When buyers don't yet have a name for what you build, search volume reads as zero, and the work becomes building the vocabulary they'll search for later.
When buyers have no settled name for what you build, search volume for your category reads near zero even while committees evaluate the problem. Capture volume in the problem terms buyers already search, and separately build the vocabulary, content and answer-engine presence they will search for later, measured over quarters.
A search-first demand-gen strategy assumes buyers already know what to search for, and for most companies building applied AI, robotics or sensing systems, that assumption is false. Nobody is typing the exact phrase for what you built, because the category has no settled name yet, and a program measured by search volume in a category that has none will always report the same result: there is nothing to capture.
Search demand and buying activity often move separately. A buying group at an industrial company can be actively evaluating whether to add machine vision to a production line without a single person on that committee typing a query that matches your product description, because the language the market will eventually settle on hasn't been established yet. Every new applied-technology category goes through this gap: the buyer's problem is real and urgent, while the vocabulary connecting the problem to the solution is still being formed, often by whichever vendors are loudest and most consistent during exactly this window. Waiting for search volume to appear before building visibility means arriving after competitors have already claimed the vocabulary.
Keyword tools make the gap look larger than it is. They estimate volume from past searches and round small numbers down, Ahrefs reports that almost 93 percent of the keywords in its US database get fewer than 10 searches a month, and Google has said that 15 percent of the queries it sees each day are new to it, so a zero in the tool often means the phrase has not been searched enough to measure yet.
You can check this for your own category. Run the exact phrase for your product category through a keyword tool and note the monthly volume, then run the established problem language your buyers already use, terms like “industrial automation” or “predictive maintenance”. In a new subcategory the first number is often too small for any paid search program, while the second carries real volume that a category-specific vendor can't win outright but can appear inside.
This has a cost in measurement. A demand program built for category creation can't promise attributable pipeline the way a search-capture program can, because the point of the work is to build visibility before a measurement system exists to track it cleanly. A CFO asking for cost per lead on a category-creation program is asking a question the program isn't built to answer yet, and promising a number to make the pitch land produces a figure that won't survive once the campaign is running. Measure it instead by share of conversation and share of answer, meaning how often an AI assistant names you when asked about the problem, inside the adjacent territory buyers already search, with cost per acquisition coming later, once the category has a name.
For a marketing leader planning the budget, that means splitting the program on purpose. A smaller, continuous portion builds the content, the point of view and the answer engine presence, the work of the Visibility practice in Torke Service, that keep paying off as the category's vocabulary forms, measured over quarters rather than weeks. A separate, larger portion runs against the adjacent, already-searched terms where real volume exists today, measured with the same attribution rigour as any performance channel. Reporting both under one number hides which half is actually working.
A category with no name yet still has buyers, and their demand simply hasn't learned its own vocabulary, so the company that supplies that vocabulary first tends to keep the advantage once search volume arrives. The same pattern has played out in every earlier wave of applied technology that reached buyers before the market had words for it. Check the exact phrase your buyers would need to type for your product this week, and if the volume comes back near zero, treat it as a sign that the vocabulary still has to be built, which is the work.
Each figure links to the page it comes from, so you can check it before you repeat it.
| What the evidence says | Source |
|---|---|
| Almost 93% of the keywords in Ahrefs' US database get fewer than 10 searches a month. | Ahrefs (27 May 2026) |
| Google says 15% of the queries it sees each day are ones it has never seen before. | Google, The Keyword (25 October 2019) |
| LinkedIn's B2B Institute estimates that 95% of potential B2B buyers are not ready to buy at any given moment. | LinkedIn B2B Institute |
Each answer stands on its own, so you can forward one to a colleague, and an assistant asked the same question can quote it as it is.
Yes, as one part of the plan. In a new category the exact phrase often reads near zero because the vocabulary is still forming, so pair it with the problem terms buyers already search, where real volume exists today.
Keyword tools estimate from past searches and round small numbers down, and Google says 15% of the queries it sees each day are new. Almost 93% of the keywords in Ahrefs' US database get fewer than 10 searches a month, so a zero often means the phrase has not been measured yet.
The work of naming a problem and the type of solution before the market has settled words for them. It fits when your product does something buyers cannot yet describe, and it is the wrong move when your honest pitch is a better version of an existing product.
Measure share of conversation and share of answer in the adjacent territory buyers already search, over quarters. Cost per acquisition becomes the right metric once the category has a name.
Tell us what your team sells, who buys it and where deals stop moving. You'll get a written reply saying which way of working fits you, or whether a Diagnostic makes sense, and if neither does, the reason.