Paid Search and Precision Advertising: Two Halves of a Winning Strategy

Paid search is—and should be—a vital component of every marketing strategy. After all, companies will spend more than $190B on paid search efforts in 2024. Its advantage comes from the real-time performance data that provides immediate visibility and direct response results. However, marketing leaders know that relying solely on a paid search strategy is insufficient to maintain a steady traffic flow. Too many companies over-index on the direct response results that paid search and paid social provide. A well-executed upper-funnel strategy is essential to sustain search volume and consistent, steady lead flow. That funnel can be filled effectively with precision advertising.

What Is Paid Search and How Does It Work?

Paid search is a marketing channel that lets advertisers pay for premium placement on a search results page. Paid search ads usually appear above, beside, or within organic search results.

The most common paid search strategy is pay-per-click (PPC), which means advertisers don’t pay the search provider until someone clicks on their ad. PPC prioritizes clicks while other channels, such as display, prioritize reach using metrics like cost per thousand impressions (CPM).

The placement of paid search ads depends on several factors. First, companies with higher bids on a given keyword (cost per click) will be prioritized. Search ads are also assigned a quality score that determines how relevant your ad, landing page, and offer are for the given search query. The most common search engines for paid search ads include Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It’s essential to optimize for placement since the top 3 ads receive nearly half of the paid clicks.

Paid search ads are typically text ads but can also be display ads or other formats, depending on the platform. The best paid search ads contain keywords in the title and ad copy relevant to the search query and feature a strong call to action.

Paid search is measured through metrics like click-through rate (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC), and conversion rate. Because paid search is a bottom-of-funnel tactic, paid search efforts are often linked to revenue results, but paid search alone is not responsible.

Paid Search as Demand Capture

Paid search is inherently a demand capture strategy. That demand either exists already or comes from upper-funnel strategies. Since paid search typically captures the bottom of the marketing funnel, users are already aware of their needs and looking for solutions. They might even already be aware of your company and product. If you fail to generate demand or continually fill the top of your funnel, paid search campaigns can suffer from reduced performance and a weakened pipeline. To prevent this, many marketing teams use brand awareness marketing campaigns to boost search volume and keep their funnel full.

However, for many companies, brand awareness campaigns are unmeasurable and provide little to no data to help understand the effectiveness of your investment. That’s where precision advertising comes in.

What Is Precision Advertising and How Does It Work?

Precision advertising is a marketing strategy that uses open internet channels like display, connected TV, audio, and digital out-of-home to advertise to hyper-targeted personas instead of the broad targeting found in traditional brand awareness campaigns. It uses advanced tracking and treatment-control data science to track the impact of advertising touchpoints on down-funnel revenue-based metrics and KPIs like marketing efficiency ratio (MER) and customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Precision advertising helps fill your business’s funnel by reaching your personas at the right time and place. It not only results in direct response conversions but also boosts the performance of all of your advertising channels, including paid search and social media. Companies using precision advertising alongside other channels have seen a 525% increase in conversion rates.

Paid Search and Precision Advertising—Better Together

A thoughtfully structured search account that houses relevant keywords is necessary for top performance. Not only will a tight keyword structure allow you to capture demand generated from upper-funnel campaigns easily, but it will also allow you to use top-performing keywords as insights into the interests and behaviors of your audience. These insights can be used to refine and optimize your upper funnel campaigns. For example, if you have high-performing long-tail keywords, you can create display or programmatic ads that address the concerns or desires those keywords reveal. As an additional tool, precision advertising allows you to retarget users based on keywords, a helpful strategy if you're in a restricted industry that limits remarketing on paid search platforms.

The impacts of upper-funnel strategies don’t materialize overnight, which can be frustrating for teams seeking immediate results. It can also be tempting to tie monthly ad spend to monthly performance, but this approach oversimplifies the reality of digital advertising. There’s often a lag between when users are first exposed to an ad and when they finally convert, especially in longer customer journeys. You can use metrics to monitor as precision advertising or upper-funnel strategies work to reach your ideal customer personas. You'll notice increased website traffic and metrics across your paid search and social campaigns improve. Keeping track of metrics like search impression share is significant if you believe you are at your max but haven’t been able to hit the last couple of percentages to reach your highest total. You’ll also see evidence of your funnel working to push highly qualified leads down to your lower funnel campaigns as lead quality improves over time. This is representative of upper-funnel efforts to educate and nurture potential customers before they engage with your paid search ads.

In summary, paid search and upper-funnel strategies such as precision advertising are crucial for an effective digital marketing strategy. Consistently optimizing your campaigns across the entire customer journey is necessary and made easy with precision advertising with Agility. Adding precision advertising to your paid search efforts will help capture demand while driving new interest, ensuring your marketing strategy is both measurable and scalable in the long run.

Precision Advertising with Agility

Increasing the effectiveness of your paid search efforts with precision advertising is much easier than you might think. Agility is pioneering precision advertising, and our team is happy to help you get started. Contact a member of the Agility team today.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is paid search vs SEO?

SEO, or search engine optimization, involves optimizing a website's content to increase its rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) and grow organic (non-paid) traffic. Paid search, or search engine marketing (SEM), is a pay-per-click (PPC) channel that allows businesses to bid on keywords for sponsored placement at the top (or in other designated spaces) of a search query page.

How does precision advertising affect paid search advertising?

Precision advertising captures direct demand and increases the effectiveness of other channel’s marketing efforts. Advertisers who run precision advertising alongside paid search campaigns see improved conversion and return on investment. When a target audience is already familiar with your brand through optimized multi-channel precision advertising efforts, it’s much easier for them to convert when they see you again at the top of their search results page.

What are the benefits of paid search campaigns?

Paid search guarantees exposure without optimizing your content for specific keywords and search terms. As long as your bid amount is high enough, your target audience will see you, regardless of how competitive your market is. With such a prominent placement, your target customers can take immediate action. Paid search also provides detailed tracking and analytics to inform content, product, or offer optimization.