In this webinar, Akash Patil, VP, Product and Systems at FTA Global, has an interesting conversation on demand generation with Jess Scholz, Growth Marketing Consultant and AI and SEO Futurist, who has led marketing at scale across 140+ brands and now advises enterprises on discovery and measurement in an AI-driven world.
You can watch the webinar between Akash Patil and Jess Scholz here:
The discussion starts with a direct question for marketing leaders.
Are teams measuring real demand, or are they only measuring traffic because it is easy to see on a dashboard?
Buyers no longer move through clean, visible journeys. They discover brands through AI platforms, communities, peer conversations, social content, videos, search results, newsletters, podcasts, and private recommendations.
A dashboard may show clicks and sessions, but it can miss the places where the actual decision was shaped. Traffic tells you that someone arrived. Demand tells you whether the market wants you.
Akash Patil frames the webinar around a measurement gap most marketing teams now face. He mentioned that brands have spent years trying to perfect attribution, decide which touchpoint deserves credit, and prove which channel created the conversion. The issue is that buyer behaviour has moved faster than measurement systems.
Jess Scholz points out that marketers often call measurable activity demand because the numbers are available every day. Sessions, clicks, views, and conversions feel safe because you can track them.
The real problem is that easy measurement can create false confidence.
A campaign can drive traffic without creating market demand. A blog can get visits without creating brand memory. A social post can influence a decision without creating a website session. An AI answer can introduce a brand without sending the user to the site.
This webinar makes one thing clear: marketing measurement must move beyond visible activity and start tracking real influence.
TL;DR
- Traffic is easy to measure, but it does not always prove demand.
- AI platforms are showing whether your brand has real presence in the market.
- Mentions, citations, sentiment, share of voice, and market context now matter more than sessions alone.
- Content should create memory, trust, and conversation, not just website visits.
- CMOs need reporting that connects brand influence, customer understanding, and long-term demand.
What does measuring demand mean in modern marketing?
Measuring demand means looking at whether your brand is becoming easier to remember, easier to trust, and easier to choose when buyers are actively solving a problem. It goes beyond asking how many people visited the website. A stronger question is whether people understand what the brand stands for, connect it to a real need, and bring it into consideration when comparing options.
A website session can show interest, but it cannot explain where that interest came from. A buyer may have first heard the brand in a webinar, seen it in an AI answer, come across it in a LinkedIn discussion, received a peer recommendation, or read a third-party mention before visiting the website. Analytics may capture only the final visit, while demand was built much earlier across several touchpoints.
Broader market signals make real demand visible. People start mentioning the brand in communities. AI platforms include it in relevant answers. Customers recall the brand during interviews. Sales teams speak to better-informed prospects. Branded search grows steadily. Share of voice improves across category conversations that matter.
For FTA Global, an LLM SEO agency in India, this is where measurement needs to mature. AI-driven discovery does not always end with a click, but it can still influence who buyers remember, shortlist, and trust.
Why is website traffic a weak marketing metric now?
Website traffic became popular because it was easy to see.
Marketers could open analytics tools and see whether sessions rose or fell. Teams could report campaign traffic, landing page visits, and referral activity. Leadership could see movement.
The problem is that traffic alone doesn't explain quality, memory, or intent.
Traffic can rise because of broad content that attracts people who will never buy. Traffic can fall because AI answered the user before the click. Traffic can look strong while brand salience remains weak.
Cookie restrictions, bot traffic, AI answers, private sharing, and fragmented journeys have made traffic a less reliable signal of overall performance.
Traffic still helps when it measures a specific tactic.
It becomes dangerous when teams treat it as proof that marketing is working.
A better question is whether the brand became more memorable, more trusted, and more likely to be chosen in buying situations.
How are AI platforms changing brand discovery?
AI platforms are changing discovery because users now ask for direct answers, comparisons, recommendations, and summaries.
A buyer may ask ChatGPT which agency to consider.
A CMO may ask Perplexity how to measure demand beyond traffic.
A founder may ask Gemini which brand is trusted for LLM visibility.
The answer may shape the shortlist before the buyer opens a search result.
Jess makes an important point in the webinar. AI is not only a new channel to hack. It reflects what the wider market already understands about a brand.
If AI systems don't mention a brand, the issue may not be purely technical. The brand may lack salience. The wider web may not describe it clearly. Communities may not discuss it. Third-party sources may not validate it. Content may not be structured well enough to cite.
FTA Global’s position as a top LLM SEO agency in India sits within this shift. AI visibility is not only about citations. It is about whether the market, content, sources, and brand signals create enough confidence for AI systems to mention and trust the brand.
