1. The chal­lenge: you want your brand to have more vis­i­bil­ity online.
If your brand isn’t show­ing up on the first page of search results when cus­tomers are search­ing for your brand, prod­uct or ser­vice, paid search can get your mes­sage onto the first search results page. In order to suc­ceed, you will need to:

• Select the right key­words to align with your cus­tomers’ searches
• Bud­get enough money to be com­pet­i­tive on those key­words
• Write com­pelling ad copy (offer some­thing of value, and be clear)
• Cre­ate land­ing pages that sup­port your ad and ful­fill the promise of the ad
• Be pre­pared to test the ele­ments of your cam­paign to get the best return on investment

2. The chal­lenge: you had good search engine vis­i­bil­ity but now it has slipped, and you want to recover it.
Per­haps you are in a sit­u­a­tion where you were used to see­ing your brand promi­nently ranked in the search engines for searches that were rel­e­vant to your indus­try, but now those rank­ings have slipped and you need to regain that promi­nence quickly. If your organic rank­ings have slipped, it could be due to a num­ber of fac­tors, includ­ing changes in the search engine’s algo­rithm, improve­ments your com­peti­tors have made to their own web­sites, a redesign of your web­site that didn’t take SEO into account prop­erly, or greater activ­ity point­ing to competitor’s web­sites (such as press releases, news cov­er­age, social media men­tions, con­tests, new con­tent, and videos). 

Improv­ing organic rank­ings may take some time, and if your online vis­i­bil­ity is vital to your busi­ness, then paid search is the fastest way to get back on the search results pages in a promi­nent posi­tion, while you do the things that are nec­es­sary to repair your organic ranking.

3. The chal­lenge: your rep­u­ta­tion has taken a hit.
It can hap­pen. You do an online search for your brand and some of the top results are from blog­gers or other sites high­light­ing a recent pub­lic rela­tions dis­as­ter, or even a sin­gle unhappy cus­tomer who is cre­at­ing a stir. If your com­pany is respond­ing to the chal­lenge in good faith and you want to get your mes­sage out there faster, a paid search cam­paign aimed at address­ing the issue head on can be a pos­i­tive way to get in front of the prob­lem and not only do some­thing about resolv­ing it, but be seen to be doing some­thing about it. 

4. The chal­lenge: intro­duce new prod­ucts to the mar­ket.
If your com­pany is intro­duc­ing new prod­ucts, or prod­uct lines not pre­vi­ously asso­ci­ated with your brand, a paid search cam­paign sup­port­ing the new prod­uct launch can be used to put your mes­sage in front of your cus­tomers, in addi­tion to the usual mar­ket­ing chan­nels you use to launch new prod­ucts. With some effort in your key­word selec­tion, you could also use paid search to put the new prod­uct mes­sage in front of poten­tial cus­tomers who would not have asso­ci­ated your brand with that product. 

5. The chal­lenge: expand your reach to new audi­ences.
Is there a demo­graphic or mar­ket that you are cur­rently not reach­ing? A well-designed paid search cam­paign can place your ideas in front of entirely new audi­ences, with the right com­bi­na­tion of key­words, mes­sag­ing, and land­ing pages.

6. The chal­lenge: pro­mote a con­test.
If you go to the effort to run a con­test, paid search is an obvi­ous medium to help you spread the word. 

7. The chal­lenge: you have cre­ated lots of new mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als, includ­ing videos, and now you need to let peo­ple know about it.
Maybe you have decided that con­tent mar­ket­ing is a good idea, so you have cre­ated videos and eBooks and webi­nars and other use­ful resources. In addi­tion to pro­mot­ing these new resources through email and social media, try a paid search cam­paign. It is easy to mea­sure the results, test your cam­paign, adjust it, and hone it to be a cost-effective plat­form for shar­ing your valu­able content.

8. The chal­lenge: pro­mote a one-off sale or event.
The spe­cial, lim­ited time offer; paid search cam­paigns can be fine-tuned to run exactly when and where you need them to be seen. Plan­ning a Black Fri­day sale? You bet­ter make sure your sales event will be eas­ily found online.

9. The chal­lenge: get more clicks from the search engines results page.
Our stud­ies have shown that yes, run­ning a paid ad in addi­tion to hav­ing a strong organic place­ment on a search results page, will likely can­ni­bal­ize some of your organic clicks. But we’ve also seen that typ­i­cally a promi­nent paid search result along with a strong organic search result will net the brand a greater num­ber of total clicks off that page. That’s more clicks for your brand, fewer left for the com­pe­ti­tion. Our stud­ies have also clearly shown that hav­ing both a promi­nent paid and organic list­ing together increases brand reten­tion and pur­chase intent. This is why you some­times see brands bid­ding on their own brand name and run­ning a paid search ad for searches on their brand name, even if they already dom­i­nate the page with organic listings. 

If you have good web­site ana­lyt­ics in place, you can see the results for your­self. The other advan­tage of course, is that by bid­ding on your own brand name, you pre­vent com­peti­tors from tak­ing up that space on the search results page and poten­tially tak­ing clicks away. It’s about pro­tect­ing your mar­ket share and reas­sur­ing cus­tomers that your brand is an authority.

10. The chal­lenge: launch a new com­pany or web­site.
If you are start­ing some­thing brand new, you likely won’t be show­ing up organ­i­cally on the top search results pages right away, but with paid search you can make your pres­ence known right away. As paid search dri­ves more traf­fic to your web­site, your com­pelling value propo­si­tion will win new busi­ness, bring­ing more traf­fic, and sup­port­ing your organic search ranking.

90 Days to Quick Wins
When it comes to paid search adver­tis­ing, we have a few dif­fer­ent ways we can help com­pa­nies get results. For the do-it-yourselfers, we encour­age you to down­load our free Mar­ket­ing Hero Quick­start eBook. It cov­ers the basics of paid search and con­ver­sion opti­miza­tion. If you need some help to get results mov­ing fast, ask us about our Quick­start Pro­gram. It’s a 90-day pro­gram that engages us to help you build a win­ning cam­paign, get it up and run­ning, mea­sure the results, and report on the progress. Of course, if you are look­ing for a ven­dor to really push the enve­lope of your paid search cam­paign, we work with some very large clients, man­ag­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in annual online spend­ing for them. For a free con­sul­ta­tion, email us at -email- or phone 1–800-277‑9997. 


Biography / Resume : Karl joined Mediative’s service delivery team in 2008. A year later, he moved to the company’s research department where he conducted online surveys, eye-tracking studies, one-on-one interviews and usability testing. Most recently, he transitioned to the marketing department. Before Mediative, Karl worked in sales and marketing. In 1997, he caught the digital bug and became the original “webmaster” for Roland Canada Music. Around the same time, he began teaching the relatively new topic of Internet marketing to college and university students. Karl’s insatiable curiosity and drive to get to the core and substance of every situation has served him well in his various roles at Mediative.