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Which is Better for Your Business: Paid Search or Paid Social?

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Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is hands down one of the best ways to reach potential customers, build brand awareness and get them to buy your products or services. Over the years, platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads just keep improving their targeting, algorithms and everything else you need to succeed at PPC.

That being said, even mastering one PPC platform can be a challenge, and with the wide variety of options and opportunities available to you, it’s often hard to figure out where to focus your time, energy and budget.

This is especially true when you don’t have a dedicated marketing team to manage everything for you. Running a business is hard enough on it’s own without trying to juggle the demands of multiple PPC campaigns on multiple platforms.

So, if you can only pick one PPC advertising channel to focus on, which one should it be? Paid search? Or paid social?

While these aren’t your only options, they’re the two biggest ones in front of most businesses and understanding the differences between the two will help you identify the right marketing channel for your business. Once you know which channel you should be using, all you have to do is figure out which specific platform will be best for getting in front of your target audience.

With all of that in mind, let’s take a look at paid search, paid social and what makes them better suited to different business goals and needs.

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Paid Search vs Paid Social

Before we can really talk about whether paid search or paid social is a better PPC channel for your business, we need to take a step back and talk about how each of these channels work. Both of these marketing channels target people in fundamentally different ways and understanding those difference is the key to figuring out which channel is right for you.

Paid Search

Paid search is a responsive type of advertising. A user types in a search query, the platform decides that your ad is relevant to that query and your ad shows up. Google Ads, Bing Ads, Yahoo and even Pinterest’s search ads all use this approach to deliver targeted, highly relevant ad content to users who are actively searching for that sort of content.

As a quick example, let’s imagine that you run a flower shop and you want to attract more wedding bouquet customers. If your campaigns are set up correctly, your ads should show up when someone searches on Google for “flowers for wedding”. Since your ad should be a good match for their needs, there’s a good chance that they’ll click your ad and hopefully make a purchase.

wedding bouquets

The key to paid search is the fact that it’s intent-based marketing. It’s great when you’re trying to market a product or service that people are actively searching for online. By the time they type in that search query, they’re already fairly low in the sales funnel, so all you have to do is convince them to buy from you…instead of the competition.

Paid Social

Paid social, on the other hand, is an intrusive type of advertising. Someone is checking out their social media feed, the platform determines that they meet your targeting criteria and shows your ad. Maybe they’re in the market for what you’re selling, maybe they’re not, but either way, they see your ad.

When it comes to paid social, most people immediately think of Facebook Ads, but there are a lot of paid social platforms out there (Instagram Ads, YouTube Ads, Twitter Ads, Reddit Ads, etc), and they all work in the same basic way.

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Now, the fact that paid social advertising is intrusive doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. Marketers have successfully used intrusive advertising for decades with things like billboards, radio ads or television commercials. Paid social is a lot like these tried-and-true marketing channels—with two caveats: targeting and tracking.

With a television commercial, you have only the loosest guesses as to who is seeing your ads or whether they are working. With paid social, however, you can get incredibly specific with who you target and then track how different audiences respond to your ads.

As a marketing channel, paid social ads are great for getting in front of audiences that might not otherwise find you online. Not everyone searches on Google for the solution to their problem—heck, your potential customers may not even be aware that they want or need your product!

For example, a friend of mine recently bought eucalyptus for her house because of an ad like this:

eucalyptus farmsPrior to seeing these ads, she didn’t even know that she could buy fresh eucalyptus. It wasn’t on her radar until she saw the Facebook ad. But, once she discovered that this was something she could buy, she realized that it was something that she wanted to buy.

Whether you’re trying to build awareness for a product, a service or just your business in general, paid social is a great way to get onto your target audience’s radar—especially when you’re trying to sell something that most people might not actively seek out otherwise.

Which Channel is Right for You?

So, which is better for your business? Paid search? Or paid social? To be honest, they can both provide a lot of value to most businesses, but if funds and/or time are tight and you have to pick one, which channel should you prioritize?

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The answer to that question is highly business-dependent. For certain goals and priorities, paid search is ideal. For others, paid social is the obvious choice. To help you figure out which channel is best for your business, let’s take a look at how paid social and paid search shake out in the following key areas: speed of results, cost and brand building.

Best for Speedy Results: Search

If you need sales now and sell something that meets a need are aware of and actively seek solutions for, paid search should be your go-to marketing channel.

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Because paid search targets the bottom-of-the-funnel, most people who click on your paid search ads are well on their way to making a purchase. If they don’t buy from you, there’s a good chance that they’ll buy from the competition.

