Breaking Silos To Break Bank: Shattering The Divide Between Search And Social

At Mozcon 2024 I shared this deck on bridging the divide between search and social. We began by acknowledging that search-first marketers are used to different rules of engagement than social marketers. We also looked at how both channels treat creative, audiences, bidding/budgeting, and AI. We finished by going through how they can win together including UTM audits, harvesting comments from both to inform creative, and allowing for non-login forums to be part of your marketing strategy.

I themed this deck using Baldur's Gate 3 characters: Gale as Search and Astarion as Social

1. Breaking Silos To Make Bank: Shattering The Divide Between Search And Social Navah Hopkins - Optmyzr

2. How Many Of You Consider Yourselves Search Marketers?

3. What About Social ?

4. SGE, Consent Mode, Reddit…

5. Both Search And Social Have the Potential For Good… Search Social

6. …and Evil

7. Many Who Start With One Struggle To Adopt The Rules Of Engagement For The Other = = Ad set level control Micro conversions Very visual Budget for testing Campaign level control Profit oriented conversions Text heavy Budget must yield return Search Social

8. Demand Gen + Performance Max Are Blurring The Lines

9. You Don’t Need To Be Both, But You Do Need To Understand Both

10. That’s What We’re Going To Invest Some Time On Today When To Use Each Rules Of Engagement Winning Together

11. P.S. I’m A Bit Of A Gale, So Check The Appendix For All The Content I Wanted To Share With You That Couldn’t Fit In 15 Minutes

12. When To Use Each

13. Search & Social Both Belong … They Also Each Have Bias Baggage

14. Search Is More Than “Bottom Of Funnel”

15. 426.66% All Campaigns 424.57% One Asset Group 461.64% Multiple Asset Groups 7100 ad accounts PMax Enables Us To Speak To Customers At All Levels

16. Just Like Social Isn’t Just For Awareness/Brand Lift

17. Both Can Be B2C AND B2B Heroes

18. Do You Need It Fast ? Social Likely Is Better? Average Ad Approval Time: Facebook : a few hours Google : 1-2 days Microsoft : 1-2 days LinkedIn : 1 day TikTok (rip in the US): a few hours Instagram : a few hours

19. Need To “Trust” Your Conversions? Search Can Handle Smaller Data

20. Need The Human Connection? Social Is Your Friend

21. Price Tone P.S. Comments & Threads Are Paid & Organic Gold!

22. Learning How People Think? Search Is The Hero!

23. There’s Also The Pragmatic Question : Can You Afford Search ?

24. Reddit, Quora, and Other Non-Login Forums Are Paths To Search If You Can’t Afford Paid P.S. Reddit Was The First Result After One Scroll

25. Rules Of Engagement

26. Search Budget Shifts Can Trigger Learning Periods

27. This Is Tied To Conversions

28. Social Lets You Build In Budget Spikes

29. Social Needs A LOT Of “Conversions”

30. Let’s Address The Tadpole In The Room: We Don’t Have As Much Transparency Anymore

31. How Do We Track Without Clids ? No More Ad Click Driven Audiences Yes To First Party Data & Closed Systems

32. Offline Conversions Are A Must!

33. UTM Parameters Help Keep Analytics Straight

34. Both Search + Social Ask Us To Trust AI Levers we used to use Ad Platforms Practitioners

35. Creative Is Easier To Say Yes To Than Structure

36. Campaign Objectives Are Either Fluff Or Foundational

37. Meta Ads Is Done With The Old Campaign Objectives

38. Save For Engagement/Local, The Objectives Are Indistinguishable From Each Other

39. Search Structures Strategy Campaigns Ad Groups Creative Market Specific One major location per campaign Represent products/services (limit no more than 5-10 ad groups per campaign ) Honors how a location thinks /cost of living vs margins Persona Specific One major audience per campaign. Will still need to divide locations for scheduling . Ad groups represent creative ways to speak to the persona Lots of human driven tests and hyper oriented around customer feedback . AI Heavy PMax heavy with some broad match campaigns *Asset Groups/Ad Groups oriented around business objectives Lots of different assets approved by stakeholders for ad network to work with

40. Social Structures Strategy Campaigns Ad Sets Creative Full Human Control Oriented around the objective and budgets are set according to the value of that objective Audiences represent what the advertiser thinks is their ideal user filtered through ad network policies Human created assets based on the type of campaign/ campaign group they chose Hybrid While human control is at the core, there are some AI components (like campaign budgets) Lean heavily into audience expansion and placement expansions Allows for some AI creative but the majority is human driven. AI Heavy Full delegation of A/B testing and budget management to ad platform Ad sets represent full testing and targeting governed by the ad network Lots of different assets approved by stakeholders for ad network to work with

41. Budgeting/Bidding Mechanics Are Similar Yet Different Search Social

42. Daily Budgets Aren’t Always Daily Budgets Social can exceed daily budget by 25% Search can exceed by double

43. Most Are Using Smart Bidding

44. 1334 accounts with spend and conversion data in Q1 2023

45. Audience Building: Search + Social Embrace Lookalikes

46. However, The Seed Thresholds Are Vastly Different 1000 = Search 100 = Social

47. Social Is Becoming A Game Of Targets Tell me what you desire , it will be yours…. But be specific or I’ll twist your budget and turn it to nothing!

48. While Search Remains Focused On Exclusions I don’t feel comfortable showing you everything right now… Tell me what makes you uncomfortable , I’ll accommodate!

49. Get Audiences To Speak To Each Other By Using Cross-Network Tracking Pixels!

50. Winning Together

51. Tactic #1: Harness Comments For Content (Paid + Organic)

52. Tactic #2: Let Audiences Empower Each Other

53. Tactic #3: Respond To Social Conversations That Don’t Require A Login

54. Tactic #4: Audit Your UTMs AND Reports For Hidden Attribution Help!

55. Tactic #5: Know When/Where Your Budget Can Thrive

56. Thank You! Questions? Navah Hopkins [email protected] @navahf

57. Appendix

58. Demand Gen Look Alike Audiences

59. Social Is Focused On Engagement + Events

60. Know Who Your People Are + What They Want ? Social Rules! 100~

61. 1000~ Search Helps You Discover Your People Through Baked In Audiences!

62. Google Audiences: PMax Signals 1000~

63. Consent Includes Confirming Permission For Marketing Audiences

64. Microsoft Audiences 1000~

65. Google Ads Content Suitability