought leadership. My advice is to keep the sales function happy in the short term by delivering immediate needs, while simultaneously laying the foundation for long term, scaleable success through deeper, intent driven demand generation. Phew!

Conclusion

By adopting this two tilt approach to demand generation, you create a marketing and sales system that not only meets the immediate needs of your business but also ensures your efforts are future proofed. Try to shift away from capturing interest to capturing demand with real intent behind it. That’s what fuels a sustainable marketing machine.

Lastly, in my opinion, marketing is actually business development. It’s the art of scaling a business through managing short term pressures while building for long term future growth. Imagine a layer cake (also a good film) with a solid base layer from which you can add new tiers of flavours, textures and decoration. What you end up with is a unique demand generation cake that scales as your business grows.