Growth marketing and growth hacking are terms that are often used loosely. There are even specific job titles and functions dedicated to “growth hacking.” However, what exactly does growth marketing mean?
In simple terms, growth marketing involves identifying and attracting the right customers to your business. These are the individuals who are most likely to make a purchase from your brand. Whether they are at the beginning or end of the customer journey.
So, what is the key to successful growth marketing in today’s world? Three words: search engine marketing (SEM).
SEM should not be confused with just pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or search engine optimization (SEO). SEM has consistently shown its effectiveness in delivering positive outcomes.
Search Engine Marketing is not a short-term endeavor; it is an ongoing strategy aimed at attracting more qualified customers and achieving conversions in the long run.
Outlined below are best practices that will help you succeed in SEM within today’s market.
Harmonize Your Campaign Objectives with Business Goals
The impact of search on your business goals is significant, and it also serves as a valuable tool for measuring those goals. It is essential to align your search engine marketing (SEM) strategy with your campaign objectives.
Here are some key considerations for aligning your SEM strategy with specific objectives:
Brand awareness and perception: To enhance brand awareness and perception, it is crucial to bid competitively on non-brand, brand, and competitors’ keywords. Non-brand searches play a crucial role in initiating a customer’s journey, as 69% of brand ad clicks are influenced by non-brand search queries. Exposure to a brand ad on a generic search query or a competitor’s branded query increases the likelihood of searchers conducting a branded search by 30%.
Acquiring new customers: Consumers heavily rely on search to gather information and make informed purchase decisions. SEM can effectively support every stage of the decision-making process, helping you attract and win over new customers.
Driving sales: Search is a powerful driver of conversions and consistently outperforms other marketing channels in terms of conversion rates across various devices. By optimizing your SEM efforts, you can effectively drive sales and achieve your revenue targets.
Expanding into new markets: Search’s ubiquitous nature enables you to activate a cross-border marketing strategy. With tools like Location Extensions, you can drive foot traffic to physical stores. Call Extensions help generate more phone calls, and Sitelink Extensions increase ad clicks, allowing you to tap into new markets and reach a broader audience.
By understanding the impact of search on different business objectives and aligning your SEM strategy accordingly. You can maximize its effectiveness in achieving your goals.
Provide Meaningful Value Throughout the Decision Journey
In order to keep up with the changing behavior of your diverse customer base. It is crucial to adapt your growth marketing plan accordingly. But who exactly are the customers behind those numerous clicks?
Through research conducted by Microsoft Ads. We gain valuable insights into the some distinct stages of purchase intent that all customers commonly experience:
Awareness: At this stage, customers gather background information and familiarize themselves with the buying landscape to become more informed researchers.
Consideration: Customers enter the consideration stage where they explore buying guides, recommendations, and products that meet their basic criteria. They compare a few products that fulfil their requirements, considering factors such as ratings, reviews, features, and cost.
Conversion: Once customers have identified their desired product, they shift to the conversion stage. Here, they search for where to make the purchase, examine pricing and promotions, availability, and local stores, and ultimately make a purchase.
Maintain: Customers who have already established a relationship with a particular brand may come across other products or services provided by that brand in different areas. This stage focuses on maintaining their engagement and loyalty.
Expand: Satisfied customers become advocates for your business by leaving reviews, engaging in word-of-mouth recommendations to peers, and more. These individuals then re-enter the awareness stage as they explore new products or services.
Understanding these distinct stages of purchase intent enables you to tailor your growth marketing strategies to effectively engage and convert customers throughout their buying journey.
Broaden the Reach of Your Marketing Funnel
In today’s world, search has transformed from being a mere product into a pervasive behavior that accompanies us constantly. We rely on a search across various devices such as desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, seeking information and answers wherever we are.
Gaining an understanding of how people search at different stages of their purchase journeys presents an opportunity to actively engage with this evolving audience and connect with your brand. Search has evolved into a powerful source of insights, enabling it to exert influence throughout all stages of the buying process: awareness, consideration, conversion, maintenance, and expansion.
In addition, SEM plays a crucial role in reinforcing your conversion funnel and bringing together diverse marketing activities. It acts as a unifying force, aligning your efforts and ensuring a cohesive approach to driving conversions.
By recognizing the behavioral shift and significance of search, and leveraging SEM effectively. You can tap into its insights, engage with customers at various stages, and strengthen your overall marketing strategy.
Elevate Your Audience Targeting to a Higher Level
Merely engaging potential customers at the right time and place is no longer sufficient to compel them. To effectively reach a broader audience, you must employ audience targeting strategies.
Here’s a two-step approach to leverage audience targeting and optimize your engagement:
Step 1: Develop comprehensive buyer personas that consider the following factors:
Behavioral: Analyze past behaviors to gain insights into consumer interests and their propensity to make purchases. Evaluate activities across websites, searches, and content to better understand user behavior.
