When creating your marketing mix, it's important to choose channels that drive demand generation and demand capture. While most retailers tend to focus on the channels the capture immediate demand or high intent prospects -it's equally as critical to invest in channels that drive awareness or interest in your product or company. Doing so will increase the likelihood of a prospect choosing your store when they're ready to make a decision in their path to purchase.
So how do demand generation and demand capture differ? And what channels are best to drive them?
Demand Generation seeks to drive awareness and interest in your product or company. It's is all about positioning yourself to drive business. Demand generation tactics generally take the shape of TV commercials, radio ads, online videos ads, organic social media, display ads, print ads and direct mail. All of these channels and tactics can help you cast a wide net over your market.
We can often see how much a retailer has invested in demand generation tactics when we advertise for their company name with paid search. If they have a lot of impressions, clicks, and high click-through-rate, we know that the retailer has invested in demand generation tactics. This will also appear as direct traffic in Google Analytics.
Demand Capture capitalizes on demand generation's successes and goes a step further by seeking to capture people who are actively looking for products like yours. These high intent prospects are most commonly using search engines or similar channels to answer the questions that will move them towards purchase. For example, someone searching "sofa retailer near me" usually has high intent. Demand capture tactics often include: SEM, shopping ads, display retargeting, SEP and remarketing list for paid search ads.
Evan Sanchez
Evan Sanchez is an Enterprise Success Manager at Netsertive who manages paid search campaigns for large multi-location furniture dealers. He's lived in both Peru and Colombia.