So, when you invest into paid search, the results are usually fairly quick. For example, when someone searches for an emergency plumber, it’s not a decision they’re going to sit and stew over. They need help now!

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emergency plumberTo make things even better, you can make your paid search ads very direct. Your audience is looking to buy, and they want you to help them choose the right solution to their problem by making as compelling of a case for your business as possible.

With paid social, however, things are a bit more tricky. You’re interrupting your audience and hoping that they’ll be interested enough to buy, but to be honest, most of the people who see your ads will need some time to warm up to your product, service or company before they make a purchase. My friend who bought the eucalyptus saw those ads quite a few times before she finally decided to buy.

Of course, if you’re selling an impulse buy or have a particularly affordable offer, paid social can produce speedy results, but that’s generally the exception, not the rule.

Best for Cost: Varies…

“Which is cheaper, Facebook Ads or Google Ads?” is a question I get quite a lot. And it makes sense. You want to get the best bang for your buck, so it’s natural to want to know which ad platform will produce the cheapest results.

The only problem is, there’s no easy answer to this question.

If all you care about is your cost-per-click, paid social is definitely “cheaper” than paid search. After all, paid search clicks are more targeted, lower in the funnel and more likely to “buy now”, so it makes sense that they would be more competitive and cost more.

However, even with paid search, cost-per-click has a huge range of variability. On Google Ads, you might pay $3.00 per click for a keyword like “ice cream shop”. For a keyword like “personal injury attorney”, however, you could be paying $80 per click.

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In contrast, the average CPC for Facebook Ads is about $1.00. For a particularly competitive audience, you might pay as much as $3.00 a click. On the surface, that seems like a much cheaper way to go, but looks can be deceiving.

Remember, you don’t make money off of clicks. You make it off of sales.

Sure, you might only pay $1 a click on Facebook Ads, but if only 1-in-300 clicks produces a paying customer, you’re paying $300 per sale. A click on Google Ads might cost you $30, but because those clicks are higher-intent, it might only take 10 clicks to make a sale, so you’re still paying $300 per sale.

This is why it’s so hard to predict whether paid social or paid search will generate a better return-on-ad-spend. Both can be extremely profitable or prohibitively expense—or anything in between—so the differences in CPC shouldn’t be your primary criterion for choosing one channel over the other.

Best for Building Your Brand: Social

Getting quick results is great. Making a great return-on-investment is vital. But if you really want to grow your business, you need to do more than just optimize for the fastest, most profitable results.

If you want your business to grow, you need to build your brand.

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When it comes to building a brand, paid search really isn’t all that useful. Most people don’t type in a search query online because they’re looking for a brand to fall in love with. Their goal is to solve a problem, not to build a relationship.

Paid social, on the other hand, really shines in this area. I mean, the whole point of social media is to build relationships. When people hop onto Facebook or Instagram, they’re not thinking about buying a new blender, they’re looking for connection: connection with people, connection with influencers…and even connection with brands.

So, if you want to build awareness and get people to buy into your company’s vision and brand story, there’s no better place to do it than social media.

osso good bone brothNeed to generate a buzz about your new product? Paid social is the way to go. Want to be the first company a potential client thinks of when they need help? Get in front of them with paid social. Looking for ways to work people through your marketing funnel? Paid social just might be your best bet.

With paid social, you can get people ready to buy, and more specifically…ready to buy from you. If people know your business and believe in what you do and sell, they won’t need to hop on Google and search around for a solution—they’ve already got you.

Best for You?

So, is paid search or paid social better for your business? Hopefully, at this point, you should have a good sense for the differences between the two channels and where their strengths and weaknesses lie.

To be honest, the right primary PPC channel for your business will depend on what you’re selling, how your business works, who you’re targeting and what you’re trying to accomplish. As a general rule, though, paid search is better for quick sales and paid social is better for long-term branding—although you can do both with either channel.

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The best play, of course, is to integrate the two. For example, if you need sales now, you can set up a solid paid search strategy to get people onto your website. Then, for the people who don’t buy right away, you can use social media advertising to retarget them and bring them back. Simultaneously, you can start to build out brand awareness campaigns on social media that fill your marketing funnel for the future, ensuring that your business will grow and thrive over time.

In the end, the best PPC approach is the one that delivers the results your business needs…now, tomorrow, and for years to come.


Author: Jake Baadsgaard

Follow @disruptiveads

Jacob Baadsgaard is the CEO of Disruptive Advertising. He is a passionate digital marketer and entrepreneur with 7 years of enterprise digital marketing experience. He personally managed over 40 million dollars in annual marketing budget and consulted many of the Inc. 100 companies while at Adobe, including groups like: GE,… View full profile ›


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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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