DemandGen Report provides a fantastic Glossary Page with common industry terms and definitions.
Demand Generation: Focused on targeted marketing programs, demand generation drive awareness and interest in a company’s products and/or services. Predominant in BtoB marketing, demand generation marries marketing programs and structures sales processes. Read more
Lead Nurturing: The process of building a relationship by conducting an informative dialogue that helps qualified prospects who are not yet sales-ready, regardless of budget, authority, or timing — and of ensuring a clean hand-off to sales at the right time. Marketers strive for winnable opportunities in their pipeline. They care more about quality (defined as likely to drive revenue this or next quarter) than quantity. The implication is that leads should live in marketing, and that marketing should nurture leads until they are ready to become opportunities.
Marketing Automation: Software platforms designed for marketing departments and organizations to simplify processes by automating repetitive tasks. Marketing departments, consultants and part-time marketing employees benefit by specifying criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes which are then interpreted, stored and executed by software, which increases efficiency and reduces human error.
Lead Generation: To obtain information to expand business scope, lead generation starts by utilizing items like computer programs, databases, the Internet or a specialized service. The practice is focused on increasing sales revenues, looking for a job or for new clients, or conducting specialized research. Leads can consist of the names and addresses (or e-mail addresses) of individuals, corporations, institutions or agencies. Lists of leads can be gathered or filtered from targeted databases such as telephone and Internet directories. For a fee, lead generation vendors conduct research and provide clients with a list of leads.
