Definition
Brand demand: definition and measurement
Brand demand is the share of searches that contain your company's name or your product names. It stands apart from category searches, which describe a need without naming a supplier. It is a site's best converting and least expensive traffic, because the decision to come to you has already been made.
How to measure it
The Performance report in Search Console gives the measurement in a few minutes. Filter the queries that contain the company name, its variants and its common misspellings, then the product names. The report then shows the clicks and impressions of brand demand; the rest is category demand.
In Google Ads, the search terms report allows the same split for advertising. Brand queries inflate an account's average return when they are mixed in with the others.
Why it distorts averages
Brand demand converts better than anything else and costs almost nothing. It therefore pulls a site's average acquisition cost down. SEO that seems to work well sometimes works mostly because people already know the company. Removing brand demand from the numbers shows its real performance without brand awareness.
What makes it grow
Brand demand is not created by SEO. It follows awareness: referrals, advertising, presence in an industry, everything that leads someone to type your name rather than your category. It is also the only part of your traffic that does not travel from one territory to another.
Brand demand share = clicks on queries containing your name ÷ total organic clicks
The calculation is done over the same period in the Performance report in Search Console. Done with impressions, it gives the share of searches.
A manufacturer gets 1,000 organic clicks a month, 400 of them on queries that contain its name. Its brand demand accounts for 40% of its clicks. Those 400 visits convert markedly better than the other 600.
The day it opens a territory where nobody knows it, those 400 clicks have no equivalent. It starts from category queries, the most contested ones. Its cost per inquiry there will be higher without any campaign being badly managed.
We always separate brand demand from the rest before judging SEO or a campaign. Comparing a new market's return with the home market's means comparing a known company with an unknown one: the conclusion will always be failure. In the first year, the two numbers that make sense are the cost per inquiry on category queries and the number of closed sales.
Brand demand also needs protecting. A competitor can buy your company's name as a keyword in Google Ads, and its ad then shows above your organic result. A campaign on your own name costs little and takes that spot back.
Not to be confused with
- Category search
- It describes a need without naming a supplier (“garage door manufacturer”). It is the demand every competitor in a market fights over.
- Brand
- A brand is the set of associations your name triggers in a person. Brand demand is a measurable trace of it: the number of people who search for that name.
- Direct traffic
- It comes from people who type your address or have it bookmarked. It does not go through a search engine, whereas brand demand does.
Related concepts
- Brand
- Customer acquisition cost
- Non-transferable asset
- First market signal
- Market entry cost
- Third-party mention
Further reading
- Ranking in a market where nobody knows your brand
- Branding: what it is, why it is necessary, and what gets billed for nothing
- Generating B2B inquiries in a market where your name means nothing
- A competitor can buy your company name, and it is allowed
- Marketing metrics: the ones that change a decision
Related services
Frequently asked questions
Why does my acquisition cost rise in a new market?
Because brand demand, the cheapest and best converting traffic, is zero there. Only category queries remain, the most contested ones. The cost rises even when no campaign is badly managed.
