Talking about Adwords when referring to paid searches is not entirely accurate. But it is clearly the most widely used term. At the end of the article you will find a small clarification.
In the vast majority of strategies, the role of paid searches is to achieve direct conversions (generally sales), and it makes perfect sense because it is the most effective channel.
For this reason, and because it is one of the channels that has been used in digital strategies for the longest time from the beginning, strategies are rarely defined with a different objective than sales.
In addition, it is the channel most in line with the widespread short-term approach of seeking the greatest number of sales, in the shortest period of time and at the lowest cost. A indonesia number utopian approach that is rarely possible and that is applied to any channel from Adwords to social networks.
It is something that I frequently encounter when planning marketing strategies. It is the 'fight' between tactics and strategy. It seems that
companies forget that their audience needs our attention in all phases of the purchase decision process, not just before paying (you can read more about this approach in the article I wrote about my conference at Expo Marketing Bogotá The great mistake of digital strategies ).
That said, let's think about how we use search engines in our daily lives: we look for information, quick answers to specific questions, help with certain topics, etc.
When it comes to making purchasing decisions, we turn to them almost from the first moment. In this article I will try to break down the advantages of using them and the objectives to be met at each stage of the purchasing process ( customer journey) to achieve a more robust strategy with better results .
How do we use search engines throughout the purchasing decision process?
I would like to start with a fact, taken from a recent Forrester study , which confirms what we all intuit from our daily experience.
“71% of users start the purchasing decision process using a search engine and 74% use it to compare products and make the final purchase.”
If we apply this experience to the purchase funnel methodology that I usually use, we can see the objective and type of search that our audience performs in each of the stages of the purchase funnel .
Adwords' role in the purchasing process
Adwords' role in the purchasing process
Beginning of the purchase decision-making process: first searches
At this point, our audience is not clear about what they are going to buy. They start to do generic research, and as such, they use generic terms that are not related to the brand ( non-brand ).
Being in this initial stage and dealing with terms where the brand does not appear, the bets in the form of a campaign must be controlled. Since the greater the distance from the brand, the greater the volume of keywords and, therefore, the higher the potential costs.
That is why brands must define the linguistic profile of our audience and the keywords associated with the related territories where their audience starts the search.
In the following stages of the customer journey , brand campaigns are normally chosen, since they have the highest conversion and at the lowest cost (it is the easiest way).
Any test outside this area usually raises doubts due to its greater difficulty and cost, but if we look at the data from the Bing Ads study , we can see the direct relationship between no