ok and Facebook: Driving ROAS beyond Google and Microsoft

Search is incredible – there are compelling reasons it is at the heart of all our media plans.

• It is highly targeted and reaches exactly the people looking for our content. This allows us to serve them with highly targeted ads.
• It is transparent, you can see exact performance metrics.
• It is very easy to measure, especially if you use tools like Google Analytics.

The creative needs are of great value to many. It is easier to not worry about animations, video assets, or images. It is loved by clients for these same reasons.

Search is going to be the strongest performance channel, especially when you consider last-click attribution (ROAS) and return-on-adspend (ROAS).

What’s the next step after your master search?

You need to work with brands in the changing digital landscape.

• You should be aware that your search campaign may not reach its efficiency limit.
• Scale at the right levels
• Explore new ways to reach audiences.

Particularly younger audiences are searching differently. They are still using Google and Bing but they may also be looking at TikTok or YouTube depending on their search query.

You can forgo the funnel

It’s time for us to think beyond traditional strategies. We need to move beyond traditional marketing (purchase funnel) and towards signal planning. This plan is more about the needs of the consumer, not the marketer.

We can focus on a consumer map to identify our audiences at each step of their purchase journey based on the signals that they give us back.

This map shows your active consumers in the middle. That is where your first dollar should go.

The signals that you receive from channels diminish as you reach more active consumers and into general demand generation or in-category awareness,

You can still reach new people even though you will spend less in these areas. This framework is important because it maximizes inner circles and slow expansion, while still focusing on ROAS.

The next step in building on the consumer map is to create a custom measurement framework that identifies key goals, tentative channels and primary and secondary KPIs.

You might consider your brand’s demand for demand generation and decide that linear and TV, influencers and audio content partnerships are the most effective channels to support your media efforts.

You should track KPIs that go beyond reach and frequency. For example, brand search interest is simply search impressions for your branded keywords.

KPI can be valuable as it can increase your search efficiency and search spend. This will also affect organic traffic so that you can quickly attract people to your site, knowing they are engaged.

A measurement plan is necessary

This is where you can learn how to measure success. There are four options that you can choose from, each with different levels of complexity. These options can be tailored to fit your media budget.

• Data visualization and reporting.
• Platform-based attribution.
• Testing for inrementality.
• Media mix modeling.

Depending on their campaign needs, most clients will only need two or three of them.

As a starting point, make sure you have clear reporting automation. Ideally, this should be in a dashboard that allows you to view and analyze real-time performance.

You might consider platform-based attribution (i.e. the Campaign Manager 360 Model), which allows you to think more about consideration tactics.

You might also consider incrementality testing if your campaign is focused solely on awareness. If you launch a new channel that is more top-funnel than YouTube or CTV, it might be limited to a handful of key markets.

Comparing these successes to markets that weren’t yet live will provide you with scientifically supported data to prove what’s working. This can be used as a guideline to scale up and make it bigger.

Finally, multi-touch attribution or media mix modeling are options that can be considered if you’re sufficiently sophisticated.

You can test, test, and more test

The testing plan is likely to be the most important step of the process. This is crucial for ensuring that your measurement strategy is more rigorous. The ideal testing plan should include:

• Test details.
• Learning objectives
• Test length.
• Run dates.
• KPIs for primary and secondary.
• Channel.
• It was a good idea.
• Conflict.
• Results.

Platform selection

Now that you have your measurement plan in place, it is time to select the channels and platforms that will make the most sense for the campaign.

This is done by taking the stages in the consumer map, and aligning them with the samples signals that you observe from your consumer behavior.

You might continue with the demand generation example from earlier. This stage could be stacked with signals like nearby category purchases, wedding planning, and moving to a different climate.

There are many channels that can reach all stages of the consumer mapping. However, we know which channels are full-funnel. We prioritize them based on our budget and the best fit for us.

To prioritize action areas, you can also look at platforms that measure consumer behavior.

You can use common consumer behavior to guide channel selection.

You can get cues based on the mindset of the consumer to help you make creative decisions about which platform will have the best ROAS. This is another way to think of scaling beyond search.

Creativity is essential

Your campaign will fail regardless of how well-planned, targeted, and managed it is. If you don’t use the right quality and quantity (or leverage the same creative throughout the funnel), then even the best marketing strategy won’t work.

You can determine how complicated the creative process is to help you make the best decisions.

Although TikTok is a popular channel, almost every brand is interested. Many brands simply aren’t creatively ready to meet this production schedule and associated cost.

CTV is not as frequently refreshed as YouTube or Hulu. However, the creative must be very high quality.

Meta and programmatic channels, on the contrary, need fewer updates (monthly/bimonthly) but can be able to function with a slightly lower level of creative complexity. These depend on audience size and budget so there are tradeoffs.

It is also important to think about the creators that you could partner with, and how they can best be used for advertising. Influencer assets are highly effective and cost-effective, especially on channels like Meta or TikTok.

There are many ways to achieve a positive outcome. You can amplify directly from the handle of the influencer, in addition to using the creator for branded posts. This is a great CTA because you can change the caption to drive action.

There is also success with “mashups,” which are creative teams that take assets from influencers and turn them into something new. This can be a way for your audience to connect with you by creating a variety of experiences or other points of differentiation.

Points of cohesion

Scaling beyond search requires that the campaign be cohesive and integrated.

You must ensure that your entire marketing team is functioning and ready to succeed in implementing the media KPIs you have established with your client.

There are many variables to be aware of, and there is more to it. But these steps will allow you to scale beyond Google and Bing, while still keeping your business focused on ROAS.

Tik Tok, Facebook and Beyond: Driving ROAS beyond Google and Microsoft

Here is the entire video of my SMX Next presentation.

The post Facebook, and Beyond: Driving ROAS Outside of Google and Microsoft was first published on Search Engine land.