Jun '23 in Insights & Resources
Full-Funnel Isn't Always The Best Focus
I'm a huge proponent of a "full-funnel" marketing strategy that targets people who aren't ready to buy yet so they're familiar with you when they're ready to buy and more likely to trust you.
However...
You have to design a Google Ads strategy that fits the budget and maturity of the company you're advertising, and that takes into account the sophistication of the market you're targeting.
Here's what I mean:
1. Budget
This is pretty straightforward. The lower the budget, the more you should focus on what is converting.
That means fewer campaigns, fewer ad groups, smaller geo-targets, and ESPECIALLY fewer keywords.
You also shouldn't waste time or money on keywords or their search terms if they don't have clear buying intent or are not converting (sometimes general searches are the only option, but some convert and others don't).
If you're converting at or below your target CPA and get approved for more budget, double down on what's working until you are no longer limited by budget on your non-branded search campaign.
Only then should you look into expanding keyword coverage or any other aspect of the account.
2. Maturity Of The Company
Not every company is in a great position to capitalize on their Google Ads account.
If a client wants more calls but doesn't answer the phone, has a bad answering service, or is slow to follow up, they'll get mad when spending money on ads doesn't help them grow.
If a client has a service-based business or a product funnel and can't fulfill their offer at scale, they're not ready for ads (or to spend more on ads).
A company grows in maturity when it grows its customer base, hires, trains, develops processes, refines those processes, understands its customers, improves its messaging, improves its offer to align with its target market's primary pain, etc.
To simplify, a company is mature enough to scale an ad account when it understands its ideal customer and can consistently serve them well.
Immature companies should focus on internal stability over acquisition.
3. Sophistication Of The Market
This is a concept talked about in Breakthrough Advertising (Eugene Schwartz). It refers to the market's awareness of the problem they have (the one you solve, they have lots of problems 馃槤) and the solutions available to them.
It also incorporates the market's familiarity with solution providers and the saturation of ad space, which I've just decided to call "ad density" because it sounds good (that's how marketing terms are coined).
The more a market is shown ads for a product or service in association with their problem(s), the less you need to educate them about the problem and solution and the more you need to explain why and how your solution is different and/or better than the other options.
The more sophisticated the market, the easier it is to slap together a minimal ad account with "bottom-of-funnel" keywords that start pulling in conversions quickly.
The less sophisticated the market (or the newer the solution), the more you have to focus on education about the problem and solution, which takes more money and more non-search campaigns (because they're not searching).
Pin down these 3 points and you'll have a good idea of where and how to start with a new ad account or one you've just inherited from another agency.
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Full-Funnel Isn't Always The Best Focus
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