Demographic: Consider basic yet crucial factors like age, gender, and location, as they significantly influence buying preferences.
Contextual: Consumers often conduct searches at the moment. By analyzing where, when, and how they search, you can gather valuable data to create more impactful ad campaigns.
Step 2: Select keywords that align with the key stages and mindsets of your target customers:
Awareness: Utilize keywords such as “What is” and “Benefits of” to capture attention during the awareness stage.
Consideration: Opt for keywords like “Buying guide” and “Models” to cater to customers in the consideration stage.
Conversion: Incorporate keywords such as “Where” and “Coupon” to facilitate conversions by providing relevant information.
Maintain: Include keywords like “Support” and “Experience” to address the needs of existing customers and maintain their engagement.
Experience: Implement keywords such as “Reviews” to enhance the overall customer experience and foster trust.
By employing audience targeting and aligning your keyword strategy with the different stages of the customer journey. You can effectively engage with potential customers and drive conversions.
Elevate Your Other Investments Through Paid Search
Maximize the effectiveness of your search efforts by integrating organic search with a paid search engine marketing (SEM) strategy.
Here are some key considerations for optimizing your search campaigns:
Search and Social: Customers who click on your paid search and social ads are more likely to make a purchase and spend more. Strengthen your keyword coverage to increase impressions, and customize your bidding strategy specifically for commercial-focused pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.
Search and TV: Following the airing of a commercial, there is a notable spike in search volume that lasts for several days. According to a Digital study, search volume increased by over 30% compared to days and times when a commercial was not aired. Capitalize on this surge in search interest by aligning your search strategy with your TV advertising campaigns.
Search and Display: Running search and display campaigns simultaneously allows you to evaluate which channel delivers the best results. Investis Digital suggests that both channels can contribute value, and by monitoring their performance, you can make informed decisions to optimize your marketing efforts.
Search and other channels: When Microsoft Ads is the sole advertising channel in the customer’s purchase path, the average order value of purchases is 27% higher compared to purchases that do not involve Microsoft Ads. Furthermore, Microsoft Ads can generate value when combined with other marketing channels, enhancing the overall impact of your campaigns.
By combining organic search with a paid SEM strategy and strategically integrating it with other marketing channels, you can optimize your search campaigns, increase conversions, and maximize the value generated by your advertising efforts. Hire a Microsoft Ads expert for a quick result and noticeable conversion today.
Secure and Dominate Your Share of the Paid Search Budget Battle
In the ongoing competition for a portion of your marketing budget, search engine marketing (SEM) must prove its value and demonstrate a strong connection to business benefits.
To effectively advocate for SEM, it is crucial to present compelling hard data that connects the dots between SEM and its positive impact on your business.
Here are three essential elements for your budget share battle plan:
Comprehensive Metrics: Utilize a range of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to showcase the tangible outcomes and return on investment (ROI) generated by your SEM campaigns. This can include metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, cost per acquisition (CPA), and revenue generated. By presenting a comprehensive set of metrics, you can demonstrate the effectiveness of SEM in driving results.
Attribution Analysis: Implement an attribution model that accurately measures and attributes the impact of SEM across the customer journey. This allows you to connect SEM activities to various touchpoints and interactions, providing a clearer understanding of how SEM contributes to conversions and overall business success. Highlighting the specific touchpoints where SEM plays a pivotal role will strengthen your case for budget allocation.
Ways to Enhance Page Speed for Increased Traffic and Conversions
Competitive Insights: Provide insights on how your competitors are leveraging SEM and the potential risks of reducing or neglecting your own SEM efforts. Showcase data on the market share and visibility that can be gained through SEM, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a competitive presence in search engine results.
By presenting a data-driven battle plan that encompasses comprehensive metrics, attribution analysis, and competitive insights. You can make a compelling case for allocating a share of your marketing budget to SEM. This approach will help demonstrate the value and business benefits that SEM brings to your organization.
Conclusion
SEM plays a vital role as the foundation of today’s marketing mix and is essential for successful growth marketing strategies.
The ever-expanding availability of channels and the prevalence of multiple devices per user have led to a more fragmented customer journey. This presents a significant challenge of delivering the right message to the right customer, at the right time, and on the right device.
Furthermore, measuring the success of SEM campaigns has become increasingly challenging due to limitations imposed by user privacy concerns.
To drive effective growth marketing, it is no longer sufficient to invest all marketing resources solely in one search ad network. To expand your addressable market and achieve growth, it is crucial to incorporate other channels into your marketing strategy.
By following the best practices outlined here. You can maximize the reach, impact, and value of your paid search campaigns, ultimately delivering bottom-line results. These best practices will provide you with the necessary tools and insights to secure the marketing resources and budgets needed to drive your marketing efforts forward.
Would you like to read more about effective SEM best practices-related articles? If so, we invite you to take a look at our other tech topics before you leave!
