Imagine a world where you could appear at the top of the SERP as soon as someone has an issue your product or service can solve.
Historically PPC has been pitched to businesses as a lower funnel and solely a conversion-driving strategy. It still is. It’s great at doing that, but can PPC successfully drive awareness? The answer, in many cases, is that it can…
What is awareness?
At this stage in the purchase process (AKA the funnel), users may not be looking for a specific product or service — but a solution. Remember: awareness doesn’t need to create active engagement with your brand. Awareness is as simple as a person having the knowledge that your product or service exists.
Research by NP Digital showed that in 2020, 98% of people used search engines to find the answers to their questions online. While that number is dropping as search habits and online behaviors evolve over time – and with the advent of AI chatbots and people using platforms such as TikTok as search engines – 61% of people in 2024 still use search engines to find answers to their questions.
The search term is “dog eats grass and vomits” and the two headlines of the highlighted ad say “Dog eats grass and vomits? This is how you can help the dog.”. This is a great example of getting TOF search right: presenting a solution to a potential customer’s issue in the form of your product or service.
What makes this ad especially effective, is that it addresses the user’s search query in the first headline and gives them a solution in the second line . Within just a single line of text and just a few seconds of searching, the user has found one potential solution to their problem. The description line says “Can eating grass be dangerous for dogs? Avoid these mistakes when feeding” and the sitelinks give options for a dog symptom checker and probiotics to support the dog. This gives the user the knowledge that this brand is committed to the health of dogs, that they have a solution or solutions to the user’s search query, and demonstrates expertise on the topic.
Our user had a problem — their dog was sick . They turned to Google simply for advice. There was a solution for it , and after perhaps clicking the ad, reading product reviews, and learning more about the brand, a conversion may have taken place too: whether that’s a newsletter subscription, product page view, checkout start, or even a sale. The user could’ve seen this and finished their Google search entirely or clicked on another result. In both scenarios — what was achieved? Awareness.
Awareness can also be generated when hijacking competitor brand terms! While you could argue that the act of searching for brand terms forms part of the consideration stage of the funnel, the act of seeing an ad for an alternate brand — whether you’re about to purchase from another brand or not — is still awareness.
User behavior on search is not linear or straightforward. If you’re actively looking for project management software, for example, you could be in multiple stages of the funnel at any one time. Just because you’ve signed up for a newsletter or a free trial with Monday.com, it doesn’t mean you’re in the conversion stage of the funnel for all project management tools. Instead of thinking of the funnel as a single journey per product or service, begin to consider that multiple funnel journeys could be occurring simultaneously.
Going back to the ads themselves, you can choose to be cheeky with your copy, to highlight your own USPS, or stack yourselves up against another brand by being cheaper/faster/stronger in your ad copy.
Why hasn’t search worked to drive awareness before?
In order to move forward with this tactic, let’s take a step back. What I’m saying so far seems obvious — so why hasn’t everyone already been using PPC to generate awareness?
In my experience, search seems to not work for upper-funnel objectives for the following reasons:
- PPC is inherently a conversion-oriented process, and it’s argued consumers already know what they want by the time they’re using a search engine , whether that’s product searches, service searches, or brand searches . That assumption says they’re naturally lower down the funnel — with awareness having been generated outside of search
- There’s no outbound reach or discovery process: we have to wait for someone to start Googling the perfect search term to match our keywords
- As PPC experts, we’re used to generating results, ROI, and ROAS via search ads — this makes TOF (top of funnel) or MOF (middle of funnel) activity appear expensive and less efficient by comparison
- It’s not as cost-effective as social media or video advertising (generally speaking), when it comes to generating reach
- Last-click attribution and weak full-funnel reporting: search may contribute to a customer journey but may not get the ‘credit’ via older methods of attribution.
This has led to an industry-wide understanding of PPC as an exclusively lower-funnel activity, and instead relying on video and social media channels to drive awareness. Let’s review how social media and video ads do a good job of generating awareness. - They have a wealth of targeting options to show your ads only to relevant demographics and audiences
- They use hashtags and topics to help the right audience discover your ads and content
- Product & lifestyle imagery means that users can see the product or service in action
- User-generated content and influencer marketing tactics create social proof
- They use a wide range of multimedia
- There is more space to go into detail about the features and benefits of the product or service
- Users can usually engage with the content and share it.
None of this is said with the aim of encouraging you to dispense with social media or other TOF efforts. As part of diversifying your TOF strategy, PPC is an oft-overlooked opportunity. This goal is to empower you to use PPC tactics to their fullest potential for the best possible end results.
The ideal TOF strategy for search ads
For a TOF strategy, we need keywords. Specifically generic ones. Generic doesn’t necessarily mean vague, broad, a lack of intent, or long tail. In the case of PPC, it simply means not branded.
