Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 70 - Demand Gen for lead gen
Do Google Ads Demand Gen campaigns actually work for lead generation?
Can you generate demand with Demand Gen?
Demand Gen is Google's newest campaign type. Yes, even shinier and newer than Performance Max, and it's really misunderstood. I have seen so many people, both in my coaching practice and through my course members, launch Demand Gen, say, “ugh, this thing is terrible” and turn it off.
Will Demand Gen campaigns work for everyone? No, but it can work if you put the right foundations in place.
For today's episode, I wanted to bring you three different Google Ads practitioners who have run successful Demand Gen campaigns for three very different kinds of lead generation clients.
In doing so, I hope to inspire you with real world, current examples of how you might be able to make Demand Gen work for your account.
I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you.
This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 70: Demand Gen for Lead Generation.
Heather Brousell is the founder of Antares Digital Marketing and she's here to share a story of how Demand Gen had some surprising results for an educational institution. Let's have a listen.
Heather Broussell: The client that I'm currently using Demand Gen for is a prominent university, so the reason that we decided to go the route of Demand Gen was primarily because the university needed some brand awareness, but they also needed to hit specific enrollment numbers. We were tracking primarily form fills because those go into their admissions department where they will then follow up with the potential candidate.
Most of the creative was centered around the different types of community days that they have at the school. They wanted to show they are open to different nationalities and different cultures, and the majority of this is really focused around the students owning that entire process. In the video, you're not really hearing from the president, you're hearing from the actual students.
So the targeting was actually very interesting. They also of course run social media type of campaigns. What we did was we pulled different lists that we were using in social media and we essentially made Lookalikes of the ones that were really generating a lot of views, and a lot of engagement. We found that engagement actually was a bit higher on Google, which wasn't a surprise to me because that's something that I've really been heavily testing.
We also kind of took a more creative approach to reuse two different types of audiences. One audience was the student, and then the other audience was the parent. These videos were maybe like more, on campus fun types of things, that's really where we want to get the student excited. Whereas a video that maybe is more so around, different offerings in the school, more of like a behind the scenes of how those things come together, that was really the way that we approached parents because that would really speak to them and that would say this is some place that my child would really get value out of.
We wanted to really focus on conversion-based bidding. So we really focused on Target CPA. We wanted to make the daily budget about 15 times more than the expected Target CPA.
One of the main things that we looked at to gauge success was the video played metrics. We wanted to make sure that our messaging was very strong. And as a result of that, we found that people watching ads above 20% to 25% were the ones that were really converting.
Ads were hitting somewhere between $50 and $60 of cost per acquisition. So that's why we really started to hone in on the viewership. When we did that and we started to pause out those ones that were just kind of stragglers and not really hitting that 20% to 25% mark, that's when we started to really drive down the CPA, which was primarily our goal. And we actually ended up at a $21 CPA.The client was thrilled. And they started to see enrollments really spike.
They're a university based in Texas and get a huge amount of local candidates. One of our goals was actually to kind of penetrate the Northeast, and we found that the videos really started to resonate with people in the Northeast, but even more so, which was really interesting, is that they started to resonate with candidates that were in the Oregon or Colorado areas, which are typically areas they don't normally get candidates from. And they did find that they got quite a few enrollments that actually moved forward with the process and became students.
Next up, we're going to hear from Austin Lindquist, who's the Director of PPC at Ring Ring Marketing and one of my Google Ads coaching clients.
He's going to share a story of how Demand Gen was really helpful for a home services business to help buff up their normally slower season.
Austin Lindquist: A big part of Ring Ring Marketing is we work with trades. One of our clients is a window and door dealer and we decided that we wanted to really expand and get him a little bit top of the funnel, but also get a little bit better conversion tracking, so we tried out Demand Gen.
We were all trying to figure out, what is going to be the best way to approach this? And we decided with the client to use an audience that is 25 to 34. We wanted to do a Lookalike audience. We built our Lookalike audience off of a website remarketing and then we decided to do windows, doors and siding, door installation services and window replacement.
