Demand capture gets a bad rap.
But we know how important it is.
We’re just trying to change how it’s utilised for the better!
This week we’re joined by Silvio Perez, who shares his amazing and practical insights on another great use case for demand capture channels, scaling and getting the initial boost you need to build your demand creation engine.
In his role as Head of Product Innovation at Metadata.io and running AdConversion, he’s taking practical learnings from very real tests. He’s sharing that knowledge opening and giving us and you listeners the inside scoop of exactly what to do to get started.
There’s a ton of practical advice and value from this episode. Even as seasoned performance marketers, we’re still learning and swapping tips and tricks! Be sure to tune into this week’s episode for more!
Links To Mentioned Resources:
Some Highlights From The Episode
Some of Silvio’s Key Points
- Demand Capture channels get a bad rap because it’s finite and sooner or later you hit a wall.
- But there are still opportunities here. Chief among them for B2B businesses is feeding the right data into something like Google Ads and using value based bidding.
- Make sure you’re tying back what’s happening and testing back to actual revenue and pipeline growth. So you’re scaling the right thing.
- And as with anything, leverage automation through things like rules to make the whole operation better.
- To get started with Google Ads, you can start with branded search campaigns and exact match on high intent keywords. This helps you control and maximise performance and revenue impact from the most likely to convert.
- You can also look to expand reach and match types, but layer on audiences to help drive another layer of growth. One specific example is you can take the top 10 affinity audiences from Google Analytics and overlay them in Google Ads and it can have great results when scaling.
- Making use of remarketing audiences as another starting point is also a great way to go as you go into this space.
- Success for demand capture channels like Google Search should still be measured in pipeline / revenue impact. Even in the B2B SaaS space. And if you can get to breakeven or a slight loss if you know down the track you’ll get a positive return after the first click and cost, then that’s pretty good too for growth.
- Capture channels can help you get started to build a customer base and initial traction. Think of it as a way to sell burgers to the people who are hungry first. Use it to give you the runway to then shift to demand creation and educate the rest of the market on why they should buy your burgers when they get hungry.
- Don’t just be sold the dream that you can spend $1 and get $1.50 back. That takes time, if it ever happens. You need to understand what your bottom line is, how it’s being impacted vs what you’re spending. So you can understand, improve, and sell to the board / higher ups why continued investment is a good idea. Plus, you become more valuable when you think this way.
- Google search isn’t always feasible at the beginning, particularly if it’s saturated and you’re a challenger in the space with high CPCs. Because of that, you should explore other ad formats and / or channels to find an in to the demand capture channels. But be sure to not spray the field with it and also personalise and make those ads as native as possible so that it’s not dismissed out of hand. That includes creative and messaging. Sometimes the stuff done in-house and on the go performs better because it resonates and lands better.
- Different ad formats also have ways for you to filter out those that aren’t relevant customers. Make sure to use them to specifically target your ideal audience to keep the ads as efficient as possible.
- Specifically for creative, make sure you have a lot to test and quickly get feedback on. You can go polished, but it can slow you down too much and not be worth the cost in terms of revenue impact. You need that variation as well so that your audiences don’t become fatigued, which happens a lot quicker when you’re small and your audience sizes are also small.
- Additionally, for things to improve with your creatives, look first to audio and video quality. That can go a long way at the start.
- People often don’t pay attention to their campaigns. You have to embrace the boring work of looking at the CPLs and trends etc and making sure you’re catching those things early and make changes quickly. Or automate as much as possible to keep on top of that. Also be sure to really test some big differences to actually have an impact, not just little wording changes. And finally, give tests enough time (about 90 days) to really get an idea of what has potential and honing in on those and confirming they work.
- Start with manual bidding and then switch to smart bidding. This gets around some limitations of smart bidding during the learning phase for conversions data.
- Even with everyone on smart bidding, there’s still an advantage to be had in the details. You could work hard to improve your quality score due to your creative and keyword optimisation, you could be switching off on certain segments, times or locations because you’ve seen them not work, or you could even be leveraging match types and campaign set up differently that will still give you a lift on your competitors through the maintenance of your campaigns.
- And of course, the more conversion data or conversion signals you can put in, the better the algorithm will perform. Offline data is more optimal as well vs pixel based conversions.
- There’s then the biggest challenge of the point of diminishing returns. Once you hit that wall, you need to find other avenues to keep growing. Keep your existing system with ongoing creative refreshes but look to build for tomorrow. Go after a fixed list of dream customers and starting doing demand creation by going after them specifically to keep growing the capture pool itself through things like retargeting.
- You’ll know you’re hitting this wall when you start to see the pipe to spend is dropping and cost per opportunity is increasing, plus the increase in number of opportunities just isn’t worth it anymore. Your CPA will be exponentially increasing.
- Your landing page optimisation is 50% of your performance too. Don’t neglect it. It will help you combat the rise in demand capture channels. And it’s easy to get started with free tools like Google Optimize.
- Although you can do without retargeting, you probably should because it’s likely to be the most efficient way to get started with paid ads. Your ads will fatigue quicker, but you’ll look like a bigger fish in the pond.
- If you have no money to start, start with organic and build your presence to learn the channels. But install the remarketing pixel as soon as you start so you can build those remarketing pools. That becomes your first pool of people you should go after with your paid ads. This will continue to build on the good will you’ve been building. And it’ll give you hopefully the base to continue to scale your paid ads.
- Keep an eye on your frequency (aim for below 4) with remarketing and general ads delivery though.
- Tiktok can work for B2B reach too, even if it’s not as accurate in targeting. That’s an example of doing testing to get out there and find those hidden gems in demand capture.
- The best thing you can do for your marketing career and learning is to start a side hustle and learn to market it. Everybody is just figuring it out and each situation is unique. Be maniacal about your numbers and get stuck in.
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