In our Curated Commerce Strategy series, we identify a common eCommerce challenge, then we curate some of the industry’s best thinking, tools, and resources into an easily digestible summary that can be referenced whenever you need it.Synopsis

Potential customers can be found everywhere, yet reaching out to them should be done strategically. While some customers might find you through their own research on search engines, other users can become customers if you simply raise the awareness about your brand through social media.

Now, with more and more people being more and more active o Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc social ads are becoming very popular. Still,  these ads on their own cannot bring such great benefits as if they are combined with paid search.

In this strategy, we will focus our attention to why cross advertising is optimal for today’s businesses, as well as how to successfully execute one such marketing strategy.

This Strategy Will Help You WithAcquiring Leads • Increasing Revenue                                                  Tips From ExpertsPut Search and Social Ads to Work Together

The end goal for both paid search and social ads is the same – to generate leads, increase traffic and ultimately increase revenue. Still, when starting a search-and-social campaign you should keep in mind that both mediums have different, yet still complementary purposes.

Social advertising is mainly used to build brand awareness in the first place, and driving sales comes as a secondary goal, whereas paid search is directly focused on leads, sales, and conversion. Why is that so?

According to a  study done by the University of Amsterdam, by using social media advertising, you can create  positive brand awareness on different levels, which  later results in generating leads or increasing sales:

Additionally, search engines nowadays take into consideration the social aspect of the brand, i.e. they have integrated social media signals within the algorithm, meaning that your brand will gain more authority through social media, if, of course, is done right.

That being said, it is evident why these types of advertising can work together so well.

Extract Information from Social and Use it on Search Ads – and the Other Way Around

Your social content and the interaction you will get from social advertising will let you know a lot about the behavior of your users. Search engines nowadays tend to replicate the way people type in queries, and that is exactly what you can extract from comments and discussions on social pages. By analyzing how customers think (and write) about your business on social pages, you can extract new high-converting keywords.

For example, when a discussion arises, look for keywords that are relevant to your business. See how users formulate the sentences and predict what kinds of queries they might type in when searching for something. Next, bid on some of those keywords that have a good search volume. Run tests and controlled experiments, and analyze the results you get.

Similarly, by extracting information from your search ads about the demographics of the users that convert, you can do an appropriate targeting of users on social media.

Pair processes with teams

When combining search and social ads, you need to consult both search and social experts to create a successful cross-advertising campaign; and the first thing to keep in mind is your budget.

Start with paid search budget planning first

Doing keyword research is the most important thing when it comes to search for ads. Instead of going for short and generic keywords, go for long-tail and more descriptive keywords. The bids on the generic keywords are higher, but according to studies, users tend to type in longer queries in order to get more relevant results. This means that your PPC rate will be lower, and you can increase the budget for social media campaigns.

If you have enough data from your paid search campaigns, analyze it and see what characteristics the users have: age, country, gender, etc. By having the paid search team monitor and extract information from the campaign, you can then modify your social media campaign and the other way around.

Use social media primarily to raise brand awareness

Social media on its own has a very low percentage of users who have converted. However, when it comes to popularizing the brand, social media ads work like a charm. Even if the user does not convert right away through a social media ad, chances are, he will remember your brand and look for you when in need of a product or service you offer.

Retarget users from a search on social media

Let’s say that a user got to your website by clicking a paid search ad, but never converted. By using the retargeting option such as the one that Facebook offers, you can “remind” the customer about your product. By implementing a small code called “pixel”, you can get data about the customers and use the retargeting option through Facebook in the Custom Audience tab. This way, your ads will be displayed to customers who find them relevant, directly increasing the chances of conversion.

Use the right metrics to report success

When it comes to social media. The key metrics you should pay attention to are the following:

Total Online Community Size (CRM) – The total number of “captured users” which you can communicate with through social media and can potentially turn into customers.

Referring Traffic (sTraffic) – How much traffic is referred to your website through social media channels.

Social Monthly Impressions (sMI) – Number of mentions of your brand on blogs, forums, social pages and profiles in a month.

On the other hand, the following metrics should be taken into consideration for your paid search campaign:

Quality Score – The relevance of the selected keywords of your paid search campaign.

Click-Through Rate – A high CTR means that users find your ad relevant for the keywords they are typing in.

Conversion Rate – The number of users who clicked on the ad and turned into customers. There is no use if the CTR is high but the conversion rate is low, and it means that you should optimize your ads or your landing page.

Must-Read Content From Experts

10 Reasons to Combine Search and Social

The top reasons why to combine search and social explained through an infographic.

Exploiting Social Networks for Internet Search

A study on how to use information gathered through social media for optimizing your paid search campaigns.

SEM & Social

:

A study done by Josh Deller on the effectiveness of cross-channel advertising.

Combining Search, Social and Display Advertising

A presentation on how combining search and social can help you generate leads and increase revenue

Tools

Qwaya

A useful tool with many features for social media marketing, including scheduling, rules settings, campaign organizer, and automated split testing.

Hootsuite

A tool with a very sophisticated algorithm which can analyze your Facebook page and generate ads and target people in accordance to its analysis.

Google Keyword Planner

A Cross-channel ad-reporting platform, including attribution models.The most popular tool for researching your keywords and checking their search volumes.

AdEspresso

A very simple and easy-to-use tool for tracking your Facebook campaigns and their performance.

Industry Leaders

Guy Kawasaki

Chief evangelist of Canva, author and former chief evangelist of Apple.

@GuyKawasaki

Kim Garst

A social-media expert, discussing the latest social-media-marketing strategies, Forbes Top 10 Social Media Influencer.

@kimgarst

Rand Fishkin

Founder and President of iSearch Media The founder of Moz, tweets about search-engine optimization and marketing.

@randfish

Amy Porterfield

Social Media Strategist specializing in Facebook Marketing, speaker and marketing coach

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