How to Plan Lead Generation and Demand Generation From One Dataset (With Real Counts)

Lead generation turns a known person into a conversation. Demand generation makes a whole market aware you exist. You need an account list for one and a people list for the other, and both come from the same filters.

Demand generation is content, ads, events and free tools. You do not need to know who read them. Lead generation is a form fill, a reply or a booked call, and it needs a name and a channel.

TL;DR

• Demand generation targets accounts and runs on ads, content and events. Lead generation targets named people and runs on email, calls and forms.
• You can size both audiences with free count calls in about 20 minutes.
• The only step that spends records is pulling one page of 25 people. That is 25 of the 1,000 records on the Free plan.

Prerequisites

• A LeadOcean API key from the free plan, exported as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY.
• curl and jq.
• Optional: the LeadOcean MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp, to run the counts from an AI client.
• An ICP you can write as filters. This guide uses US companies with 201-500 employees and VPs of marketing.

Step 1: Write the ICP as filters

Write the buyer once. Both motions reuse it.

{
  "country": ["US"],
  "employeeRange": ["201-500"],
  "jobFunction": ["Advertising & Marketing"],
  "jobLevel": ["VP"]
}

Enum values are exact strings. Check a value before you use it:

curl -s "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/enums" -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" | jq 'keys'

jobLevel accepts C-Team, VP, Director, Manager, Staff and Other. GET /v1/enums costs no records.

Step 2: Size the lead generation list (people)

A lead generation list is named people with a working email. Count them first with count=true as a query parameter and limit 1.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?count=true" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "country": ["US"],
    "employeeRange": ["201-500"],
    "jobFunction": ["Advertising & Marketing"],
    "jobLevel": ["VP"],
    "limit": 1
  }' | jq '.meta'

The same count through the MCP tool leadocean_count_leads ran on 2026-10-21 and returned 5,339 people with a verified, catch_all_valid or catch_all email, across 3,311 companies. Without the email condition the same filters match 14,508 people. The count is capped at 100,000 in meta.total, so a wide filter shows a floor.

Step 3: Size the demand generation list (accounts)

Demand generation does not need a name. It needs the right companies in front of your ads and content. Count accounts with GET /v1/companies/count or the MCP tool leadocean_count_companies. Both are free.

Add a technology category to describe the company, not the person. This call asks for US companies with 201-500 employees that run marketing automation software:

{
  "hqCountry": ["US"],
  "employeeRange": ["201-500"],
  "technologyCategories": ["Marketing automation"]
}

On 2026-10-21 it returned 2,636 companies, with breakdowns by industry, HQ state and NAICS code. California had 524 and New York 243. Software Development led the industries with 162. The technology filter covers about 7.8M crawled sites, so a company we did not crawl will not match.

Use that list for ad audiences, event invites and account-level content. The counts show where to spend: a state with 524 accounts earns a regional event, a state with 20 does not.

Step 4: Pull the lead generation contacts

Now spend records. Pull one page of 25 and read the fields before you pull more.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "country": ["US"],
    "employeeRange": ["201-500"],
    "jobFunction": ["Advertising & Marketing"],
    "jobLevel": ["VP"],
    "limit": 25
  }' > page1.json
jq '.meta' page1.json

Page with the cursor from meta. One search pages to 10,000 rows, and meta.depthCapped turns true at the cap. Narrow the filters instead of walking further. For a larger file, POST /v1/exports takes up to 50,000 rows a request and 500,000 a day. Bulk CSV export is not on Free.

Step 5: Split the list by motion

Use one list, two jobs.

Load the company list into your ad platform. Send the people list to your email tool. Check email_status on each record before you send. A bounced email is not refunded.

Step 6: Measure each motion on its own number

Do not judge demand generation on leads. Judge it on reach into the account list from Step 3: how many of the 2,636 accounts saw the campaign, visited the site or searched for you by name.

Judge lead generation on the contacts from Step 4: how many replied, how many booked. Keep the denominator honest. If you sent to 25 people, say 25, not "the market".

A simple weekly check:

accounts_in_list        = 2636
accounts_reached        = (from your ad platform)
contacts_pulled         = 25
replies / meetings      = (from your email tool)

Re-run the free counts each month. The dataset is refreshed monthly, so the totals move.

What you get

The count outputs above are real and dated 2026-10-21:

leadocean_count_leads  (US, 201-500 employees, Advertising & Marketing, VP)
  total: 5339          (verified, catch_all_valid or catch_all email)
  totalAll: 14508      (no email condition)
  distinctCompanies: 3311
  credits: 0

leadocean_count_companies  (US HQ, 201-500 employees, Marketing automation)
  total: 2636
  credits: 0

A row from the people search has this shape (response shape from the API reference, placeholder values):

{
  "success": true,
  "data": [
    {
      "profile_data": {
        "profile_full_name": "Jane Doe",
        "profile_headline": "VP Marketing at Acme",
        "profile_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe-example"
      },
      "contact_data": {
        "has_email": true,
        "has_phone": false,
        "email_status": "verified",
        "email_type": "work",
        "contact_current_experiences": [{ "...": "company name, domain, job title" }]
      },
      "meta": { "source_ids": { "person_id": "1234567890" } }
    }
  ],
  "meta": { "count": 25, "nextCursor": "(opaque string)" }
}

Search rows carry no emails or phones. Enrich a person with POST /v1/people/enrich and reveal_email: true to get them.

Troubleshooting

FAQ