Demand Creation versus Demand Capture
In today’s turbulent B2B marketing landscape, the pressure to deliver both long-term brand value and short-term pipeline results has never been more relevant. In a recent conversation, Joaquin Dominguez was joined by a trio of accomplished marketing leaders to unpack the tension between demand creation and demand capture.
Their conversation surfaced shared struggles, strategic shifts, and evolving mindsets around how modern B2B teams think about building awareness, driving pipeline, and creating meaningful audience relationships.
Host
Joaquin Dominguez Head of Marketing at Adzact
Guests
Isabel Casey, Head of Marketing at Sifted
Beth Brooker, Senior B2B Marketing Manager at Three UK
Taylor Coblentz, Partner Marketing Manager representing HPE within Insight
Balancing Act: Between Brand and Pipeline
All three speakers agreed: short-term pipeline pressure remains intense. Yet, over-reliance on demand capture risks starving future pipeline. Taylor described the ease and attribution clarity of capture tactics, engaging buyers who are already in-market, as a double-edged sword. While effective, it can draw focus and resource away from the slower, more uncertain process of demand creation.
At Sifted, Isabel spoke of the delicate trade-off her lean team faces. While brand-building is a strategic priority, pressure tends to default to capturing active buyers. To bridge the two, they prioritise thought leadership content that serves both awareness and lead generation goals. It is a strategy designed to make brand investments more defensible by tying them to measurable business outcomes.
Beth shared a similar evolution at Three UK, where B2B marketing matured from a startup-like focus on performance to a more balanced brand-led strategy. She credited their growth to building brand awareness in a market where Three B2B was initially unknown. Without visibility, demand capture efforts faltered, an insight that led to a renewed commitment to brand investment.
Justifying Brand: The Role of Econometrics
A recurring theme was the challenge of measuring brand impact. Beth introduced econometrics as a game-changing capability for making brand’s case in a performance-driven organisation. By aggregating internal and external data, including spend, pricing, competitor activity, and macro trends, Three UK’s marketing team has been able to prove how brand investments drive pipeline and amplify performance channels.
This data-rich approach has helped them build internal trust and secure budget. Yet, Beth acknowledged that econometrics requires a certain level of scale and spend, making it less accessible for smaller teams. Still, its strategic value in complex attribution environments makes it a model worth aspiring to.
“Econometrics gave us the clarity we needed to prove that brand spend wasn’t just noise—it was driving real performance. It helped shift internal conversations from ‘why brand?’ to ‘where next?’” – Beth Brooker, Senior B2B Marketing Manager at Three UK
Matching Content with TAM
Isabel shared how Sifted’s new content product, Sifted Leaderboards, became a powerful tool for both brand and revenue. The rankings of Europe’s fastest-growing startups generate buzz and engagement among startups and investors alike. More importantly, they provide a natural entry point into Sifted’s proprietary subscription data.
A recent re-segmentation of their Total Addressable Market (TAM) allowed them to match content engagement with business fit, helping the team identify where to focus demand efforts and which leads are most aligned with their ICP. By connecting TAM analysis with content strategy, Sifted is building a clear bridge between top-of-funnel awareness and bottom-of-funnel conversion.
“When content directly reflects your value proposition and connects to your TAM, it stops being just noise—it becomes a bridge between awareness and conversion.” – Isabel Casey, Head of Marketing at Sifted
The Power of Case Studies and Human Stories
Taylor brought in the partner marketing perspective, highlighting how co-created case studies serve both performance and brand. They offer social proof, deepen partner relationships, and demonstrate value across a whole industry. While getting named clients can be difficult, the investment pays off in long-term impact.This blend of storytelling and credibility echoed across the group. Beth and Isabel reflected on how content that connects emotionally or showcases real success is increasingly central to building trust and conversion.
“Case studies build trust because they make the customer the hero. They’re not just proof points—they’re relationship-builders that resonate across the entire industry.” – Taylor Coblentz, Partner Marketing Manager at Insight
Connecting Brand and Performance: More Than a Funnel
While each organisation approached it differently, all agreed that brand and performance are not separate lanes but interdependent elements of a single journey. From using lead management teams to qualify intent (Taylor), to triangulating data across econometrics, sales feedback, and AI-powered call listening (Beth), or mapping how thought leadership aligns with product value (Isabel), the goal is not to split the funnel but to better understand and orchestrate it.
Rethinking Demand: Shifts for B2B Marketers
To close the episode, Joaquin invited the panellists to share what they would most like to change about how B2B teams think about demand. Three bold themes emerged.
First, Taylor called for a shift away from obsession with short-term pipeline. She argued that brand should be seen as an investment in future relationships, not just a source of immediate leads.
Second, Isabel advocated for moving from a transactional view of demand to a relational one. Generating demand is not just about leads, but about building trust and creating ongoing value.
Third, Beth challenged B2B marketers to take more inspiration from B2C creativity. Injecting emotion and distinctiveness into B2B campaigns, she argued, can make them more resonant and memorable.
Conclusion
The conversation underlined that while the tension between demand creation and capture persists, it is also evolving. Modern B2B marketers are not choosing one over the other. They are connecting the dots, grounding creativity in data, and championing brand as an enabler of performance.
Whether it is leveraging econometrics, building TAM-informed content, or rethinking attribution, the common thread is the need to align marketing with how buyers really behave. Messy, emotional, and nonlinear. And in doing so, perhaps begin to bridge the long-standing divide between what marketing can prove and what it can truly deliver.
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