How To Create Future Demand

With a solid understanding of the opportunity for growth, and a value proposition that sings to potential customers, the next step is to communicate to potential customers that you are their best option in the category.

Sounds simple, but in truth it requires planning and consistent execution and a two-speed approach.

Why two speed?

Well, some people will be in market now and so your aim is to persuade them to buy from you. At the same time, there will be plenty in your target who are not in market right now and so your aim there is to create future demand by being memorable and relevant for when they are in market.

It's been shown by the LinkedIn B2B Institute and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute that at any given time, of your total target market - people who will buy from your category - only 5% are in purchase mode at any given time.

Add to that the simple common sense fact that people don't tend to buy from brands they do not know, and marketing academics having shown a huge (0.67 from a scale of 0 to 1) correlation between awareness and purchase, and so the focus on the 95% is clearly crucial.

I look at it as the 5% as being immediate cashflow, whilst the 95% offer the potential for sustainable business growth. 

I'd always advise to set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) objectives around that growth too, so that you can qualify the investment required and the intended outcome.

So as well as short term activations, promotions and lead generation for those in market you need to deliver brand-led campaigns and communications to increase awareness and give your business the best opportunity of being bought by those not in market right now.

The key to success here is to be creative, memorable and consistent with your communications. 

Each campaign builds on the previous. Each time your target customer sees your brand and understands its value to them, you are increasing salience and the likelihood of being considered a good option when their time to purchase comes.

One final thing to add is that people don't really care about or think about brands in the way we do our own brands, so they won't get as bored of your campaigns and messages as perhaps you would. So let your messages wear in, and don't fret about them wearing out.

A good marketer can build a marketing plan to keep your business front of mind, memorable and relevant when your ideal customers are ready to buy.

Right. The Obvious Questions Answered.

If 95% of our market isn't ready to buy right now, what's the point of marketing to them?

Because the 5% who are in market right now is where everyone is competing.

Every business running performance campaigns, optimising for intent signals and chasing the same search terms is fighting over the same small pool of immediately available demand. That's expensive, competitive and inherently limited.

The 95% who aren't buying yet will buy eventually. The question is whether they'll think of you when they do. If you've been building mental availability: awareness, familiarity, positive associations, during the period they weren't in market, you start the conversation already ahead. If you've only been visible to the 5% who were searching, you don't exist to the rest.

How do you build awareness without knowing when someone will eventually buy?

Consistently. Over a sustained period.

Brand awareness is built through repeated exposure to messaging that's distinctive, relevant and memorable. Each campaign builds on the previous one. Each touchpoint increases the chance of being recalled when the buying moment eventually arrives.

The key is not letting campaigns wear out before they've had a chance to wear in. Buyers don't think about your brand as much as you do. They need more repetition than you'd expect before it sticks, and they get bored of it far more slowly than you will. That impatience to change things is one of the most expensive habits in marketing.

What's the right balance between short-term activation and long-term brand building?

There isn't a universal answer, but the general principle is well established: roughly 60% of marketing investment in long-term brand building and 40% in short-term activation produces the best results over time for most businesses, with the balance shifting depending on category and stage.

Under-invest in activation and you starve cashflow. Over-invest in activation and you plateau: you're squeezing existing demand without growing future demand to replace it. The businesses that grow most consistently manage both simultaneously, with clear intent behind each. The ones that only ever do one or the other tend to wonder why growth keeps stalling.

How do we set objectives for brand awareness investment when the results take time to show up?

SMART objectives still apply. You just need to pick the right metrics.

For awareness-building investment, track branded share of search over time, growth in direct website traffic, and unaided brand awareness in your target segment if you have access to research. Set clear benchmarks and timeframes. "Increase branded share of search from 3% to 7% over 12 months" is a measurable, time-bound objective that can be tracked without waiting for revenue to move.

These are leading indicators. They tell you whether future revenue is being built before it shows up in the P&L. If you only track lagging indicators, you're always surprised in both directions. Usually unpleasantly so.

We're being told to cut the brand budget because it's hard to prove ROI. How do we push back?

Make the commercial case before the budget conversation happens.

Show the correlation between awareness and purchase. It's well-evidenced, commercially logical, and can be expressed in terms a CFO understands. Show how your branded search is trending and what that implies for future cost per acquisition. Model what happens to pipeline quality if the business is only known to the 5% already actively searching.

The argument "it's hard to measure" concedes too much. It's not hard to measure, it just doesn't show up in last-click attribution. Those are different things. Build the case in commercial terms and the conversation changes completely.