A sales manager once asked me: "Why aren't we getting more product demos booked? Why can't we just double or triple the number?"
Classic. "Advertising doesn't work the way you think it does," I said.
We cannot simply make people book a demo. Ads do not work like a machine where you turn a knob and people start flowing. Nobody signs up for a product that costs $20K per year just because they saw a few ads. There are many factors that influence buying decisions: the product itself, the pricing, the sales team, the distribution. Advertisers do not control any of that.
But what we do control is one key factor of brand growth: making more people aware that our brand exists, what it does, and when they should consider buying it. To do that, there are three levers.
Lever 1: Targeting — Reaching the Right People
One of the main jobs of an advertiser is ensuring that the right people see the ads. This means selecting relevant media channels and using the best targeting options within those channels.
If you are selling enterprise software, you would not target students. You would refine your audience based on job roles, industries, and company sizes where your solution makes sense. In B2B, this often means LinkedIn job targeting, custom intent audiences on Google, or account-based targeting for specific companies.
Poor targeting means paying to reach people who will never buy. Precise targeting means every impression has a realistic chance of contributing to a future conversion.
Lever 2: Budget — Dictating Reach and Frequency
Budget directly affects how many people you reach and how often they see your message. A bigger budget means reaching more people and increasing frequency. The more people you reach, the more people learn your brand exists. The more frequently they see your message, the more likely they are to remember it — up to the point of diminishing returns.
Most B2B companies drastically underinvest in reach and overinvest in bottom-of-funnel retargeting. This is the formula for flat pipeline growth: spending money on people who already know you while neglecting the 95% who have never heard of you.
Lever 3: Creative — The Biggest Driver of Impact
Creative is the design, messaging, and overall presentation of an ad — the visuals, the copy, the storytelling. Unlike targeting and budget, which determine who sees an ad and how often, creative is what they actually see.
Research from the LinkedIn B2B Institute found that creative quality accounts for 70% of advertising ROI — the single most important factor in campaign success. Kantar found that creative quality contributes to nearly 50% of media impact, more than reach or frequency.
The message is clear: better creative matters more than bigger budget. If the ad creative is bad, no amount of targeting or spend will fix it. As David Abbott put it: "Shit that arrives at the speed of light is still shit."
So, How Do You Get More Demos?
You do not force them. Instead, you increase brand and product visibility, ensure you reach the right audience, and deliver a compelling message that sparks enough interest for someone to want to learn more.
And once they learn more, if they find the product relevant and it meets their needs, only then will they decide whether to book a demo or make a purchase.
That is how advertising works. Not a knob to turn. Three levers to pull — and creative is the one that matters most.