At this stage of the funnel — we know customers are asking questions or are looking for answers to an issue they’re experiencing.
How do we find the right questions to address with our ads?
To find the questions to address with your ads, consider what problem/solution your product or service solves. If you’re stuck for inspiration, there are some tools to help.
With keyword planner and autocomplete you can use the formula [product/service/brand name] followed by ‘how’/’what’/’when’ etc. and Google will show you via autocomplete some of the questions that are commonly asked on that topic, and Keyword Planner will give you search volumes for these. Both are free and accurate tools that’ll give you a list of questions to consider using.
You can also use a third-party tool such as AlsoAsked.com and AnswerThePublic.com. Again, input your product/service and you’ll get a beautiful wheel of relevant questions that are being searched for grouped by what/when/can/are/how, etc.
Another great prompt as a starter for questions is when/where/what/how questions:
For B2B:
- How can I get more done at work?
- Where to learn delegation skills/time management skills
- How can I spend less time on reporting
- How to automate my accounting
- When is my corporate tax return due?
For B2C:
- What are the best solutions for back pain?
- How can I fix my chronic headache?
- How much pocket money should I give my 10-year-old?
- Which trainers are best for running on a treadmill?
- What can I give my 5-year-old for a cough?
How do we effectively answer these questions using PPC?
Here are some campaign structure tips:
- Use relatively granular ad groups — very closely themed
- Create a new campaign
- Use a separate budget (maybe 5–10% of your total PPC budget)
- With a focus on viewability over engagement, use Target Impression Share as your bidding strategy.
Some ad best practices:
- Ensure you’re directly offering a solution or answering the question within your ad text. Consider using tools such as dynamic keyword insertion to help you match the user’s search query to your ad copy
- Focus on more upper-funnel questions and queries that prospective customers may have rather than product or service-specific searches
- Pinning headlines and descriptions in this case makes sense when you’re trying to effectively answer a question or offer a solution to a problem with your ad copy.
For your ad assets or extensions:
- Add business name and logos to ads to demonstrate authenticity
- Add relevant image extensions at the ad group level to keep them relevant and specific
- Utilize reviews in your content: Mention reviews in ad assets or add review extensions via Microsoft Ads
- Add price extensions and promo extensions to offer that information up-front: this will help to pre-qualify the audience before they even click on your ad (and, so, before you even pay for their click!)
- Utilize site links, structured snippets, and callouts to enhance your offering on the SERP
Remember, the goal of these tactics is to bridge the gap between social ads and PPC ads for awareness — with the ability to offer much more information up-front.
How do we measure this stuff?
So now we know how to create an awesome TOF campaign and ad, how should we measure the effectiveness of our TOF search activity?
We should focus on viewability over engagement and conversion.
While CTR and interactions are important as part of PPC in general, the key metric for upper-funnel awareness is impressions as a measure of viewability. In an ideal world, any ad engagements or interactions form part of the consideration phase of the funnel. Therefore, impressions and Search Impression Share are your two critical metrics.
These two metrics will help you understand how regularly your ads are appearing in the SERP for eligible auctions. Beyond Impression Share alone, Search Impression Share lost (rank) and Search Impression Share lost (budget) will help you to understand the volume of opportunities for viewability missed out on due to each of these factors – this will allow you to optimize your bids/bidding strategy to increase visibility for your TOF ads.
Beyond these core metrics, Google Ads offers a range of in-platform attribution that’ll help you understand the role that TOF ads play throughout your customer journey. Using the ‘Top assisting campaigns’ report, we can understand where and how clicks and views have contributed to eventual conversions.
Finally, if you’re not already using Data-driven attribution, you can use the model comparison tool to understand how the credit for conversions is different between a last-click attribution model and the data-driven model, which will allocate fair credit to all impressions and interactions. This will help to better demonstrate the value of TOF ads as part of the path to conversion.
Next steps
What tangible next steps should you take to build out a TOF search campaign?
Your next steps:
- Research relevant search terms, queries, and questions that are unique to TOF
- Create bespoke ad copy for each question or group of questions
- Define your measurement KPIs and set the expectations of viewability over engagement and conversion
- Create your new campaign!
Optimisations:
- Review metrics such as impressions, SIS and SIS lost due to rank/ budget – including impression share achieved to goal and adjustments to target and/or bids
- Review search term reports – are there irrelevant words or phrases to remove, are there new questions that aren’t being addressed by your current ads?
- Review ad relevance metrics to ensure that users are finding your ads relevant to their search queries
- As your keyword lists and exclusions grow, check in regularly to ensure your ad groups remain relevant to a single theme.
