Use Paid Media to Build Funnels Now for Long Term Success

People are increasingly sensitive to how they are spending their time and money

According to Qualtrics, 33% of people say that not taking advantage of the crisis to maximize profits makes them trust brands more. Both AdWeek and Edelman report that consumers want companies to provide solutions, not just sell things.

Brands should spend time building trust now through education and brand awareness so they can continue to resonate with users as the economic outlook improves. Users will remember the companies who helped them during this time, rather than those who just tried to sell them something.

Check out our post about pivoting Paid Social strategy in the current climate.

You’ve read Seer’s post about what people are asking on Reddit, and now you have content lined up - awesome! How can you make sure people are finding your content and your brand?

💡 First - reconsider your goals. Depending on the current state of your business, you should consider focusing more on engagement metrics than revenue in the short term. Revenue is likely not the best indicator of success right now.

Promote timely content to build trust

It’s every marketer’s worst nightmare to come across as tone-deaf in a brand’s messaging, especially during a global pandemic. In many cases, now is not the time to be drilling bottom-funnel efforts and forcing a product or service down someone’s throat. Instead, it’s crucial that you take a step back and examine your marketing efforts to ensure you’re being sensitive given the circumstances  At Seer, we’re using this time to build our funnels - expanding top of funnel efforts to help more people and get them in the funnel - so we can reach out to users later through search, display, or video remarketing and encourage them to take action when they’re ready.

A benefit of building your funnel now and focusing on bringing those users back down the road is that Remarketing typically results in lower CPCs and CPAs, so you might see increasingly efficient CPAs over time.

Pages might not rank overnight; while you’re working on improving rankings, build your funnels using paid search. Consider if it’s even possible for your content to rank. Are industry aggregators or news sites holding the top organic spots? If so, you might need a paid media strategy in order to compete.

Traditional Search

Bid on common questions your customers are asking. Leverage the common questions from Seer’s Reddit scrape or review your long-tail search terms to start. Still not really sure what your customers might be asking? Try launching…

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA)

Spend less time building keyword lists and test a DSA campaign targeting your new content to cast a wide keyword net and understand how users are searching. You might even get ideas for ways to improve your content or write net new pieces.

While you can generally expect DSA campaigns to increase traffic to your site over everything else, at Seer we’ve seen strong performance outside of traffic alone.

One client’s DSA campaign has driven a ROAS more than 2X the rest of the account, while only making up 3% of account spend in the past 90 days. Another client’s DSA ad group has a 35% lower CPA and 6X higher CTR than standard ad groups in the campaign.

Client A

Client B

Seer’s typical keyword research process considers sources like a client’s branding team, audience research, and keyword-specific tools that can take a few weeks to complete. With DSAs, you can save time and see results quickly while leveraging Google’s smarts.

Display & YouTube

Now is the time to test campaign types like Display and YouTube. Historically some advertisers shy away from these campaign types due to cost and revenue concerns, but now that people are spending more time on the internet but less time searching, reach people where they are. Use targeting types like Custom Intent or In-Market to help focus your content on relevant audiences.

(!) Just think about how many people you know who are watching YouTube exercise videos on a daily basis!

When to let organic take the lead

Once the content you’ve created is ranking in a comfortable spot for your brand, read Wil’s post about cutting budgets with a scalpel vs. sledgehammer:

• Is budget still really tight? Consider selectively turning paid media off once you’ve hit your ranking goals.
• Do you still have room to spend budget, and is paid media providing incremental benefit? Keep running, especially where your organic presence is not as strong.

Now what?

Audit your current content and start answering your users’ questions if you’re not already. Lean into building trust - it might not result in revenue now, but your site visitors will remember how you helped them for a long time. And, you’ll have a pool of users to reach out to as the economic landscape continues to evolve.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, or contact us if you’d like to talk more about how to adjust your strategy now to reap long term benefits.

Sign up for our newsletter for more posts like this - delivered straight to your inbox!