What is the difference between traffic generation and demand creation?
Traffic generation brings people to a destination.
Demand creation makes people want the brand.
A brand can generate traffic through paid campaigns, broad keywords, trending topics, click-led content, or short-term offers. Those actions can increase visits, but they may not build preference.
Demand creation works differently. Here’s what it does:
- It builds memory.
- It creates recognition.
- It earns trust.
- It gives people a reason to choose the brand when the need becomes active.
Akash explains the practical test well. If paid ads are paused and demand disappears immediately, the brand may have been generating traffic rather than creating demand.
Strong demand means the brand has built enough market memory to stay relevant even when a single channel isn't actively pushing users to the website.
Which metrics should CMOs track beyond clicks and sessions?
CMOs should track signals that show market position, not only website activity.
Share of market shows how the brand performs in context.
Share of voice shows whether the brand is present in category conversations.
AI mentions show whether answer engines include the brand.
AI citations show whether brand-connected sources are being used as proof.
Sentiment shows whether visibility is positive, weak, confused, or negative.
Branded search shows whether more people are looking for the brand directly.
Customer interviews show which touchpoints people actually remember.
Sales feedback shows whether prospects are becoming more informed.
Community mentions show whether the brand is part of trusted conversations.
These signals are not always as clean as sessions, but they are more useful for understanding demand.
A top llm seo agency in India connects these signals across search, AI answers, citations, content, brand authority, and competitor visibility so marketing leaders can see where influence is actually being created.
How can marketers measure influence when attribution is limited?
Attribution weakens when the journey gets messy.
A buyer may first see a webinar clip, later read a LinkedIn post, then see the brand in an AI answer, ask a peer, visit the website through Google, and finally convert through direct traffic.
Last click attribution may give credit to the final visit.
The decision was built across many earlier moments.
Marketing teams need to move from credit assignment to influence measurement.
Here are a few useful questions you can answer about your brand while measuring the real demand:
- Are more people talking about the brand?
- Is the brand appearing in AI answers?
- Are competitors appearing more often?
- Are buyers remembering the brand in interviews?
- Are sales conversations improving?
- Are customers repeating the same brand associations?
- Are key category entry points becoming stronger?
No single attribution model can answer these questions. A stronger measurement system combines analytics, AI visibility tracking, share of voice, social listening, customer research, sales feedback, and market context.
Why does traffic not prove demand?
Traffic only proves that someone reached a page. It doesn't prove the person remembered the brand, trusted the message, compared the offer, or moved closer to a buying decision. A campaign can increase sessions by targeting broad topics, but those visits may still have low commercial value if the audience has no real intent.
Search behaviour also no longer ends neatly on a website. Google now includes generative AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode, which can answer parts of the user’s query before the click happens. SparkToro’s zero-click search research also shows why brands cannot depend only on open web clicks to understand demand.
How does AI show if people know your brand?
AI platforms reflect how clearly the market understands a brand. When a brand is often mentioned, cited, described consistently, and connected to a clear category, answer engines have more confidence using it in responses. When the brand is missing, the issue may not only be an AI visibility problem. It may also show that the brand hasn't built enough recognition across the wider web.
Google’s guidance for AI features makes it clear that site owners need to think about how their content is included in AI experiences, not only how pages rank in classic search.
For brands, the practical question is simple: when buyers ask AI tools for options, comparisons, or recommendations, does the brand appear with the right context?
What kind of content builds brand memory?
Content builds brand memory when it gives the reader a useful idea they can repeat, share, or connect back to the brand later. A generic keyword article may bring a visit, but it may not create recall. A sharper article, webinar, report, point of view, or expert explanation can make the brand easier to remember when the buyer moves closer to a decision.
Google’s newer guidance for generative AI features continues to point site owners toward high-quality, useful content rather than short-term tricks. Strong content should answer real buyer questions, show original thinking, and make the brand’s expertise easy to understand across search, AI, and human conversations.
What should CMOs report instead of traffic?
CMOs should report whether marketing is improving demand in the market, not only whether website traffic moved up or down. A better report should show where the brand is gaining share of voice, where competitors are appearing more often, which AI answers mention or cite the brand, which content is creating recall, and whether sales is seeing better-informed buyers.
Google has introduced dedicated reporting for generative AI performance in Search Console, showing that AI visibility is now a measurable layer of search performance. The larger lesson for CMOs is to build reporting around influence, market position, and buyer confidence, while still using traffic as a tactical signal where it genuinely helps.
Do you want more traffic?
Brand Mentions vs Citations in AI Search: Which One Actually Moves the Pipeline?
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