{"id":4898,"date":"2024-09-06T14:09:36","date_gmt":"2024-09-06T18:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/?p=4898"},"modified":"2025-12-20T06:30:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T11:30:27","slug":"how-to-harvest-demand-with-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/blog\/how-to-harvest-demand-with-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Harvest Demand with SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019m not going to go into the whole \u201cdemand creation versus demand capture<\/a>\u201d debate here. We\u2019ve all talked about it enough, and most of the arguments center around semantics and not first principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is true and somewhat common sense: at any given moment, some percentage of your target customers is in-market, meaning they are actively looking for a solution like yours, and the rest are not in-market but may eventually be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, for the sake of this essay, when I say something like \u201cdemand creation,\u201d I mean targeting out-of-market people, and when I say something like \u201cdemand capture\u201d or \u201charvesting demand,\u201d I mean targeting in-market people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we focus on at Omniscient, principally, is driving performance for clients by first saturating in-market surface areas and the middle to bottom-of-the-funnel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then work our way upwards to comprehensive customer journey coverage, TOFU education content, etc. (this is a general heuristic – every engagement is different). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An isolated focus on BOFU SEO traffic, however, is tough if not impossible nowadays, especially if you\u2019re an earlier stage challenger brand. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s actually much easier to drive performance with SEO (and ads and sales and any performance channel) when the brand side is locked in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, the preeminence of the “barbell portfolio strategy.” <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s also true that you can crush it at targeting out-of-market audiences and still fail to capture demand and revenue when they\u2019re in-market. Happens all the time. Eric Doty left a comment<\/a> on Josh\u2019s post above to that effect:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlso common: company creates a big linkedin brand -> creates category awareness -> people search the category -> whoever’s winning search goes into the consideration set.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So for those with solid brand efforts who want to be more salient to in-market buyers, where do you start?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mindshare and positioning<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Foundationally, you have to understand the category you play in. This is a function of positioning, namely the defining<\/a> of your \u201cmarket category.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Positioning is too deep of a topic to cover in this essay (listen to April Dunford\u2019s podcast<\/a>), so I\u2019ll simply say that clear is better than clever, even if you\u2019re \u201ccreating a category\u201d (and I\u2019ll cover an example of a client who is doing just that and how SEO can play into it). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, I could define Omniscient\u2019s category as something like \u201cHolistic Audience-Centric Organic Growth Marketing<\/a>,\u201d but no one understands that, there\u2019s no budget for it, and no one is searching for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So while our messaging can hinge on differentiation and get a bit creative, we ultimately sell as an SEO agency<\/a> (and sometimes a content agency, though to a lesser degree). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you want is mindshare<\/a> in relation to a big category. Salesforce = CRM, Mailchimp = email marketing, Unbounce = landing pages, Ahrefs = SEO platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Threshold effects and repetition<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In your demand creation or brand marketing efforts, it\u2019s important to understand \u201cthreshold effects.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It takes several messages, usually heavily repetitive on the same thing, to rise above the noise and cause someone to think \u201chuh, that\u2019s interesting,\u201d or \u201cwow, that sounds awesome, I should look into that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is true even in \u201cclassic\u201d channels like SEO (and was, in fact, the central thesis to the Surround Sound SEO strategy<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My co-founder David mentioned this on our last podcast. He had seen a brand come up over and over when searching in a specific topic area and eventually was triggered to sign up for their email list. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assuming you’ve got your market category, messaging, and mindshare initiatives down, how can you capture some of this buzz and recognition when buyers are, indeed, in-marketing? I’ll focus on SEO strategies here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEO as a landing pad<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I like the idea of SEO as a “landing pad,” something that kicks off the customer journey and has the potential to bring readers down the funnel to more interesting and product-centric content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

John-Henry Scherck<\/a> talked about this in his Goldenhour presentation. Effectively, you can get in front of an audience who are already searching for a topic, capture their information and turn them into an \u201cowned audience,\u201d and then write whatever you want on your newsletter to make them love you more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he said, \u201cSEO is a landing pad, and if all you can do is send people to more SEO content<\/a> – YNGMI.\u201d I agree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inversely, it\u2019s also effective to look at search as a way to \u201charvest\u201d some of the demand you\u2019re creating on social media or podcasts or whatever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you spend a ton of time and resources talking about “data contracts” on LinkedIn and at conferences, for example, it would naturally be a good thing to rank for this term<\/a> when someone searches for it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gated assets and the value of an email address<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

 Next note here: it\u2019s pretty valuable to have someone\u2019s email address<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe reports of [the MQL\u2019s death] are greatly exaggerated.\u201d<\/em> – Mark Twain (probably)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly, downloading an ebook on \u201cthe ultimate guide to content marketing\u201d does not indicate that someone is ready for sales to contact them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But so what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re on your email list now, and now you can do all kinds of fun segmentation, targeting and personalization, nurturing, and continuing campaigns so that when they are in marketing, you\u2019re the obvious choice and right in front of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can use additional website behavior signals to trigger a sales email or to personalize a website experience to drive a demo or product signup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So don\u2019t sleep on gating some assets or collecting emails (through valuable content of course!) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t overthink it: Pain points and BOFU saturation <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One way we harvest demand is by saturating the middle of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot of ambiguity in those terms, so in layman\u2019s terms, you should try to be found for these types of search queries:<\/p>\n\n\n\n