to use Always-on Marketing in Paid Search //

According to study conducted by Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, and , at any given time, 95% your potential customers will not be in the market to purchase.

Your advertising is largely aimed at buyers who are not likely to purchase any time soon.

How can marketers stay top of mind for buyers, no matter when they make a purchase decision?

Always-on marketing is a great way to achieve this. It aims to create brand-relevant memory through messaging.

Learn how to use search-marketing in your campaigns.

What is Always-On Marketing?

The goal of Always-on Marketing is to make your brand visible on the market by running ongoing campaigns.

It is important to make sure that your audience knows about your brand, its products and services even before they decide to buy.

Brand awareness is increased and brand equity is boosted by always-on marketing. It measures performance using metrics across the entire marketing funnel, from reach to revenue.

Why Always-On Marketing Matters

Lead generation campaigns that are short-term continue to dominate marketing.

These campaigns lead to a brief spike in revenue, followed by a stagnant growth.

Why do marketers tend to prioritize short-term tactics?

They are often used to meet the immediate needs of companies, who demand fast results.

Marketing, especially on the digital side of things, has been heavily influenced by “performance-based campaigns” that expect rapid results in just two weeks.

The only way to measure success is by the number of leads generated.

Marketers should instead use marketing programs that are always on and include full-funnel campaign for long-term durations.

This approach, if adopted, can transform marketers from short-term reactive campaign executors into strategic long-term brand builders and revenue drivers.

The planning, budget, creativity and time required for an always-on marketing campaign is more than that of a standard lead generation campaign.

Marketers should find this exciting, but convincing your company and especially your finance department to accept it will require time and persuasion.

Test new marketing strategies to learn and grow. Big bets can bring big rewards.

Pay-per-click marketing with always on marketing

Always-on paid search marketing runs the entire marketing funnel, from the top of the funnel to the bottom.

This is a far more effective approach than traditional paid search campaigns, which are conversion-focused and have set goals for conversion volumes or cost per conversion.

Always-on paid searches include optimization for “performance marketing” metrics.

They also optimize your campaigns to maximize TOFU awareness metrics such as impression share, and MOFU engagement measures like click-through rates.

A full-funnel approach to paid-search involves:

• Content Strategy.
• Alignment of messaging
• Ad creation.
• User-journey development.
• Lead nurturing.
• Metric identification/measurement.
• Budget allocation.
• Selecting keywords

Content on TOFU and MOFU landing page should be ungated.

• Your brand should be the focus of your message.
• This section describes the high-level categories.
• Data that addresses the pain points of customers.
• Social proof is important.

BOFU content shouldn’t be gated except if the value is very high. Some examples are research reports with original and valuable data or annual surveys.

The days of locking down standard ebooks and whitepapers are over. You can give away this type of content without restricting it at the TOFU or MOFU stages.

Budget allocation is also important. Allocating your budget to funnel stages is best done by following the 60-40 rule.

• Keywords within TOFU and MOFU should receive 60% of the budget.
• BOFU keywords should account for 40% of your budget.

This ensures that your brand is visible throughout the entire search process to increase awareness and revenue.

Pay-per-click keywords that are always on

It is not a precise science to divide keywords into TOFU (total), MOFU (total) and BOFU (total).

Keyword research tools can be used to complement your understanding of your audience as well as your experience in paid search marketing.

You should always evaluate your stratification of keywords after initial testing and make any necessary adjustments.

Here are some practical suggestions on how to start segmenting your keywords according to the stage of the funnel.

Tofu is a keyword.

• Branded Keywords
  • Branding is one of your most valuable assets. Protect and promote it as your competitors bid.
• Keywords that are used by competitors
  • Searchers may be customers of your competitors now, but this does not mean that they will be forever. Competitive conquest increases your brand’s awareness among relevant prospects. Remember that we are judging TOFU based on awareness metrics such as impression share and not conversions.
• Industry-level keywords
  • Find industry-level keywords and bid accordingly. A cybersecurity firm, for example, could bid on terms like “cybersecurity”, “cybersecurity solution” and “cybersecurity”.

MOFU Keywords

• Keywords at the category level
  • If you are using the cybersecurity example as an example, bid on keywords like “threat Intelligence” and judge the performance based on engagement metrics including click-through rates and website engagement metrics. Don’t judge these keywords based on revenue, conversions or leads.
• Comparison keywords
  • Searchers who compare companies or solutions in your area will bid on these terms. You can bid on terms like “top cybersecurity companies.”

BOFU is a keyword.

• Keywords at the product level
  • Product-level keywords have traditionally been used to generate leads. They are focused on products and transactions. A cybersecurity firm might use “managed detection response (MDR),” as an example.

Budget and duration of Always-on

To be effective, the always-on approach must be full funnel and have a long duration.

Always-on paid searches can be expensive, so it is important to be strategic. If the budget is restricted, reduce the amount of money spent based on performance metrics that are relevant to each funnel phase.

Don’t just reduce the budget for TOFU and MOFU keyword. If you only focus on BOFU keywords, then your revenue will be flat and short-lived.

Push back, Say “No,” Advocate for strategic budget allocations that are based on brand building over the long term and revenue growth.

Always-on Marketing by Champion

Test it now that you understand the concept of Always-On Marketing. Try it out in your organization with a paid search pilot lasting six or nine months.

You can move beyond short-term campaign promoting webinars or whitepapers that are gated. Adopt a long-term, full-funnel view of paid searches.

It will be difficult to implement such a test, but you can start by socializing the idea and advocating it.

Paid search marketers should and can be more than just reactive campaign executers. They should champion the concept of always-on marketing, and turn into a strategic brand builder as well as revenue generator.

The first time Search Engine Land published the post How you can use always-on advertising in paid search.