your MQL obsession is tanking your pipeline
Everyone’s obsessed with leads. How many we got. How much they cost. Whether they’re "qualified."
But here’s the problem: marketing doesn’t control leads. Not really.
You control your message. You control your distribution. You control how often and how clearly you show up in front of the right people. Do that well and leads will follow… but they’re not the job. They’re just what happens when your demand gen program is actually working the way it’s supposed to.
The job is harder than that. It’s slower than that. It’s bigger than that.
Real demand gen isn’t a quarterly campaign you scramble to launch. It’s the system that makes your brand stick in your buyer’s head before they ever hit your site.
If you’re still measuring marketing success by how many MQLs you pushed to sales, you’re not just missing the point. You’re burning trust, wasting money, and slowing down your entire funnel.
lead gen and demand gen are not the same thing
Let’s stop pretending these terms are interchangeable.
Lead gen is transactional. It’s about collecting contact info in exchange for something — a template, a guide, a webinar registration. When marketers say "we’re running a lead gen campaign," what they usually mean is they’re putting some kind of gated asset behind paid spend and hoping people bite.
Demand gen is foundational. It’s about shaping perception, creating mental availability, and staying top of mind so that when your buyer is ready, your name is the first one they think of.
Lead gen is about friction. Demand gen is about flow.
This isn’t semantics. If you’re held to the wrong definition, you’ll run the wrong playbook. And then you’ll wonder why your numbers look great on paper, but your pipeline is dead in the water.
lead volume is an illusion
MQLs are sexy. They’re neat. Quantifiable. They make for impressive dashboards and pretty quarterly reports. You can point at them and say, "Look, we’re generating interest! We’re doing things!"
I used to work for a SaaS company that lived and died by this. We’d crank out gated content on anything remotely business-adjacent just to pump lead volume. It didn’t matter if the topic had zero overlap with our product or ICP. If it got downloads, it was a win. We’d parade the numbers in meetings, celebrate the volume, and move on.
Sure, those metrics look great on a resume — but when you zoom out, what’s the point of getting a lead if they were never going to become a customer?
Volume doesn’t mean value. Never has, never will.
If you’re capturing the wrong people — or the right people at the wrong time — those leads aren’t a step toward revenue. They’re a distraction. They bog down your sales team, erode org-wide confidence in your marketing program, and pollute your CRM — which is a whole other mess you’ll have to clean up later.
And when teams are under pressure, it gets worse. You start lowering the bar just to keep the numbers up. Anyone with a pulse and an email address gets through. The dashboard lights up, but no one converts.
Lead count is a vanity metric. And if you’re still optimizing around it, your strategy is built on sand.
real demand gen is slow burn
The best demand gen doesn’t try to brute-force its way to pipeline. It doesn’t scream for attention. It builds context and trust over time.
You’re not trying to create a spike. You’re trying to create a system.
That system should be intentionally designed to keep you in front of the right people, at the right time, with the right message, long before they hit the "book a demo” button.
Start measuring the quality and behavior of the buyers entering your orbit. Demand gen is working when it’s compounding quietly in the background. When buyers start arriving warmer. When sales starts skipping steps. When your brand starts to feel obvious.
which demand gen KPIs actually matter?
Forget CPL. Forget total lead volume. These are the demand gen health metrics that actually matter:
MQL-to-opportunity ratio: How many of the leads you generate actually move into the pipeline? If that number's low, you're either targeting the wrong people or pulling them in too early.
Associated deal value: Are you bringing in leads tied to real revenue? This helps gauge whether you're influencing high-value accounts or just driving noise.
Pipeline contribution by campaign: Can you attribute sourced or influenced pipeline to specific plays? Not every campaign needs to close deals, but it should at least push something forward.
Average sales cycle for inbound vs outbound: Demand gen should shrink sales cycles. If your inbound leads are taking just as long to close as cold outbound, your content and messaging aren’t doing their job.
Account match rate (especially on paid): Are you getting in front of your actual ICP, or just whoever LinkedIn feels like serving your ad to?
Sales sentiment: Are reps actually excited to work your leads? Are they referencing your campaigns unprompted on calls?
These are real indicators of demand. Not surface-level engagement. Not pixel fires or spreadsheet wins. Real traction with the buyers who matter.
Not everything that matters can be neatly measured in HubSpot. But if your programs are working, you’ll start to feel it across the business:
Sales starts saying "they mentioned our content" more often
You see more direct traffic, more branded search, more demo requests that don’t come from a campaign
The match rate on paid improves, meaning you’re hitting the right audience
Win rates get better, sales cycles shrink, ghosting goes down
Those are real indicators. They signal heat. And they’re a way better barometer than how many PDFs got downloaded last month.
don’t optimize for leads
Forget lead count. Start looking at:
Message clarity: Is what you stand for obvious and sharp?
Audience fit: Are your programs reaching decision-makers, not just followers?
Consistency: Are you present often enough to be remembered?
Utility: Are you genuinely helping your buyer understand their problem?
Good demand gen doesn’t mean leads disappear. It means they show up more qualified, more informed, and more ready to buy. And that’s the goal.
the real kicker
Most teams are drowning in MQLs and starving for real pipeline. And the longer you measure marketing success by lead count, the longer it’ll take to fix it.
So stop gaslighting yourself. You don’t need a new funnel template. You don’t need a dozen new gated content offers.
You need:
A clear message
A smart distribution plan
And the patience to build actual market momentum
Leads will come. But they are the result of trust and awareness — not a form fill.