With the creative we had two different ads going. The first one was image creative and we decided with the client we wanted to do both the before and after images that he had as well as AI-generated. If you've ever worked with one of these clients, they have a tough time getting their installers to actually get good pictures. So we did leverage some of the AI features, which was really nice. Then the second one was leveraging the Video ad he was running on YouTube before. We actually uploaded that creative and most of his clicks and conversions at first were coming from the Video ad. So, now it's kind of going 50/50.
When we first ran, we had optimized targeting on and Display ads, and that was a pretty big mistake. He got a lot of spam. When we turned off optimized targeting and display network, we actually went from 65 conversions to 30 conversions and the ones that he was getting were actually good leads. He was a very happy client. He definitely loved the Demand Gen experience.
Obviously with Google Search, I still think that is going to be king. We also run in tandem our Google Search with Demand Gen, we just focus in on Google Search and then leverage Demand Gen during his slow season.
Having the two work together is probably one of the best things that we've been able to do this year for 2025 and hoping just to continue that success for all of our trade clients.
Let's hear now from Jack Hepp, the Founder of Industrious Marketing, who leveraged Demand Gen in a creative way for his cyber security client.
Jack Hepp: We ran Demand Gen for a managed IT service. It's targeted at small businesses. We tried Search, there was really limited search volume. We tried some social media as well and had limited success, but the targeting was difficult, so we ended up trying Demand Gen. The goal was basically to target businesses that were aware of this as an issue, and maybe they didn't know that there were solutions that existed.
Where we ended up finally having success was we built a Custom segment. We used some of the top performing search terms that we used when we tried Search before, and then we also added in industry type websites that somebody might go to if they're looking for information on “how to do cybersecurity,” or “what are cybersecurity risks,” things like that. And then we added in potential competitor websites as well, just to kind of give us a well rounded audience that we could reach. Then we also added in demographic age restrictions. We eliminated mostly younger audiences and then older audiences.
What we found with Demand Gen is that different people react to different types of creative. Some people are willing to click on an image ad in the Discover feed. Other people may be more likely to click on a Video ad on YouTube. So we tested a variety of types, and the best ads were where we focused on their pain points. We knew that they were problem aware, not necessarily solution aware, and so we were able to put their pain points in front of them. The top ads were almost always protecting your business. This is where we were focusing - “how to avoid cyber attacks,” “protect them from cyber attacks,” things like that. We tried feature-focused ads or some that highlighted industry statistics such as “this percentage of small businesses will have a cyber attack,” things like that. And we didn't get the response out of those that we did out of, “Hey, this is the problem. We know it's a problem. Here's the solution.”
One of the big things that helped us find success with this is we knew that this audience wasn't necessarily ready to sign up for a service today, right? They're not, they weren't searching for cybersecurity solutions or managed IT solutions. They weren't necessarily an audience that was going to be booking a demo as soon as they clicked on the ad.
So the client was able to build a quiz on their landing page. We drove people to the landing page and then encouraged them to fill out this quiz and it walked them through questions like, “How do you handle the IT services that you have currently,” if you are even doing anything to handle those services. That was a much lower lift for people. They weren't having to book a demo and commit to anything, but they were getting information and they were showing us that they were interested and they were somebody that actually was willing to go beyond just clicking on an ad. We knew that they were higher quality. They were at least, MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) and a higher level than just an ad click or even a really basic form fill.
Over three months we saw a $10.24 cost per lead. Those were people who actually completed the quiz. One of the best things was, users who completed the quiz converted to SQLs at a 40% rate. And then overall, they had a 20% increase in SQLs on the account.
Our [Search] clicks were $10 to $20 on average, around $15. And with Demand Gen, we were able to generate about $10 MQLs. So we were converting people into marketing qualified leads at the same cost as we were getting them to click on our ads in Search. It was a much more efficient way of getting leads into the funnel and then able to work them from there.
