In a talk earlier this year at Digital Summit Atlanta, Jason Dailey, Agency Partner Manager at Facebook highlighted that 25% of all time people spend online on a mobile device is on Facebook, Instagram or Facebook Messenger. In addition, 58% of total search queries are conducted on a mobile device, revealing that when people are on their smartphones, most of the time they’re either utilizing a search engine or hanging out on social media. As more people access the internet from their smartphones, it’s important for marketers to ensure that they are fully optimizing campaigns to reach their audience where they spend time. What’s the best way to do that? Sync your search engine marketing and social media efforts to create killer, research-backed campaigns.
It’s all about personas.
Building audience personas provides a framework through which to create your marketing strategy. Pulling from the knowledge and tools available to both your search engine marketing and social media teams will allow for data-driven personas that help you develop cohesive campaigns to drive conversions. Utilizing Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is one of the most straightforward ways to dip your toe in the world of SEM. Through Google’s Ads platform, you’re able to do extensive keyword research and target your ads accordingly while still staying in your budget. Analyzing ad performance, testing your creative, targeting, and using tools like Google Trends to decide on keywords for which you’re bidding is crucial to unveiling audience insights and achieving the most sought-after goal: a top ranking spot on Google.
Social media analytics tools found right in Facebook Business Manager offer deep insights that provide data that contribute to accurate audience personas. Use Facebook Audience Insights to determine the demographics and interests of your followers, upload your customer email list to build a lookalike audience for boosted content or ad targeting, and use UTMs to track which content is driving the most traffic to your website. Once you’ve collected data on what your audience is searching for and where those people hang out on social media, you’re equipped with the information needed to build personas that inform your content and ad strategies.
Measure your results.
Proving the ROI of your efforts should be a top priority as a marketer, and to do so, you’ll need an attribution strategy. As you sync your SEM and social media strategies to incorporate paid search and social campaigns, you’ll want to make sure you are setting metrics that define success and tracking the results in Google Analytics. Use mobile-optimized landing pages where appropriate to track conversions and site engagement. If your main call to action on Ads and social ads is to call your business, you may also want to use call tracking to tighten attribution and ensure you know which efforts are driving the best results.
Get on the same page.
The only way to achieve this dream team meshing of marketing tactics to ensure you have killer content, on-point targeting and an increasing number of conversions, is to make sure that your SEM and social media managers stay in sync. Marketing departments are often siloed, especially when it comes to paid versus organic efforts. Focus on fostering a collaborative environment in which keyword information and new audience insights are shared freely amongst your team. Encourage your SEM manager to weigh in on paid social campaigns and targeting for boosted content that is handled by your social media team. By breaking down communication barriers, your marketing department will be empowered to create their most informed, data-backed work that yields you bottom-line results.
Want to learn more about how call tracking and analytics can impact your search engine and social media marketing? Schedule a demo today!
