Here’s how an ROI-worthy search marketing budget should look in 2022

It is a little overstatement to say that digital marketing success depends on many things. Your skill set, your team, and your knowledge of the market in which you want to succeed, for your clients or yourself.

How often do you think about your spending? We’re referring to your search advertising budget.

It’s easy to run paid media ads on Google Display Network , Facebook, Microsoft and other platforms. You bid on keywords, target your audiences and then run your ads for the duration of the campaign.

While you might not believe that budget is important beyond determining how much money you have, I think it does. Especially when you consider the potential tunnel vision of ROI and every dollar matters.

Only you can decide what your ROI-worthy search advertisement budget will look like in the future. However, this article will show you how to make your paid media budget work for you in 2022.

The basics: What are you looking for?

You want to know how your search advertising budget should be in 2022.

First, who are you? How big is your company? How much money do you have for search advertising? And most importantly, what goals do you have in mind.

While there are many variables to consider, the following questions would be relevant to me if I was preparing a budget for search advertising in 2022.

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  What should I expect from my campaigns?
  
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  How many conversions should I expect from my campaigns?
  
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  Search advertising is my only growth channel, or are there other channels?
  
• 
  What amount will I also put into SEO and email?
  
• 
  How do I track my search ads to ensure that my performance is as I expected?
  
• 
  What does success look like?
  

Your budget will reflect your goals for your campaigns. What you want should also reflect your vision of growth.

Are you an affiliate marketing blogger looking for more traffic to your site? Do you work for a law company and need honest form-fills? Are you an ecommerce company that retargets your customers for products they have viewed?

Your goals will determine how you approach your search advertising and your budgeting.

What are you looking for in closing in?

Once you have decided what you want, you can start to plan how you will get there. We’ll be discussing budgeting here.

You will only know what your search ads campaigns should produce (the results will ideally be based on the goals that you have set).

If you want to grow your business by $2,000 per month, you will need to do some math.

What number of leads did your current search advertising campaign bring you? How many of those leads convert? It is important to know your conversion rate and how much each lead is worth.

Once you have these figures, you will be able to plan your budget.

A conversion costs $500 and you charge $10 per lead. If your conversion rate of five percent is the case, you will need to generate 80 leads per month via search advertising.

This is how it works.

To reach your $2,000 goal, you need to convert four leads per month. Five percent of all leads are converted. Four is 5% of eighty. To reach your goal, you will need to generate 80 leads per month.

If you pay $10 per lead then your search advertising budget should be $800 per month.

That’s a perfect situation. This is assuming that you can make it happen consistently month after month.

This budget would be profitable in a perfect world.

Campaigns may fail and certain methods may not work.

How do you make sure your efforts and budgeting are successful?

It’s all in the details: Be smart about bidding

For 2022, you want to create a search advertising budget that is ROI-worthy. This means that you will want to compete in the top leagues. What do they think you’re doing differently than you? Are they able to give you some insights into Google Ads?

It really all comes down to the keywords you use for your ads.

It works in SEO too, in case you didn’t know: The more popular, general and competitive keywords, such as “SEO company”, will be very expensive to bid for. You may not be financially able to maintain this campaign for very long and it will result in a lot wasted money.

Consider your competitors of similar size. You probably have a similar budget to them. They may have a better keyword bidding strategy than yours if they are outperforming you.

Taken from the previous example, perhaps you don’t need or want to rank your ads for SEO company.

You will pay less for a longer-tail keyword like “SEO agency to link building”, and you will get fewer monthly searches. However, as with any sales funnel, searchers who are more specific tend to convert more quickly.

Remember that as you become more specific you will need to focus on the quality and relevancy of your landing pages.

A long-tail keyword search will require a long ad and a lengthy-tail landing page. Your ad should deliver what it promises. You can create content that is related to link building and hiring an SEO agency.

These are the funnels. People want content that is relevant to their current stage in the buyer’s journey. They will be more likely to convert if they can see it. The same applies to SEO.

This is the place to discuss optimizing your search advertising ROI.

What are you going to do next?

Marketing accounts account for between 7 and 12 percent of a business’s annual budget. It is a necessary expense for growth.

These tips will help you ensure that your search advertising spend is worth it. You need to know your strengths and limitations as well as your bidding limits.

You can build amazing things if you are smart.

Kris Jones, the former CEO of digital marketing network Pepperjam and digital affiliate network, is Kris Jones. He sold it to eBay Enterprises in 2009. Kris Jones founded LSEO.com, a software and SEO company. He has also previously invested in many successful technology companies. Kris is a skilled public speaker. He is also the author of ‘Search-Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing’ which is one of the most popular SEO books. It has been sold close to 100,000 copies.

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