How to Launch Demand Gen Without Wasting Budget

Launching Demand Gen in Q4? Don’t get burned. 

In this episode of the Google Ads Unleashed Podcast, host Jeremy reveals the hidden risk that’s draining budgets fast, and the smarter way to launch Demand Gen without the blowout many advertisers experienced after Black Friday. 

You’ll learn why Google’s Demand Gen algorithm behaves very differently from Meta, how to test creatives safely on low budgets, and how to scale campaigns day-by-day without triggering runaway spend.

Get your free 30 minute strategy session with Jeremy here: https://www.younganddigital.marketing/

Scale your store with 1:1 coaching: https://www.younganddigital.marketing/1-2-1-coaching

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to Google Ads unleashed. Guys, hope everyone is doing fabulously this Monday. You have survived the Black Friday Cyber Monday madness. That's why you're probably listening to this, because this episode will be airing on Cyber Monday, and you will have just completed the most crazy weekend of this year. Hopefully it's gone well for you. Please do feedback how everything went. Maybe you've applied a couple of tips from the last episodes. I would love to hear from you. And today, I just want to sort of talk about one issue that has cropped up a few times over the past week, which I wanted to warn you about. So potentially, this might be a very, very short episode, but it contains a super valuable tip nonetheless, and that is how to launch demand gen campaigns. So something that we have observed multiple times now in the last week or so, with all of our coaching clients, with all of our clients ourselves, and the ones which we train through our third party partners, is that a lot of them have used their demand gen campaigns and launched them on a pretty high budget and blown a lot of money. So why is that happening? Basically, it's happening because the demand gen algorithm, in my opinion, and from my observation, simply isn't as sophisticated yet as meta ads, and when you launch a bunch of creatives on meta, you still have sort of, well, what the algorithm does. It distributes as evenly as possible the budget throughout the day and to the times where it thinks that the peak activity lays also, I've been told, but I've not heard this from meta ads, colleagues with whom I'm dealing day in day out, that they've had any issues with any delivery. But very often, I've seen the following happen. People use in the same sales creatives for demand gen, thinking that they can then relaunch it on demand gen on a high budget, 345, 100 euros, or maybe even 1000 euros a month, a day, and then just launch the ads and crack on. What has happened is that Google likes to blow the budget pretty quickly. I have seen multiple times, and this even happened to me multiple times, that when you set it to max conversions, as you should, because that's the best available Bid Strategy at the beginning, that it might blast out the entire budget within an hour, and you don't even have time to update the interface, and all the money is gone. I'm actually in dispute with a Google Ads rep at the moment, over 1000 euros that went missing with one of our demand gen campaigns, which we launched at the beginning of October with one of our clients. We launched it within an hour, over 1000 euros is gone, just spent on shitty placements. So here's what you need to do instead. And this is sort of a small iteration of my demand gen masterclass, but this is what you should be doing instead. Instead, you should start demand gen slowly. So if you have launched any, let's say Christmas creatives, where a Christmas sale today is the day where you will probably want to launch them, ready for tomorrow day after, or even the fourth, which is on Thursday, so that the campaigns can mature. What you want to do is, instead of the usual tip that I would give, and that is to only use your best selling creatives on meta and repurpose them easily for shorts on demand, Gen in remarketing and in prospecting, is launch all of your sales all of your creatives. That's fine, and and images as well on the placements in feed, discover and Gmail, but on a slow budget, let it burn on a slow candle and identify which creatives are actually working. And of course, keep them in if they if it has sold already. And also make sure that you do still the same process, but just everything a little faster, right? Because on meta ads, you'll be spending quite a lot more. You're not going to wait until the end of the month, where you're going to have a look which creatives are working and then upload them onto YouTube and then use them as demand gen ads. You've already have them uploaded. Just identify which ones are working, and quickly identify which ones of your sale creatives are not working and on meta and just proactively pause those. Pause also the ones which have a high CPC, off the bat, in demand, Gen like ridiculously high CPC you will never be able to scale this channel. I. Um, don't forget to do the basics as well. You know, split, in my opinion, that's the best way of doing it. Split all of your campaigns by placement. So have a campaign for in stream, have a campaign for in feed, if you use in 16 to nine video creative, have a campaign for shorts. Have a campaign for images in remarketing to shove them all together. It's not the end of the world. And test all of your creatives on singly. So don't mix five different shorts with each other. Have one video per ad so that you can much more easily identify and that is a much easier and smoother way to launch your ads. You're happy to launch everything in one go and not wait for the best sellers, because then you're losing time for the best selling creatives, but rather, launch everything on smaller budgets, let it run consistently over the next days. Proactively pause everything with high CPC. Proactively pause everything that's not doing well on meta, and actively keep the ones in which are already selling, and actively keep the ones in which are doing well on meta. Because on meta, you can much more easily, you know, go in with higher budgets and see what's working and on demand. Gen, you cannot, in my experience, and that is how I would go in. Then you can then very easily and quickly, over a matter of days, scale up your ads as much as possible. So I would probably recommend you wait until tomorrow for the first bump or two to see. Then on Wednesday, Thursday, that is the days where you start the call. And then by Friday into the first weekend, you should be able to double, triple, quadruple your budgets and keep an eye on it on a daily basis. What more you can do, and that is how you maximize it. For the Christmas periods, guys, we have some availability into the new year for one to one coaching and for our agency service. So if you've struggled with Google ads over this period, just give me a shout. You can always reach me on Jeremy and Google ads on LinkedIn. You can always reach me on via email, Jeremy at young and digital dot marketing, or simply book a one to one call with me via the website, young digital dot marketing. Thank you very much for listening. This has been Jeremy young, your personal Google Ads expert, and I wish you a happy and productive week ahead.