One thing I wish we had done from the beginning was tested a more targeted audience instead of trying those Google kind of default audiences. I already knew it was a difficult audience to reach. We tried other ways to reach them and had limited success, so I think that understanding your audience from the get-go and then taking that and applying it to what you're going to do with Demand Gen is going to make a big difference. If you already know it's a hard audience, be very tight with your targeting. You can always loosen it up later and adjust.
And then on top of that, matching your creative and your end goal made a huge difference. We knew that we needed to present them with creative that was going to catch their attention and, hopefully, entice them to visit our website. And it wasn't going to be something like, you know, cybersecurity, book a demo.
A big thank you to Heather, Austin and Jack for sharing their Demand Gen success stories with me and in turn with you.
I've included links in the episode description where you can find all of them if you'd like to learn more about their services.
Let's recap a few of the common themes we heard about how to make Demand Gen work for Lead Gen.
First, I would say the most important piece is your creative. You can have the best bidding and the most sophisticated targeting, but if your creative, your image or video, is not enticing people to come engage, you are not going to see good results with Demand Gen.
Once you have that compelling creative in place that really speaks to your target audience, and doesn't speak to your not target audience, the next thing you'll probably want to focus on is targeting because there are so many audience targeting options available to you in Demand Gen.
If you want to learn more about audience targeting, my book, Inside Google Ads: Everything you need to know about Audience Targeting, is available on Amazon and Google Play, it’s a great place to start.
Next, while you can absolutely run Demand Gen on a conversion-based objective, it's potentially unrealistic to expect people to directly convert straight from the ad.
Now, this is easier with lead gen versus ecommerce because a conversion is probably a form fill, a phone call, something of that nature but it's not unusual for it to take two, three, four weeks to start really seeing those conversions roll in.
And finally, after creative, the second most important part is probably your landing page. Jack shared a great example of how he did something unique with his client rather than just throwing up a lead form. They had a quiz. They were offering something of value.
What the user experiences or doesn't experience on the landing page has just as much impact on whether or not they'll become a lead as how they got there in the first place from your creative, targeting and bidding. So don't leave your creative as an afterthought and definitely don't leave your landing page and your offer as an afterthought either.
There's a lot to keep in mind here with Demand Gen. It is a tricky campaign type, but you can absolutely make it work for your business just the way Heather, Austin, Jack, and many other practitioners around the world have been making it work for their clients.
If you'd like to learn more about Demand Gen campaigns, Episode 32 of this podcast from September 5th, 2024 was all about Demand Gen. There have been some cool updates since then, like Channel Breakdown reporting and Channel Selection. You can find tutorials about those in my course, Inside Google Ads at learn.jyll.ca. That's J-Y-L-L dot C-A.
Here's our Insider Challenge for today. Let's say you work with a business that operates in a sensitive interest category. That means you can't use any of your data segments, you can't use Lookalike segments, and you can't use Custom segments or Custom interests. What that leaves for you is Google's audiences and optimized targeting. So what do you do? Do you run Demand Gen with these more limited audience capabilities? Or do you just stick with Search?
The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real life Google Ads problem solving.
Last Episode's Challenge was this. Let's say you've spied on your competitors using Keyword Planner and found a bunch of keyword ideas that are relevant to your business, but you aren't currently advertising on them. What do you do next?
Well, since we're talking about Demand Gen today, one of my favorite ways to get started with Demand Gen is to build a Custom segment based on search terms.
This Custom segment functionality only works on Google-owned properties like YouTube, Gmail, Discover. It does not work on the Display Network and doesn't work for a Display Campaign. So Demand Gen would be a great use for this. Let's take those keywords, put them into a Custom segment, and then show ads to those people as they're doing other things online.
Of course, the simpler thing to do would be to add those keywords to existing Search campaigns. Depending on the size of the business, I would decide whether I want to go Exact or Broad Match with that. Exact for a smaller budget, Broad for larger budget, and then I would analyze if they fit into my existing ad group themes or if I maybe need to launch new ad groups to take advantage of this different intent.
What about you? What would be your first instinct to do with those new keyword ideas?
I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.