Demand Capture vs Demand Generation: When to Make the Switch

Announcer: Welcome to the Ignite Podcast, the only healthcare marketing podcast that digs into the digital strategies and tactics that help you accelerate growth. Each week, Cardinal’s experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Alex Membrillo: Welcome back, everybody. We’re going to talk about demand generation versus demand capture, and when to do each. This is a good time for this discussion because we’ve got the recession, we’ve got midterms, should we be investing in demand generation because everybody is tightening their belts? So this will be a really good discussion. Everybody, welcome Rich Briddock, he’s our SVP of performance marketing, media, and analytics, and innovation. Really good to have you, Rich.

Rich Briddock: Thanks for joining me.

Alex: All right. Let’s get into it. Demand gen/demand capture [unintelligible 00:00:52]. In healthcare, what is demand generation? What are the channels, and what does that do?

Rich Briddock: It’s in the name. You are creating demand, whereas demand capture, you are just capturing existing demand out there. Demand capture is someone is searching for your service or your practice, and you just show up. That’s going to be PPC, SEO, remarketing, that’s demand capture.

Alex: That’s capture, and what’s generation?

Rich Briddock: Generation is where– It’s disruptive marketing. Essentially, they are not actively seeking out your service or your location or your company, but you are essentially interrupting their day to say, “Hey, have you thought about Invisalign? Have you thought about a kidney transplant, have you thought about whatever? If you are going to think about that, you should go with us. We do the best kidney transplants in the Southeast.”

Alex: A kidney transplant– [laughs] Are your teeth jacked up?

Rich Briddock: Yes, exactly. That is demand generation, is where you are essentially branding yourself to somebody who is not actively seeking you, but hopefully, someone who is in your target patient demographic.

Alex: Channels we use for demand generation–

Rich Briddock: It’s going to be paid social, so Facebook, Instagram, all that fun stuff. Display, native, connected TV, so that’s going to be OTT, all the stuff [crosstalk]–

Alex: A lot of buzzwords, explain.

Rich Briddock: Yes. Over-the-top devices, so that’s going to be, I’m streaming something on any kind of streaming service that has ads. Peacock or NBC, all these TV providers that now have streaming services with ads, that’s an OTT placement. That’s connected television. That’s where a lot of traditional media is now going, because you’ve got cord cutters, you’ve got people who don’t have traditional cable subscriptions anymore, and they are watching on their television, but on these streaming [crosstalk]–

Alex: Demand generation sounds fun, but a lot of groups come to us, and they are funded, but they’re starting at 5 locations and want to get to 500. Do they start with demand gen? A lot of them talk about Facebook in the beginning, and we try to shut that down pretty quickly. Where do they need to start?

Rich Briddock: People are visual, and marketers in particular. I think they like that sort of more sexy, visual thing that they can see, and they like the idea of creative concepts. Like, “How am I going to creatively position my brand so that I stand out through marketing stuff that I can do?” I’ll give you an example in the real world, Tend who is an ortho provider– They do orthodontic, not knee-ortho and that kind of stuff, but they do a great job of doing sexy ads on social, about how people hate going to the dentist, and all that fun stuff.

It’s very eye-catching, so that’s why I think as marketers, we like that stuff, because we’re drawn to it, it’s visual, it’s telling stories– These are all the things that we aspire to and want to do, but if you’re not capturing existing demand that’s already out there, you absolutely should not be doing demand generation. First stop is, let’s actually engage with the people who need our services, because they’re going to convert [crosstalk]–

Alex: SEO paid services– Our rankings need to be top three, and then search– What impression share do you need to be at before you move into demand gen through paid social or OTT or anything?

Rich Briddock: I mean, it’s not a magic number, but for your branded queries, you’d want be at about 90% impression share.

Alex: And non-branded?

Rich Briddock: Then non-branded, you probably are looking at 70%, 75% before it starts getting really expensive.

