Brand Demand Scan · Finding 3 of 3

Untapped Potential shows
where your visibility can grow

Untapped Potential is the share of your growth potential that is in category searches. Category searches describe what you sell without naming you, so the buyers who make them do not know you yet. Where the data shows that your content can answer those searches, growth from them can be realised.

What it means

Your visibility includes searches
by buyers who do not know you

Some of the searches in which your business appears name you. Others describe what you sell and do not name anyone. Untapped Potential is the share of your growth potential that sits in the second kind.

A buyer who makes a category search has not chosen a supplier yet. Your business can reach that buyer only through the results. The larger this share, the more of your visibility depends on buyers who are still comparing.

The scan reads the figure together with Demand Leakage. Where category searches give you visibility and the demand leaks, the cause is content that does not answer what buyers searched for. Where the data shows that your content can answer them, the growth can be realised.

Two terms to keep apart

Untapped Potential is also a general business phrase for any opportunity that a company has not yet used. Here it has a fixed meaning: the share of your growth potential that is in category searches.

The figure describes where your visibility comes from. It does not tell you whether the growth in those searches is already won or still open. The scan reads it together with Demand Leakage to show that.

How the scan finds it

The scan counts how much of your
growth potential is in category searches

The scan sorts the queries in your Search Console export into branded, category and buying intent queries. It records your visibility in each kind.

Untapped Potential is the share of your growth potential that is in category searches. If 70 of every 100 appearances in the results come from category searches, the figure is 70 per cent.

The scan counts only the category searches that relate to what you sell. Searches outside your market would raise the figure without adding any growth you can realise.

The strategic implication

Untapped Potential shows
where growth can start

A high Untapped Potential means that much of your visibility comes from buyers who do not know you yet. That is where growth can be realised, because those buyers have not chosen a supplier.

If Demand Leakage is also high, the visibility is there and a competitor receives the demand. The cause is content that does not answer what those buyers searched for.

If Demand Leakage is low, the same visibility already produces demand for you. Growth then comes from reaching more of those searches.

The three findings

Untapped Potential is one of three
measures from the same data

Read together, the three findings show where your demand comes from, where it leaks and where it can grow.

Brand Demand Capture
The share of the demand your business captures that comes from searches for your name.
Demand Leakage
The share of your demand that leaks to competitors.
Untapped Potential
The share of your growth potential that is in category searches.

Questions

Four answers about Untapped Potential

What is Untapped Potential?

Untapped Potential is the share of your growth potential that is in category searches.

How is Untapped Potential different from Brand Demand Capture?

Brand Demand Capture shows where your captured demand comes from. Untapped Potential shows how much of your visibility sits in category searches, where buyers do not know you yet.

How high is Untapped Potential in practice?

In the five anonymised case studies, Untapped Potential ranges from 40.9 to 91.3 per cent of visibility.

What data does the scan need to calculate it?

The scan uses a Google Search Console export, or public search data if you have none. Nothing is installed.

Next step

One scan gives you all three figures

The scan works on the search data you already have, or on public search data if you have none. Nothing is installed.

Request a scan →