How SEO Captures Demand You Create Elsewhere

Generating demand is all about making people want something they didn’t want to buy before they encountered your marketing.

Sometimes, this is a short-term move, like an e-commerce store creating buzz before launching a new product. Other times, such as B2B marketing, reaching out-of-market audiences is a long-term activity.

In either case, demand generation can quickly become an expensive marketing exercise.

Here are some of the ways SEO can help you capture and retain the demand you generate, so you can stretch your marketing budget further.

How is demand typically generated?

There is no right or wrong way to generate demand. Any marketing activity that creates a desire to purchase (where there was no such desire before) can be considered demand generation.

Common examples include using:

• paid advertising
• word of mouth
• social media
• video marketing
• Email newsletter
• content marketing
• social marketing

For example, Preshan It is a small local brand in Australia that creates a new type of exfoliating stone using clay. They have been selling offline since 2018 (or even earlier).

It’s not a groundbreaking innovation, but it hasn’t been done before.

To launch their product online, they started running a lot of Facebook ads:

Thanks to their advertising, the company is in the early stages of generating demand for its products. Of course, this isn’t the type of marketing that goes viral, but it’s still a great example of demand generation.

Judging from the search volume data, there are 40 searches for the keyword “claystone exfoliator” in Australia every month, as well as some other related searches:

However, these same keywords have almost no searches in the US:

this no way occur.

Australia has a much smaller population than the United States. For non-localized searches, Australian search volume for the same keywords is typically about 6-10% of US search volume.

Take the most popular searches, for example:

The intensity of Pryshan’s advertising on other platforms directly creates search demand for exfoliating clay stones.

It doesn’t matter where or how you tell people about the product you’re selling. It is important to change their perspective from cognitive awareness to emotional desire.

Emotions lead to actions, and often the first action people take after becoming aware of a cool new thing is to Google it.

If you’re not using SEO as part of your marketing efforts, here are three things you can do:

• Minimize budget waste
• Generate interest when people search
• Convert the audience you’ve already reached

1. Make your product, service or innovation searchable

If you’re working hard to create demand for your product, make sure it’s easy for people to discover it when they search Google.

• Give it a simple and easy-to-remember name
• Tag them based on how people naturally search for them
• Avoid any term that creates ambiguity with existing things

For example, the concept of clay exfoliating stones is easy to remember.

Even if they don’t remember what Pryshan called their product, they will remember the videos and images they saw of it being used to exfoliate people’s skin. They will remember that it is made of clay rather than a more common material like pumice stone.

It makes sense that Pryshan calls its product similar to what people tend to search for.

However, in this case, the context of the exfoliation is important.

If Pryshan chose to call its product “clay stone,” it would be difficult to distinguish it from its gardening products in search results. For this type of keyword, it’s already one of the strangest in the SERP:

When you’re going through a branding exercise to decide what to call your product or innovation, it can be helpful to search Google for your ideas.

This way, you can easily know which phrases to avoid lest your product be grouped with irrelevant things.

2. Have as much space as possible in search results

Imagine that you are part of a company that is investing heavily in a rebrand. New logo, new slogan, new marketing materials… the list goes on.

On the back of the new business card, the designers thought it would be smart to invite people to search Google for the new slogan.

The only problem is that this company’s slogan doesn’t rank.

They didn’t show up at all! (Yes, this is a true story and no, I cannot share the name of the brand).

This strategy is not new. Many businesses take advantage of the fact that people are searching on Google to convert offline audiences into online audiences through print, radio and TV ads.

If you don’t already have a search results page, don’t do this.

Not only is this a costly mistake, but it gives your competitors the conversion rates you’re working so hard for.

Instead, use SEO to be the only brand people see when they search for your brand, product, or something you create.

Let’s take Pryshan as an example.

They were the first brand to produce exfoliating clay stones. Their audience created several new keywords to find Pryshan’s products on Google, with “clay stone exfoliator” being the most popular variation.

However, even though this is the product they are bringing to market, competitors and retailers are already encroaching on their SERP space for this keyword:

Sure, Pleasant Hill has four organic seats, but that’s not enough.

Many competitors appear in the paid product carousel before searchers even see Pryshan’s website:

They already pay for Facebook ads, why not consider some paid Google placements?

Not to mention, stockists and competitors are ranking the other three organic positions.

Having stockists show up on your products might not seem that bad, but if you’re not careful, they could undercut your prices or exclude you from search results pages entirely.

This is also a common tactic used by affiliate marketers to earn commissions from brands that are not SEO savvy.

Simply put, SEO helps you protect your brand’s presence on Google.

3. Use search data to measure demand generation success

If you’re trying to create demand for a cool new thing that’s never been done before, it’s hard to know if it’s going to work.

Of course, you can measure sales. But many times, the generation of demand does not immediately translate into sales.

B2B marketing is a prominent example. Educating and converting out-of-market audiences into in-market leads can take a long time.

This is where SEO data can help bridge the gap and give you the data to gain more support from decision-makers.

Measuring brand search growth

Discover and track new keywords about your product, service or innovation

Monitor competitor visibility

final thoughts

If you’ve seen other great examples of how SEO and demand generation work together, please share them with me LinkedIn Any time.