How to Make Paid Search & Social Media Marketing Work Together
Life is all about choices. Do we side with the Montagues or the Capulets? Do we prefer to eat ice cream, French fries, or waffles? Should we get a cat, a dog, or maybe a fish?
Overwhelmed by abundant choices, people often end up opting for one thing– and stick with it. That’s why you see so many experts in online marketing specializing in one approach.
But why do we have to choose between PPC and social media? There are many ways for these two marketing strategies to go hand in hand.
After all, cross-channel efforts usually work best. For example, even when NewsCred discovered that every $1 spent on LinkedIn Sponsored Updates led to $17 in revenue, they still found that they had their best results when combining efforts across channels and focusing on the quality of the content they were promoting.
Don’t view social media and paid search as if they’re from different dimensions. You can leverage these two channels in a hybrid, complementary way that boosts website visits and drives sales by keeping the following tips in mind.
Your First Priority: Gathering Information
Insights from social media can feed PPC, and vice versa.
Both PPC and social media are valuable tools for gathering information that can then be used across different channels
Track your ROI
“What gets measured, gets managed.” In the aforementioned NewsCred case study, they found that LinkedIn Sponsored Updates outperformed AdWords at a rate of 17.6 to 3.1.
Where do you get most of your results?
Follow the Pareto Principle and remember that in most cases, a majority of your results come from a minority of inputs. What are the strategies, blog posts, or social media headlines grabbing the most attention? Which ones are lagging behind?
Successful PPC marketers know that testing is key. So bring that concept over to social media. For example, use Facebook Audience Insights to get a better handle of your best-performing demographics.
When you use information across platforms to improve each part of your strategy, you’ll spend less money chasing numbers and more money earning conversions.
Use PPC to Grow on Social Media
All of this sounds well and good—but what if you don’t have the social media presence to leverage your followers? In other words, what if one medium lags behind the others?
You can start by sending sponsored PPC clicks to your social media pages. American Airlines has no qualms about asking its potential customers to follow them on Snapchat and Instagram, and neither should you.
As long as you plan on offering valuable insights and interesting content on social media, you’ll find plenty of happy followers.
It’s also important to embrace trends. You can even buy your way into a trend by using PPC, which in turn drives traffic to your social media headlines talking about that very same trend. You’d be surprised how many followers you can pick up because of one viral story in the news, or one item trending on Twitter.
When it comes to online marketing, you’re selling yourself short if you silo PPC, social media, content marketing, and email marketing. Instead, think strategically about how you can combine your efforts on multiple channels to reach your audience where they are.
About Aleada Media Group™
Aleada Media Group is a results-driven digital marketing agency based out of Encinitas, CA. We are a team of digital experts that help companies achieve their goals through the use of advanced digital marketing techniques. Our innovative conversion optimization techniques ensure all digital marketing tactics used will deliver true return on your investment. Our main focus is always client satisfaction, which is driven by the ROI we provide our clients.
Contact us and schedule a one-on-one free consultation where we dive deep into your strategies and spark new ideas to kick ass.