The terms “growth marketing” and “growth hacking” are frequently used in casual conversation.
Even specific job titles and duties exist for “growth hacking.”
What does growth marketing, however, actually entail?
Growth marketing is, to put it simply, discovering and attracting the ideal clients to your company. Whether they are at the top or bottom of the funnel, these are the customers who are most likely to buy from your business.
What, therefore, is the secret to growth marketing in the modern world?
Search engine marketing in three words (SEM).
Not to be confused with only PPC or SEO, search marketing has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to deliver positive outcomes.
SEM is a long-term strategy to get more qualified clients to convert. It is not a one-time project.
The best practices for succeeding at SEM in the current market are listed below.
Deliver Value Across The Decision Journey
Your growth marketing strategy should adapt to the changing behavior of your dispersed consumer base.
Who are the people behind all of those clicks?
We can better understand the five distinct stages of purchase intent that all customers share according to research from Microsoft Ads.
Awareness: Acquiring background data and purchasing landscape to improve your research knowledge.
Consideration: Researching buying advice, suggestions, and items that satisfy essential requirements. comparing a few items that satisfy the customer’s requirements, taking into account cost, features, ratings, and reviews.
Conversion: Finding a place to buy, looking at prices and specials, inventory, and nearby stores, and then finally making a purchase.
Maintain: Even though they already work with a certain brand, they might run into your goods or services in other contexts.
Expand: The user is a pleased client who recommends your company to others and writes reviews for you. After that, these individuals enter the Awareness stage.
Align Your Campaign & Business Goals
Your business goals may be impacted by search and measured with its aid. Make sure your SEM strategy is in line with the goals of your campaign:
Brand awareness and perception: On your non-brand, brand, and the keywords of your rivals, place competitive bids. The best way to start a journey is through non-brand searches: A non-brand search query affects 69 percent of brand ad clicks. After seeing a brand ad on a generic search query or a competitor’s branded query, searchers were 30% more likely to conduct a branded search.
Win new customers: Consumers use search to guide their purchasing decisions. Every step of the decision-making process can benefit from SEM.
Drive sales: Conversion-based search has a strong track record. In terms of conversion rates, it outperforms other marketing channels across devices.
Enter new markets: The prevalence of search enables you to implement a global marketing plan that boosts ad clicks with Sitelink Extensions, improves phone calls with Call Extensions, and enhances foot traffic with Location Extensions.
Expand Your Marketing Funnel
Search is no longer just a product; it is now our daily companion.
Whether on our computers, laptops, tablets, or cellphones, we turn to search constantly and everywhere.
To engage your business with this new audience, you must first understand how individuals search at various stages of their purchasing journeys.
As an engine of insights, search now exerts impact during all five phases of the purchasing process (awareness, consideration, conversion, maintenance, and expansion).
SEM also harmonizes various marketing initiatives and strengthens your conversion funnel.
Take Audience Targeting To The Next Level
Engaging potential clients at the right time and in the right location is no longer sufficient.
By using audience targeting, you should be able to connect with as many different searchers as you can.
Step 1: Create more detailed buyer personas taking into account these aspects:
Behavioral: Understanding consumer interests and the probability to purchase is made possible by past activities. Analyze website, search, and content activity to more accurately measure user behavior.
Demographic: Age, gender, and geography are three simple yet significant elements that affect people’s purchasing choices.
Contextual: Consumers are currently searching frequently. To develop more effective ad campaigns, knowing where, when, and how they search might be important information.
Step 2: Choose terms that reflect the main mindsets and stages of your target market:
Awareness: At this level, the best keywords are “What is” and “Benefits of.”
Consideration: At this point, keywords like “Buying guidance” and “Models” are best.
Conversion: At this point, keywords like “Where” and “Coupon” are most effective.
Maintain: At this point, “Support” and “Experience” are effective keywords.
Experience: At this point, keywords like “Reviews” are most effective.
Lift Other Investments With Paid Search
By combining organic search with a paid SEM approach, you can maximize your search efforts.
Search and social: Customers are more likely to purchase and spend more when they click on your paid search and social ads. Improve your keyword coverage to receive more impressions, and modify your bidding strategy for PPC campaigns that are connected to businesses.
Search and TV: After a commercial airs, search volume increases for several days. According to a Catalyst Digital analysis, search volume increased by over 30% compared to the same day and times when no advertisements ran.
Search and display: According to Investis Digital, running search and display simultaneously can help you decide which channel generates the greatest results, which may be both.
Search and social: Customers are more likely to purchase and spend more when they click on your paid search and social ads. Improve your keyword coverage to receive more impressions, and modify your bidding strategy for PPC campaigns that are connected to businesses.
Search and other channels: The average order value of orders using Microsoft Ads alone in the buying path is 27% greater than those without Microsoft Ads, which also provide value when combined with other channels.
Fight & Win The Battle For Paid Search Budget Share
Still competing for a portion of your marketing spend, SEM is one of many channels.
Bring concrete evidence that demonstrates the link between search engine marketing and commercial advantages.
Three things are part of your budget-sharing battle plan:
Choose the Correct Metrics for Measuring SEM Impact Metrics offer a simple method for identifying what is and isn’t functioning.
For better outcomes, your team may test, modify, and improve your brand’s SEM strategy.
By locating and monitoring key performance indicators that match your company’s objectives, you can concentrate your reporting:
- Gaining new clients.
- Driving a footfall.
- Increasing the number of calls.
- Boosting ad ClicksC
- Creating brand trust.
- Increasing the cross-border strategy
Separate SEM Impacts From Other Channels
Recognize the most effective marketing channels.
Each transaction is the result of multiple marketing touches that may span days, weeks, or even months and may use different channels.
The ability to demonstrate that sponsored search initiatives produce ROI and bottom-line results will help you unlock additional funding and further improve search performance because attribution can be fairly difficult at times.
You may be grossly underestimating the importance of other channels and strategies if you are still measuring conversions using a last-click attribution approach.
Apply The Same Process To Allocate Budget Between Google Ads & Microsoft Ads
When you examine the paid click share and query that each SEM option represents within your industry, the final piece fits into place.
In addition to putting your company in front of a big audience, you can be sure that your paid advertisements will result in clicks.
Conclusion
Today’s marketing mix is based on SEM, which is essential for growth marketing.
An increase in the number of available channels and the use of multiple devices by one person can fragment the customer journey.
Getting the appropriate message to the right customer at the right time on the right device is one of the biggest problems.
In addition to these difficulties, determining success is likely the most difficult task because of user privacy restrictions.
You can no longer afford to invest all of your marketing funds in a single network of search ads. You need to use various channels to increase your addressable market if you want to grow your marketing.
To increase the reach, impact, and value of your sponsored search efforts and achieve bottom-line outcomes, adhere to the best practices described below.
You will be more prepared when using these best strategies to secure marketing resources or budgets.
