Demand Generation Strategy: ICP, Buying Groups, and Buyer Behaviour
Written by LeadScale
Demand generation begins with a targeting decision, not a campaign. Before any budget moves, the strategy has to settle who you are trying to reach, who you are deliberately not, and how the people you are reaching actually buy now. This hub routes to the three articles that set that foundation. For the framework overview, see the demand generation guide.
What This Covers
- Defining the ICP, the buying group, and the anti-target: which accounts to pursue, which people inside them decide, and which segments to exclude on purpose. Start here.
- What changed in B2B buying: the structural shifts that broke the lead-based model.
- AI search and AI agents in B2B buying: how buyers now research inside AI tools, and what that means for being found and cited rather than just ranked.
Why Strategy Comes Before the System
A demand engine built on a weak targeting decision runs efficiently in the wrong direction. The strategy foundation is where the expensive mistakes are avoided: spending against accounts that will never buy, addressing an individual when the decision is made by a group, or assuming a buying process that no longer exists. The decision here is collective, made by a buying group rather than a single contact, and that group’s behaviour has shifted faster than most demand programmes have.
Once the targeting and the buying reality are settled, the system foundations cover the quality, data, and governance that turn that strategy into clean pipeline, and the core concepts define the terms underneath both. For the whole programme in one view, return to the demand generation guide.