Do you wish to know my least favorite phrase in all {of professional} life?
“Be strategic, not tactical.”
I heard this quite a bit in the course of the early levels of my profession. On the face of it, it looks as if a sufficiently easy and well-meaning piece of recommendation, from one senior worker to a different, less-senior colleague. However coming away from these conversations, I realised they all the time left me wanting a little bit extra.
Particularly, I’d discover myself asking:
- What’s the distinction between technique and techniques?
- Don’t we wish to be each strategic and tactical?
- Hold on a minute… do you even know the distinction between the 2?
In lots of instances, I believe the (sincere) reply to that final query would have been a sheepish “no”.
And that’s as a result of the excellence between technique isn’t a straightforward idea to know – and we shouldn’t fake that it’s.
This fuzziness turns into much more pronounced when utilized to my self-discipline – the realm of paid search. The time period paid search technique will get thrown round liberally, however if you happen to have been to ask ten PPC professionals what it means, you’d get ten totally different solutions. (Belief me on this one; I’ve tried.)
So what I’ve been pondering is: does paid search technique even exist? And if it does, what is It?
Let’s discover.
Does Paid Search Technique Exist? The Case In opposition to
Some entrepreneurs—maybe the bulk—may argue that paid search technique is a contradiction in phrases.
Take Mark Ritson, an undisputed heavyweight within the advertising and marketing world. He teaches a “classical” mannequin of promoting technique, through which technique is the reply to a few foundational questions:
- Who’re we focusing on? Notice that this isn’t “which audiences or key phrases are we focusing on in our media?”, however fairly is the larger query of “which prospects is our enterprise aiming to serve?”
- How are we positioned? What are the associations and attributes that we wish to come to thoughts in our goal buyer, at any time when they consider our model?
- What are our aims? By positioning on this particular option to this particular goal phase, what will we wish to obtain? Which KPIs will we wish to shift, by how a lot, and in what timeframe?
In Mark’s world, the sum complete of technique is the reply to those three questions alone. It’s nothing extra, and nothing much less.
Based on this mannequin, as soon as these strategic questions have been answered, we’d then be able to maneuver on to techniques, that are the levers we will pull to execute that technique out there. Ways span the product that we develop, the worth we cost for it, the place we select to promote it, and the promoting and media that we deploy to advertise.
However paid search is only one of many channels throughout the media ecosystem, so by definition it’s a tactic solely – and any real strategic thought will need to have already been wrapped up by the point we get on to speaking about media channels. By this logic, it follows not solely that “paid search technique” can’t exist, however nor might different strategic sub-variants resembling “artistic technique”, or “search engine optimisation technique”, or “content material technique”. Fairly convincing, if you happen to ask me.
Does Paid Search Technique Exist? The Case For
That’s not the top of the talk although – there are different views we will take into account. One other necessary voice within the dialog comes from Roger Martin, one of the crucial profitable & influential thinkers on the earth of company technique.
Martin defines technique as:
“A set of interconnected choices that hypothesize the way you’re going to win.”
That’s it. No three-question framework. No predefined path from technique to techniques. Simply an summary set of selections that, taken collectively, kind a principle for achievement.
This definition of technique is a much wider one – and it’s that breadth that provides us some wiggle room to carve out a possible definition for “paid search technique”.
So what might Paid Search Technique be?
If we settle for Roger Martin’s definition, then we will transfer on to asking: what really are the selections to be made within the paid search self-discipline, which we might class as strategic?
There are some candidates we will immediately rule out. As an example: “Our technique is to consistently optimise our advert copy, and to check the most recent options and betas”. While we technically do need to resolve to do these items, it’s so trivially easy that we ought to be doing them, that we will’t take into account it to be a strategic query.
In spite of everything, technique solely hypothesizes how we’re going to win; it may possibly’t make any ensures, or be confirmed upfront. A key aspect of any strategic choice is that it ought to be a painful one to make; it should contain selective alternative about which path we’ll comply with, on the expense of all different choices. Should you ask me, selecting to optimise your advert copy shouldn’t really feel notably painful.
I make the case that there are two choices in paid search that we will feasibly classify as being strategic.
1. KPI Setting: Selecting What to Optimize For
This may really feel easy, but it surely isn’t. There are many metrics {that a} enterprise may genuinely care about, however in paid search, you may solely really optimise round one in all them.
Think about, as an illustration, that you simply’re an omnichannel retailer. You may say:
- “We care about profitability at the beginning. Of all our distribution channels, promoting through our web site is most worthwhile, so we should always run campaigns that drive site visitors on-line – and while we’re at it, we’ll feed profitability knowledge into our bid methods to optimise round.”
- Or, you may say: “We care most about our general market share. We due to this fact have to assist each in-store and on-line journeys, so ought to run a mixture of campaigns optimising to every of those two outcomes.”
- Or, you may say: “We have to enhance our lifetime worth and repeat-purchase charges. App patrons have the best LTV, so we should always arrange options resembling web-to-app-connect, and syphon off a few of our funds for app set up campaigns.”
Every of those KPI selections supplies us with very clear steering as to how we should always arrange our campaigns to ship upon these KPIs. However crucially, they’re mutually unique choices—you may’t do all three directly.
Selecting which one issues most to you will not be tactical; it’s a strategic choice about what success appears like for you. And as soon as made, this alternative informs each downstream choice in marketing campaign administration.
2. Finances Setting: Navigating the Diminishing Returns Curve
When you’ve chosen your KPI, a query that ought to all the time comply with intently is how a lot we should always spend in service of that KPI.
You can’t – I repeat, can’t – make an knowledgeable alternative on this query with out serious about how the diminishing returns curve appears in your account. While the precise parameters of the curve will differ for every account, the final form appears the identical for each single advertiser – one thing like this:
As spend will increase, so does income – but it surely does so at a diminishing fee. Due to this phenomenon, you all the time finally attain a stage past which spending extra leads to a discount in profitability for the channel.
I’d argue that the choice of “the place on the curve ought to we play” is probably the most criminally-overlooked choice amongst paid search entrepreneurs.
Many advertisers I communicate to will start by saying issues like “we spend to interrupt even as a result of we wish to maximise development” – however whenever you probe slightly deeper, it turns into much less clear whether or not they’ve correctly thought of the total spectrum of income & revenue choices obtainable to them. Most of the time, advertisers considerably stumble into this choice on auto-pilot.
To be clear, this isn’t a straightforward choice to make: it includes intentional alternative, to not point out getting access to some comparatively sturdy forecasting capabilities. However it’s a call that we have to be obsessing over, and in my thoughts, it completely passes the Roger Martin litmus take a look at of “does this rely as technique”.
Closing Ideas
Should you stroll away from this weblog and suppose, “Truly, I’m in Ritson’s camp – paid search technique doesn’t exist”, then that’s okay. As somebody who’s spent my complete profession working within the channel, I’d fairly prefer to suppose my job supplies me the platform to have interaction in strategic thought each from time to time – but when it doesn’t, then it gained’t be the top of the world.
But when like me you suppose there’s a robust case that the PPC supervisor can partake in additional necessary strategic choices, then I’m in your aspect – it’s simply that paid search technique doesn’t appear to be what most weblog posts would have you ever consider.
It’s not checklists. It’s not hacks. It’s not finest practices. It’s about deciding what is definitely beneficial for your enterprise, and making commercially-informed trade-offs between income and revenue. And I say we stand to realize an terrible lot by spending extra of our time serious about these two issues.
Andy Goodwin is Head of Paid Search at Brainlabs. This text relies on a chat he gave at Hero Conf UK in April 2025.
