Driving Traffic to Parking Lots: The AD Digital Demand Generation Pilot
Demand generation is the focus of targeted marketing used to direct interest and awareness towards a company, product, or service. Because scale plays such an important factor in successful digital marketing, AD is leveraging our size and scale to help members with keywords, search retargeting, banner advertising and geo-targeting. AD recently piloted our Digital Demand Generation Program in two cities – Dallas and Chicago – over a three month period. Ted Simpson, AD’s VP of Marketing, and Ricki Weisberg Ndege, AD’s Communications Director, oversaw the creation piloting of the program.
- Pilot Goals
54% of B2B buyers start their product search online. The objective is to use google search to capture the people looking for these products that our distributors buy in their towns and bring to their businesses. “Our hope is to bring more trucks into their parking lots,” explains Ted.
- What did we do?
- Prepped AD members with educational webinars, help signing up on google, and keeping an open line of communication.
- Created google ads that highlight the unique value proposition of AD independents.
- Built a search portal so that users searching for a specific product would be directed to all of the AD members who sell those products within a 50 mile radius.
- Purchased keywords associated with specific products, brands, and industry words.
- Analyzed and tracked the data in an effort to increase the percentage of people who contacted AD members.
- Was it worth it?
Ted says, “Absolutely.” They expected the words to appear about 200,000 times. Instead, they appeared 3 million times. “It was way more successful than we ever thought it would be because our ad appeared 15 times more than what we predicted. 
We performed better than the industry average. The biggest challenge now is to deploy it nationally, develop a kit for all of our members, and help them decide how they want to use it.”
Ted likes to reference a quote by the infamous bank robber Willie Sutton. When asked why he robbed banks, Sutton replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” When asked why someone should buy ad words, Ted replies, “Because that’s where the money is. That is where the people are searching for the products that you sell.”
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