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There’s been much debate around Googles latest PPC update and what this means for Brands and their advertising budgets. With the dust settling a little now, its clear to see Googles intention is to align the desktop experience closer to that of mobile, given the sharp increase in mobile users over the last 2 years.
Now that PPC ads take prime real estate for most searches, dominating up to 4 adverts and pushing organic results further down the page (and fold), where should brands be focusing their budgets and attention?
Well, Organic is not dead (as some may summise). This is just another development in the ever changing world of search. Google understands that users researching and purchasing processes are no longer straight forward, and in following with the “micro moments” theme, Google aims to continue to show the most relevant and useful set of paid and organic results for search queries.
With this in mind, its safe to say that any “buying” search phrases entered in the search box will most likely result in 4 paid search ads, offering users the ability to click through to retailers and complete a purchase.
However, given that users have information available 24/7 at any location (device and connection permitting), research based searches that start with “how”, “where” and “what” indicate that users are looking to learn and therefore content rich pages/website results will be returned by Google, to offer an appropriate user experience.
Following this logic, it would not make sense to offer this content through Paid search results, as this would increase campaign CPAs and also confuse users. Therfore, organic search results would better serve this type of content needed during the earlier phases of research, with paid search coming into use at the point of purchase, when users know the product or service they wish to buy.
Brands therefore need to utilise paid and organic in harmony with one another, placing ultimate importance on target customers and their behaviour patterns, and segmenting user journeys into the various (fragmented) stages that occur, mapping them to either Paid or Organic channels for exposure.
