How much should you invest in paid social vs paid search?

There's no one-size-fits-all solution, but here are some key considerations I take into account:

Awareness vs Demand Capture

Paid social (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc.) is ideal for building awareness with cold audiences.

You can get your brand in front of the right prospects cost-effectively.

Paid search (Google Ads), on the other hand, lets you capture existing demand from people actively searching for your product or service.

If you're an innovator in a well known category, paid search might be for you. If you have a product that takes some explanation for people to see how they would use it, you're better off starting on social.

2. Funnel Stage

If you're focusing on the top of the funnel to drive brand awareness, lean more heavily on paid social.

But if your goal is generating immediate leads and conversions, allocate more budget to paid search.

This is NOT a hard and fast rule. But usually, search traffic is higher intent. Think about the types of ads you get on these two platforms:

On social, you probably get webinars, content offers, and advertorial messaging.

On search, you get much more "direct" messaging. Search users are usually closer to buying, but not always.

3. Intent Signals

Paid search allows you to target people exhibiting strong commercial intent through their searches.

But social platforms are getting better at intent targeting too with improvements to their advertising algorithms.

These generalizations don't fit into every product or sales cycle.

4. Customer Journey

Map out your typical customer's journey and the touchpoints where paid media can influence them.

This should guide how much budget goes into each channel accordingly.

5. Expected Return

At the end of the day, stakeholders will want to allocate budget to the channels generating the highest ROI.

The problem is that there are always hidden costs and hidden benefits to various platforms.

Whoever is running the ads should be responsible for reporting, but also making judgement calls about the incrementality of a given platform.

This takes continuous testing, measurement and optimization.

Keep in mind, your product and service has a unique, "correct" allocation. Don't put too much pressure on yourself to find it, just try to make decisions that bring you closer to it when you can.

Work closely with your paid media team to find the budget allocation and reporting implementation that works for your business.

Want some pointers? Email me at noah.stambovsky@gmail.com for a free platform audit.