Imagine this, you’ve identified a gap in the market, develop a product or service to fill in this gap, and launch it.

As a skilled entrepreneur, you know this is just the start. You need to create enough interest among your target audience for your product or service so you can start moving things off the shelf—how else are your potential customers going to know about your solution?

Many businesses might approach this by adopting demand generation strategies, but that’s not the only way you can do this—you can create demand! Which approach you’re going to choose is going to decide your marketing strategy.

You may be wondering, is there any difference between demand generation and demand creation? There absolutely is. Let’s delve deeper.

What’s demand creation?

In very simple terms, demand creation is giving consumers a solution they didn’t know they needed. You’re essentially creating a new category of products or services and asking consumers to buy into your new solution.

Some of the biggest companies in the world, like Apple, are masters at demand creation.

Just by looking at their product lineup, you’ll know that many of their products don’t exactly solve an existing problem but rather create a new one and present Apple as the solution—think of the Lightning to 3.55mm dongle.

Demand creation instantly establishes you as the market leader in that product category because you’ll be the only business offering those products or services until any newcomers come in.

What’s demand generation?

Most marketers will be familiar with demand generations as it’s simply presenting a solution to a problem that already exists. There will already be demand in the market as consumers are actively looking for solutions.

Let’s take Apple’s lineup of laptops as an example. They’re not a new product category and there are a bunch of alternatives in the market. Consumers also research a lot about which laptops to purchase.

So Cupertino’s marketing strategy is to present Apple laptops as the best solution in the market through content, social media, and even ads.

Why should you care?

Simple. The approach you choose is going to have a big say in your marketing strategy and going to shape your sales funnel and customer journey map.

For example, let’s say you have an entirely new SaaS solution for the education sector and want to create demand for it.

Everything from the messaging in your marketing campaigns to the marketing channels you use must be very specific to first introduce the product to your target audience and then educate them about why they need your solution—you’re going to spend a big chunk of time and money to create awareness.

Some of the most effective ways to create demand include partnering up with influencers to put the word out about your solution and creating a lot of hype before you launch it with messaging such as a “new way to learn” or “say goodbye to classrooms”.

But on the contrary, if you’re tapping into an existing market segment, your marketing campaigns will need to be catered towards why your solution is better than your competitors to ensure that you always stay at the top of your potential customer’s minds.

You can do this through messaging such as “best in class” or “most innovative learning platform”. In addition, you can leverage search engine optimisation to ensure your brand shows up on the search results page when your potential customers search for products similar to yours.

Take your conversions and sales to the next level with the right demand strategy

Although you have the option to choose between demand generation and demand creation, your decision will ultimately depend on the product or service you’re offering.

So be diligent before choosing your demand strategy.

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