Marketing Beyond Paid Search: 5 Ways To Create A More Holistic Strategy
Learn how to make paid search more effective.
Paid search has a history of proven and consistent results. While it is tempting to lean heavily into paid search, the space is going through its own metamorphosis and is only one tool for reaching consumers. To remain competitive, advertisers must use everything in their digital toolbox, shares, Alex Song, CEO and Founder, Proxima.
With advertising budgets under pressure, 2023 feels like a time to focus on certainty over experimentation. The instinct for many marketers is to lean into paid search, which provides reliable, measurable results. But in today’s dynamic advertising world, paid search is undergoing its own metamorphosis. While still a highly efficient customer acquisition tool, paid search still has its limitations, and marketers need to avoid overinvesting in this area. Instead, they should develop plans incorporating the best of today’s ever-changing field of digital marketing opportunities.
Marketing Budgets Under Scrutiny
After years of consistently increasing advertising budgets, 2023 has been marked as the year of advertising deceleration. In a WFA survey of 43 multinational companies, 75% of respondents indicated that their budgets are under “heavy scrutiny” and 30% said they planned to make cuts. However, 42% of the same survey respondents said they would be spending more on digital advertising in 2023. In a separate study, 65% of marketers said they would be dedicating more money to search advertising.
See More: Demystifying Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The New World of Search Advertising
The growing focus on search advertising is happening at the same time as a big shift in
consumer behavior and technology. While Google has long dominated search, many consumers are migrating their search habits to social media platforms like TikTok and retail media platforms like Amazon. At the same time, AI is shaking up the traditional search engine world as incumbents like Google and Bing incorporate natural language AI tools like ChatGPT to elevate consumers’ experience. Although it’s still early in the AI evolution, these innovations will likely help the dominant search engines outperform the emerging retail media platforms vying to take their place.
Advertisers should continue to leverage the best of paid search but can mitigate the risk of uncertainty by pursuing a balanced approach. Here are five tips to help your marketing plan stay nimble and current amid a growing selection of options:
Start with Search
There is no question that search engine advertising provides consistent and reliable results, and this should remain a strong foundation for advertisers. In a survey conducted by my company across 158 businesses, 85% of respondents planned to either increase or maintain their Google ad spend in 2023. Marketers should leverage this tool to be sure they are in front of shoppers already searching for a product or category. But, most marketers have growth targets that require them to generate interest beyond an already captive audience. Unfortunately, paid search has its limitations, specifically when branding and creating demand for your product among consumers who are not yet aware of your business. While paid search certainly puts your company in front of interested users, it’s not doing much to elevate your brand identity or form a connection with a prospective consumer.
Stick with Social
While Meta’s stock price may have been volatile in 2022, most marketers stand by the platform and its unparalleled customer access. In our survey, nearly 70% of respondents planned to reserve at least some of their budgets for Facebook, reporting planned spend between 1% and 40% of their budget. Similarly, 80% of respondents planned to either maintain or increase their advertising spend on Instagram. These platforms offer the type of measurable, direct response marketing that is in high demand during an uncertain economy, but with the added bonus of branding, storytelling and engagement opportunities. While it’s true that targeting on these platforms did experience a significant setback with Apple’s ATT policy, with the help of emerging AI tools, that connection is being rebuilt in a privacy-friendly way.
Explore Emerging Platforms
Marketers must also be willing to experiment, because new platforms are emerging all the time. Marketers must venture into these emerging platforms to reach new audiences and find innovative ways to engage their target audience. With over a billion users on TikTok (and growing), advertisers recognize its potential to yield big returns, even if the platform is not yet performing as effectively as they’d like. Pinterest, with its visual interface and high volume of users, is also a growing opportunity for marketers. Pinterest was born as a social site, but as marketers have learned the hard way with TikTok, results can remain elusive. One potential pitfall is that because Pinterest is typically used as an early-stage research platform, not a retail site, it may take significantly longer to convert browsers into buyers — if they convert at all. While now may not be the time to indulge, it is worth allocating some budget to experiment as these platforms evolve.
Enhance Performance with Emerging AI Tools
With nearly 50% of survey respondents citing “difficulty targeting” as one of their primary challenges, marketers can gain an edge from the knowledge wrought by new technology and other performance enhancers. AI is suddenly everywhere, putting marketers in a position to enhance their results across platforms in two ways. First, the explosion of generative AI will power marketers to use creative in a whole new way, giving them the speed and accuracy to improve engagement continuously.Second, AI and machine learning are bringing innovative solutions to counteract the limits in targeting brought about by heightened consumer privacy concerns. Marketers can now benefit from emerging tools that use anonymized data platforms to build custom audiences through iterative learning. These tools can improve return on advertising spend (ROAS), convert customers more quickly, and help expand their reach. For example, Finn, a pet wellness company that partnered with a third-party vendor to scale up their Facebook and Instagram marketing, saw a 42% higher ROAS, a 53% conversion rate, and a 96% increase in ad revenue.
Monitor Entertainment Platforms
Most recently, entertainment companies like Netflix and Roblox have begun trying to monetize through ad dollars. Though advertisers may want to carve out a small amount of their budget for these services, there are two major drawbacks. First, consumers who opt for a lower-cost, ad-driven subscription model for streaming media may not have the discretionary spending money to invest in brand shopping, so advertising dollars on places like Netflix or Hulu may not reap big rewards. The same is true for advertising with gamers, who are typically younger with less disposable income. Second, these outlets may be too late to the advertising game, or they don’t have the attention of the right target audiences. Tread carefully with the new advertising platforms.
Paid search is efficient and cheap. It’s an excellent tool for marketers with shrinking budgets – particularly in an uncertain economy. But to make progress, marketers must use all the tools available to them, so they can take the pulse of their audience and continue to build their brand. Marketers with a balanced, holistic plan can remain flexible and creative. Investing part of their budget in social, emerging platforms, and digital tools such as AI will help advertisers better understand their audiences and seize opportunities to meet their evolving needs.
How do you intend to leverage paid search? Share with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn . We’d love to hear from you!
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