Maximize Your Marketing Budget: Balancing Paid and Organic Search

75% of people say paid search ads make it easy for them to find exactly what they want.

Your paid search ads can increase brand awareness by up to 80%.

46% of clicks in search engine results are for the top three pay-per-click (PPC) ads at the top of the page. 

To compete, stand out, and generate sales – you need to use paid search ads.

There is a catch though: Paid search costs are rising. You cannot rely solely on paid search.
Hint: Paid search needs organic search. Organic search needs paid search.

A hybrid search strategy helps you build awareness, offset the rising costs of paid search, and strengthens your search strategy. 

Paid and organic search give you a smart and focused search strategy:

1. Shared Keyword Strategy: Allows you to create a stronger search presence, so you reach people across a wider search curve. Optimize your paid ad content just like you do your organic search content for search intent and the customer journey.
2. Brand Awareness: A hybrid strategy helps you rank in the top of the paid search results and in the top of the organic search results. The top 4 Google search results are typically PPC ads. 
3. Short- and Long-Term Marketing: It takes time for an organic search strategy to deliver results – a paid search campaign can convert immediately. Your paid search strategy gives you instant brand awareness and a high SERP ranking while your organic search strategy is building trust and awareness with Google and Bing.
4. Consumer Trust: How do you react when you see a paid ad and an organic search result for the same company? You trust this company and brand. Sharing keyword data and messaging, helps reinforce your brand benefits to consumers. 

5. Better Content: Paid and organic search give you the data insights to create ads and content that convert. Use this data to guide your landing page content, website copy, meta descriptions, and keywords.

6. Controlled User Experience: Paid search works behind-the-scenes of long-form organic search content. Using targeted and campaign-specific landing pages, your paid search content is optimized to minimize distraction and deliver on search intent. 

Our client, a national supplement brand, had a successful brand marketing campaign using paid search and a strong organic search presence on Google and Bing.  

Challenge: This brand had two concerns: the cost of the paid search campaign and cannibalization of organic search traffic. 

Goal: Reduce spending on the branded paid search campaign without reducing the total clicks to the website and overall sales. Any lost paid search clicks needed to come from organic traffic.

Strategy: Over a 12 week period, we tested different bidding strategies and budgets to find the point where traffic and sales did not suffer. 

Result: At the end of 12 weeks, we found the ideal balance between paid and organic search, allowing us to reduce the custom acquisition costs (CAC) by close to 50%, while still receiving the same volume of clicks and sales. 

Because this brand uses a hybrid strategy built on a strong organic search strategy and a shared keyword strategy across organic and paid search, the company has established strong visibility, trust, and confidence with search engines and customers. This makes it possible to reduce spending on paid search without sacrificing brand awareness, clicks, and conversions. 

To maximize your paid and organic search strategy and stay on budget do these 6 steps:

1) Understand your search data – more you know, the easier it is to get clicks and sales.

• What do people click?
• What happens after the click?
• Which keywords resonate?
• Who ranks at the top of the SERP?

2) Repurpose, refresh, and reuse high-performing PPC ads and content. People like familiarity – it builds trust and confidence. 

3) Focus on search intent. Know the questions, challenges, and goals of your consumers and create PPC ads, landing pages, and content that provide real solutions. 

4) Audit your paid search campaign. Your ads and landing page must use the right keywords, align with your goals, meet search intent, and be error-free. Do you know which ads are converting and which ads need an update? 70% of consumers say it’s important to include directions and a call-to-action button in ads. Do your PPC ads do this?

5) Remember E-E-A-T and YMYL. Your PPC ads must adhere to Google’s expectations for YMYL brands. 

6) Optimize your technical SEO. PPC ads are useless if your website is slow, doesn’t use HTTPS, isn’t mobile friendly, has broken links, and has other technical SEO mistakes.

Paid search costs are rising and more companies like yours are using paid search. This creates an expensive and competitive market. 

You do not have the time or money to waste on a disjointed search strategy. A hybrid search strategy is your answer. Paid search and organic search together – wins. 

 

(Statistic sources: WebFX and Social Media Today)