Blog
How SEO can capture the demand you create elsewhere
Oct
Demand generation is about making people want things they didn’t want to buy before they encountered your marketing.
Sometimes it’s a short-term play, as in the case of an online retailer that creates buzz before launching a modern product. Other times, as with B2B marketing, engaging an out-of-market audience is a long-term play.
In either situation, demand generation can quickly become an steep marketing activity.
Here are some ways SEO can facilitate you capture and maintain the demand you generate, making your marketing budget larger.
There is no right or wrong way to generate demand. Demand generation can be considered any marketing activity that generates the desire to buy something (if there was no such desire before).
Common examples include the employ of:
- Paid advertising
- Word of mouth
- Social media
- Video marketing
- Email newsletters
- Content marketing
- Social marketing
For example, Pryszan is a miniature local brand in Australia that has created a modern type of clay exfoliating stone. They have been selling it offline since 2018, if not earlier.
This is not a breakthrough innovation, but it has not been used before.
To get their product online, they started running several ads on Facebook:
Thanks to advertising, this company is in the early stages of generating demand for its product. Sure, it’s not the type of marketing that will go viral, but it’s still a great example of demand generation.
Looking at the search volume data, in Australia there are 40 monthly searches for the keyword “clay stone exfoliator” and several other related searches:
However, these same keywords are hardly searched at all in the US:
This Never is happening.
Australia has a much smaller population than the US. For non-localized searches, search volume in Australia is typically around 6-10% of search volume for the same keywords in the US.
Take a look at the top searches as an example:
Pryshan’s advertising activities on other platforms directly create demand for exfoliating clay stones.
It doesn’t matter where or how you educate people about the product you sell. What matters is shifting their perception from cognitive awareness to emotional desires.
Emotions trigger actions, and usually the first action people take when they hear about a nippy modern thing is to Google it.
If you’re not incorporating SEO into your marketing efforts, here are three things you can do to:
- minimize budget waste
- pique interest when people search
- convert the audiences you already reach
If you’re working demanding to create demand for your product, make sure people can easily find it when they search on Google.
- Give it a uncomplicated name that’s straightforward to remember
- Mark it according to how users naturally search
- Avoid terms that create confusion about an existing thing
For example, the concept of a clay exfoliating stone is straightforward to remember.
Even if they don’t remember what Pryshan calls his product, they will remember the videos and photos they saw of the product used to exfoliate their skin. They will remember that it is made of clay and not a more common material such as pumice.
It makes sense for Pryshan to name their product something similar to what people would be inclined to search for.
In this example, however, the context of exfoliation is crucial.
If Pryshan calls its product “clay stones”, it will have a harder time distinguishing itself from gardening products in search results. This is already strange in the SERP for keywords like this:
As you conduct your branding exercises to decide what to name your product or innovation, searching Google for ideas will be helpful.
This way, you will easily learn what expressions to avoid so that your product is not grouped into unrelated things.
Imagine that you are part of a company that has invested a lot of money in rebranding. Novel logo, modern slogan, modern marketing materials… a lot.
The designers thought inviting people to search for a modern term on Google would be a clever idea on the back of the modern business cards.
The only problem was that this company didn’t rank because of its tagline.
They didn’t appear at all! (Yes, this is a true story, no, I can’t name the brand).
This tactic is not modern. Many companies are taking advantage of the fact that people employ Google to convert offline audiences into online audiences through print, radio and TV advertising.
Don’t do this if you don’t already own the search results page.
Not only is this a very costly mistake, but it delivers the conversions you’ve worked demanding for directly to your competitors.
Instead, employ SEO to become the only brand people see when they search for your brand, product, or something you’ve created.
Let’s employ Pryshan as an example.
They are the first brand to create exfoliating clay stones. Their audience created several modern keywords to find Pryshan products on Google, with the most popular variation being “clay stone exfoliator.”
However, even though this is a product they have launched, competitors and retailers are already encroaching on their real estate in the SERPs for this keyword:
Sure, Pryshan has four organic spots, but that’s not enough.
Many competitors appear in the paid product carousel before Pryshan’s site is evident to search engines:
They’re already paying for Facebook ads, so why not consider paid placements on Google?
Not to mention that sellers and competitors occupy three other organic positions.
Having sellers offering your product may not seem so bad, but if you’re not careful, they can underprice you or push you out of the SERP altogether.
This is also a common tactic used by affiliate marketers to earn commissions from brands that are unfamiliar with SEO.
In miniature, SEO can facilitate protect your brand’s presence on Google.
If you’re working demanding to generate demand for a nippy modern thing that’s never been done before, it can be arduous to see if it’s working.
Sure, you can measure sales. However, in most cases, generating demand does not translate into immediate sales.
B2B marketing is a great example of this. Educating and converting your out-of-market audience into in-market prospects can take a long time.
This is where SEO data can facilitate bridge the gap and provide data to gain greater buy-in from decision-makers.
Measure growth in branded searches
A natural byproduct of demand generation efforts is that people are more likely to search for your brand (or at least they should if you’re doing it right).
Tracking how your branded keywords improve over time can facilitate you gauge how your demand generation efforts are progressing.
In Ahrefs you can employ Rank tracking to monitor how many people are discovering your site through searches related to your brand and whether they are trending:
If your brand is gigantic enough and gets hundreds of searches per month, you can also check out this nippy chart that predicts search potential in Keyword Explorer: :
Discover and track modern keywords for your products, services or innovations
If you encourage people to search for modern keywords related to your product, service or innovation as part of your demand generation strategy, set up alerts to monitor your presence for these terms.
This method will also facilitate you discover keywords that your audience naturally uses anyway.
Start by going to Ahrefs alerts and setting up a modern keyword alert.
Add your website.
Leave the volume setting unchanged (you want to include low search volume keywords to find out what modern searches people are entering).
Set your preferred email sending frequency and you’re ready to go.
Monitor your visibility against the competition
If you are concerned that other brands may attract your attention in Google search results, you can also employ Ahrefs to monitor your traffic share compared to them.
I like to employ Share of voice chart in Site Explorer to do this. It looks like this:
This chart gives you a bird’s-eye view of how you stack up against your competitors and whether you’re at risk of losing visibility to any of them.
Final thoughts
As SEO professionals, it’s straightforward to forget how demanding some companies work to generate demand for their products or services.
Demand always comes first and our job is to meet it.
This isn’t a chicken or the egg scenario. The most experienced marketers employ this to their advantage, creating their own SEO opportunities long before their competitors realize what they are doing.
If you’ve seen other great examples of SEO and demand generation working together, please share them with me LinkedIn whenever.
