OK, I am back. I have been neglecting my blog far too long. But the shift towards less talking and more listening served me very well these past few months. My focus is sharper and I have a clearer vision as to where the trends are heading.

I am encouraged to see the increased discussions around demand generation. I no longer have explain what it is that I do when I say: “I am a demand generation specialist.”

Last week I attended Boston session of the Silverpop -sponsored B2B Marketing University . I was surprised to hear that the discussion concentrated on the differences between CRM systems and marketing automation. When asked which marketing automation system they currently use, most people in the audience answered Salesforce.com. Clearly, that is not a marketing system. It is a great tool to keep your database online and accessible to lots of sales people at the same time. But demand generation requires whole bunch of additional levers that needs to be tweaked and adjusted throughout marketing outreach efforts.

Following the event one of the keynote speakers, David Raab offered a very useful summary in his blog. David states:

“…marketing automation and demand generation systems are built for two different situations. Demand generation is for companies where the job of marketing is to generate qualified leads and turn them over to sales. After that, the customer relationship is managed by sales and operations groups, presumably through a CRM system. Marketing automation is for companies where marketing manages the entire customer life cycle.”

I think this goes back to the necessity of human element in successful marketing. Bottom line, it is imperative to have someone with demand generation expertise run marketing. Tools are great, but at the end people buy from people they know and trust. Marketing is most successful when all of these systems, tools, gadgets are invisible and the purchasing journey offered to the customer is seamless.