Alex: Expensive, because you’re going to like what number? Trying to bid number– First position [crosstalk]–

Rich Briddock: You’re trying to bid number, you’re competing with everyone, you’re driving your bids right up. The point is, people who are actively looking for your services, once they get to your landing page, they’re going to convert higher. Then once they’ve converted, there’s a much higher chance they’re actually going to become a patient. That’s the topic that we discussed in our last podcast about what happens beyond that lead conversion. Do they actually turn into an admit? Do they actually turn into a patient? Do they actually keep their appointment? Demand generation is great for when you’re trying to scale beyond demand capture, so–

Alex: You’ve hit 75% on impression share, and now [crosstalk]–

Rich Briddock: You’re ranking across organic for everything, you’ve maxed out your brand impressions on search, you’ve maxed out your remarketing efforts. You’re bombarding everybody who’s been to your page, but not converted, and trying to get them to come back and convert, and that’s all done and dusted. Then it’s like, “Okay, great, but this practice still needs another 20 patients a week, and demand capture alone will not get them.” Or, you’re doing something disruptive that people aren’t aware of.

Alex: Technology or– What are some examples of what would [unintelligible 00:05:49] in healthcare?

Rich Briddock: I think something in healthcare would be like TMS–

Alex: Transcranial magnetic stimulation for a behavioral health group.

Rich Briddock: Right. People don’t really understand about treatment-resistant depression. I think that’s changing, but when we started working with TMS providers, there was not a lot of search volume out there. I think that’s where demand generation helps, because you can reach a broad audience through demand generation and educate them on the service you provide and how it could potentially help them with the thing that they are suffering from, the condition that they have, and the relevant treatment. That’s when I would be going into demand generation, is when I have to scale more patients from the middle of the funnel. Maybe they know that they have a problem, but they don’t necessarily know what the solution is. Or they know what the solution is, but they don’t know about your particular solution–

Alex: And they’re not going to Google yet.

Rich Briddock: And they’re not going to Google yet. Or at the top of the funnel where they either know that they have a problem, but they have no idea what the solution is, or they don’t even know that they have a problem that needs to be solved.

Alex: Yes. Kidney failure, do you need a kidney transplant?

Rich Briddock: Right.

Alex: Smaller groups generally need to be investing in demand capture, because for five years, it will take that long to get SEO on search and landing page. I mean, it’s going to take several years, even with us, to make sure that that’s [unintelligible 00:07:08] and everything, right? But the bigger groups, let’s say bigger groups are listening to this, and the SEO on their search is really good, what are the first channels? Paid social, like you’re going to Facebook and Insta– Probably not TikTok, but you’re going to Facebook, Insta, as the best modern billboards out there? You’re going to connected, or native? Where are you starting?

Rich Briddock: There’s not an easy answer to that question, because it depends on what you’re trying to do with demand generation. If you are essentially offering something that is very niche and very specific, I would say that display is likely the best place for you to go, because these display providers still have a lot of first-party and third-party audience access that Facebook has cut right back on.

Alex: Google Display– Google has enough inventory, they’ll just go to Google’s Display Network.

Rich Briddock: I wouldn’t go to Google’s Display Network–

Alex: How do we run display?

Rich Briddock: We run it through a third-party DSP called StackAdapt. The reason why we use StackAdapt is because you can run display inventory, you can run native inventory, you can run connected TV inventory all in one place, and they have an integration with paid social with Facebook where you can pipe audiences from StackAdapt into the social platform.

Alex: Okay. StackAdapt, sponsor our [unintelligible 00:08:23]?

Rich Briddock: If you have a very niche audience, if you want to target people contextually, I would say display through StackAdapt, and you can also then layer on native, and you can layer on connected TV, is the place to start. I will say contextual display and keyword display targeting is kind of this halfway house between demand capture and demand generation. That’s where you are serving an ad on articles that are relevant to what you do, or serving ads to people who have been to and read articles that are relevant to what you do. So it’s not quite demand capture, but it’s not also demand generation. That’s where we push most of our providers as the first step, because it’s sort of this halfway house between both.

