Did you grab a donut (or your sweet or salty snack of choice) and join us for our first episode of Donuts & Demand? 🍩

Donut be worried if you missed out! Not only do we have the entire episode available on-demand, but we’ve also pulled out some of the best demand generation tips and snippets from the live event.

We had a jam-packed—or should I say jelly filled—episode featuring Chris Walker, CEO and Founder of Refine Labs, and LaShanda Jackson, Director of Lifecycle Marketing at Intuit Mailchimp.

Here’s a look into the hot takes that were shared during our first episode of our new show for demand generation markets, Donuts & Demand:

• Demand generation is a broken term
• You can control your sales cycle
• Tapping into emotions will always help you win
• Programs trump campaigns

Let’s take a look (and a listen) to what Chris and LaShanda had to say!

What better way to kickoff our first episode than with a pretty basic question that is somehow still so hard to answer! After we did introductions and showed off our donuts—yes there are REAL donuts involved—I asked our guests the ultimate question, “How do you define demand generation?”

Chris Walker started the conversation off hot by stating, “I actually don't think that we should be using the term demand generation.” Which I can get behind! I’ve always found “demand generation” to be a very vague term; one that has a million different definitions. Here’s what else he had to say:

“I think when people hear demand generation, they think either lead generation or some form of paid digital advertising or acquisition,” he shared."When you think about the things that you need to accomplish in order to generate a net new customer, you need to create demand, you need to capture demand, and you need to convert demand as a holistic revenue.”

💡Did you know? The content and videos produced for this blog were created using Goldcast’s Content Lab, the first AI-powered studio to turn your events into a multi-channel content strategy.

One question that came up during the live show was about how to measure success when you have a longer sales cycle. Closed-won opps are not the easiest way to measure success of campaigns if your sales cycle is 16+ months long!

As this question came up, LaShanda and Chris made a very valid point: Just because people say your sales cycle is X months long, doesn’t mean you can’t try to change that statistic. Take this hot take with a grain of salt: We know that some industries, like government and financial services, have lots of red tape that make it nearly impossible to speed up sales. Chris goes more in-depth:

LaShanda pointed out how important it is to set KPIs along the entire prospect and/or customer journey. Measuring how they are interacting with your content, product, and various teams allows you to not only report back on success over a longer sales cycle, but can also potentially help push people along faster by serving up the most relevant and personalized content. She explained:

This might be one of my favorite tips from the entire episode.

We often hear how “boring” B2B marketing is. Whether it’s stale, overdone, too generic, or just plain vanilla, there’s still a huge lack of creativity across the entire sector. Yet the brands who do push the envelope and create campaigns that tap into the emotions of their buyers, whether positive or negative, will be the brands who win.

LaShanda drove home this tip in under a minute, take a listen:

If you’re looking for inspiration, LaShanda shared an excellent example from the Inuit Mailchimp team, which was developed by their internal creative agency, Wink. See it here.

As someone with the word campaigns in my title, I wasn’t so sure how I felt when this topic first came up. But don’t worry, we’re not saying campaigns aren’t important! They’re just the cherry on top of your always-on content. Chris explained:

“I would encourage people to think about that layering of things, of having an always-on engine that's consistently happening, that's repeatable, that drives results, and the accumulation of results gets better the more that you do it,” he stated.

Then being able to mix the creative, big thinking, one time campaigns. They should be risky, you should be taking a chance, and not all of them are gonna work. That's why it's a one time campaign and not an always on campaign.”

That only scratches the surface of all the hot demand generation takes shared during Goldcast’s first episode of Donuts & Demand!

If you’re interested in why Chris thinks Facebook ads have the best targeting algorithm, how LaShanda views ICPs, and hearing about the differences between demand generation, lead generation, and demand capture, then you’ve got to watch the full episode!

Don’t forget to sign up for the next episode all about enterprise demand generation. Join Michelle Blondin from Zoominfo and Brian Hansford from LiveRamp for a live conversation around driving growth, reaching global audiences, and what sets enterprise demand gen apart. Grab a donut and join us for insights that are as sweet as they are valuable.