In 2025, we’re all reading or hearing how businesses are faring in continuing tough trading conditions. It’s completely understandable, arguably a necessity, that in the past few years businesses have invested more and more of their budgets in sales or lead-oriented advertising. Known as ‘bottom of the funnel’ targeting, it often comprises a combination of search / shopping ads, paid social remarketing and lead gen forms to keep the flow of new business coming.
At the same time, the big players, such as Google or Meta, also need to keep business going through quarter on quarter (on quarter!) business growth to satisfy their shareholders. The obvious way these advertising behemoths do so is through increased cost per impression, cost per click or cost per result.
Rising costs
This vicious cycle means everyday businesses are struggling to withstand rising ad costs, with a number of examples we here at Adtrak are exposed to having more than doubled over the last two years (keywords for e-learning courses +115%, clothing +132%, fire protection products +145%). This is at a time when other business costs have risen and so clients have to make challenging decisions like cutting budgets or even worse, folding. Adjacent to this, we’re seeing high volumes of companies acquire or merge, consolidating their ad buying power but also maintaining the high-cost ad auction bids.
Organic SEO
At this point, you may be thinking SEO with its free (management fees apply) impressions and clicks is a worthwhile alternative. It’s certainly an option to invest in, as optimised landing page experiences are good for all users, irrespective of origin.
Likewise, the content pieces produced to capture organic visibility will also be helpful and informative to email, social or paid click visitors visiting the site. But anybody familiar will know that SEO needs weeks and months of sustained work for results to be felt. More importantly, Google continues to adjust the design of the search results so they're skewed in favour of capturing more ad clicks. So, is there another option worth considering?
Demand generation
Increasingly, I believe companies will need to recognise and invest in originating new customers. Known as ‘demand gen’, short for demand generation, this top of the sales funnel marketing process reaches consumers who haven’t yet thought about what your business has to offer. It exists to pique new interest, then nurture it.
Demand gen can be done via display ad banners on third party websites, videos on platforms such as YouTube, boosted social posts in users’ feeds, and more. Where applicable, these ads are typically charged per mille (by the thousand) for pence, making them a thoroughly affordable option. What they don’t do, though, is immediately produce a customer ready to sign up.
Investing in future results
This will undoubtedly be hard for businesses to accept after relying upon conversion ads for years. But those costs are not going down; in fact, the premium price to access them seems likely to only go in one direction. Instead, investing in demand gen creates a sustainable pipeline of upcoming customers for the long term.
If you’re wondering how the concept works, put yourself in the shoes of a holiday booker. By the time you’ve confirmed your credit card details on the travel agent site, you’ve been primed by adverts on TV, trending holiday hashtags on social media, perhaps competitions offering a luxury getaway. These are forms of demand gen marketing. They exist to consciously and subconsciously start consumers off on a new buying journey.
Full-funnel marketing
By nurturing interest through the stages of the sales funnel - awareness, consideration, conversion - via your website, social channels, ad platforms and more, you grow qualified leads without relying exclusively on costly conversion ads.
So what’s the catch?
It’s psychological, in that there’s less instant gratification for businesses. With demand gen, if you launch a new product or service today, the early metrics will be about the number of relevant people reached and number of engagements. The sales will follow thereafter. This is going to be the hardest bit to overcome, as on-demand sales or lead-gen solutions have hooked business owners and marketing managers.
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While bottom of the funnel ads definitely have their place in a marketing strategy, it shouldn’t be the only route to results. If you find yourself in the situation where ad costs are proving expensive, the next step is to work with your digital marketing agency. Agencies like Adtrak harness top, middle and bottom of the funnel campaigns across various platforms, features and audiences. This is omni-channel marketing. By doing so, it means SMEs stand a better chance at reducing their reliance on a single source of results with the associated increasing costs.
You'll be familiar with this saying, but it remains ever relevant today: Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