Then, when you want to go full demand generation, digital billboard stuff, I think that’s where social is powerful, because you can do the full funnel execution where you have video campaigns at the top, you then see– You can weed out people who are not interested in your content at the top of the funnel very quickly, very broad audiences. Then if you’re running a 30-second video or a 15-second video, you can essentially just remarket to people who have engaged with a certain percentage of that video. I’m running a 32-second video about my kidney transplant business, you watch 75%, I know you’re interested in a kidney transplant, I then remarket it to you in the middle of the funnel.

The next step there is to try and drive you to a landing page. What I’m telling Facebook to get as their objective is what we call qualified landing page views. You go to the page, you either spend a certain amount of time on that page engaging with the content, or you get to a certain part of the page, scroll down to a certain scroll depth, and that’s how we know that you are qualified and you’re interested, because you’re engaging with the page. Only then do we then try and remarket to you with demand capture and drive a conversion

Alex: And spend whatever it takes on that specific audience.

Rich Briddock: And spend whatever it takes, yes.

Alex: Okay. Few minutes here, one more question. We’re kind of in this like recession quagmire where nobody knows if we are or aren’t, but like everyone’s depressed– [chuckles]

Rich Briddock: TMS is available.

Alex: TMS is available, kidney transplants– Final audience remarketing [unintelligible 00:10:48] is a discounted trip to Mexico.

[laughter]

We’re in a little bit of a quagmire here, and I think a lot of groups are going to pull back. Everyone thinks healthcare is recession-proof. It’s really not, because a lot of healthcare is elective, but we’re in an election year– Are CPMs going to be cheaper? Do you recommend– While we’re going to be in this fiscal slight downturn, do you recommend that groups stop investing in demand generation, or take advantage of lower CPMs? Are they even going to be cheaper? What are you seeing as the economic forecast for marketing here over the next six months?

Rich Briddock: I think it’s dependent on what you’re trying to do as a practice. If you are just trying to get as many patients as possible, then almost always, demand capture is going to be where you need to go for that. If you’ve got the choice of– If you’ve only got $10,000 and you had $20,000 the previous month– You were using $10,000 for demand generation and $10,000 for demand capture. Now, you only have $10,000, you’re going to want to put that in demand capture, because 99 times out of 100, that’s driving you the patients at a much lower cost than demand generation.

If on the other hand, your challenge as a marketer is, “I’m opening new locations. I need to get awareness out in that market, the target audience, that this location is opening, and I need to try and steal some market share.” Then you probably want to be a little bit more nuanced with approach. You probably want to say, “Okay, I’m going to reserve $2,000 to brand to my target audience that I’m opening this new location so they know that I’m here, they’ve heard of me.” They get to know the brand, so that when they search for that service or product, hopefully, they’re either doing a branded search or they’re doing a non-branded search, seeing my ad, recognizing me, and thinking I’m credible because they’ve seen my video, and then clicking through to me because I’ve already engaged with them, and I already resonate, so–

Alex: Yes, it depends.

Rich Briddock: Really, it depends on what the challenges of that group are at that time, but ultimately, if you are in the business of driving patient acquisition, demand capture is where you need to be.

Alex: That’s where you need to focus. [unintelligible 00:13:03] groups, that’s usually what they care about. After election, you think CPMs will be cheaper?

Rich Briddock: Always.

Alex: Okay. Thank you, Rich. This was fun, demand gen versus demand capture. I love branding, and as a marketer, I like to always have something on, but make sure your capture is really great, SEO, your rankings, your search impressions here is hitting 70%, 75%. Thank you, Rich, for joining us. If y’all have questions by the way, you can just reach out– You don’t even have to reach out to Cardinal as an entity. Find Rich Briddock on LinkedIn, or find myself on LinkedIn and I’ll connect you with Rich Briddock. Either way, here to help you, and you don’t have to engage us as an agency, just know that.

I want you guys to subscribe to this podcast, because the more signals that Apple and Spotify get, the more popular we become. I haven’t been popular since middle school, so that would be really cool if y’all were able to do that. Also, 5-stars please. Okay? 5-stars, unless it’s like a 10-star thing, and then put 10-stars, okay? All right, thank you everybody. Listen next week.

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