You’re losing buyers via paid search every day

Companies spend a lot on search engine marketing. In 2022, advertisers spent over $162 billion on Google Search ads.  Some of the biggest spenders fork out tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars each on paid search ads on Google every year. It’s not a bad strategy since 90% of B2B buyers start their purchase journey with an online search. But when your revenue comes through your network of partners, this can break down fast.

Imagine a CIO who is looking to improve their cybersecurity and searches for intrusion prevention systems.  Most likely, a number of network security firms will be at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). It only makes sense because they have much bigger search engine marketing budgets than their partners would have, and they understand the value of brand building, awareness, and search marketing. So, the CIO clicks on one and goes to the corporate website where s/he does some research on a number of their offerings. 

The CIO then decides that one of the solutions might work for their company and wants to speak with someone to learn more. Like most companies, this network security vendor sells mainly through a network of partners. Here’s where it gets dicey.

The CIO is on the Vendor’s web page. S/he first has to find the partner locator on the company site – not always a problem, but sometimes they aren’t easy to find.

The CIO now has to wade through a myriad of partners. Some companies have thousands of partners, many of whom may resell only a subset of the Vendor’s portfolio. 

What could go wrong?

• The CIO contacts partner A. Partner A says “We don’t sell that particular solution from the Vendor. Sorry.” So now the CIO goes back to the partner locator and tries again.  Or maybe the CIO gets frustrated, tries a different Google search, and ends up on a different Vendor’s website.  Potential lost buyer.

• The CIO contacts partner A. Partner A says “We don’t sell that particular solution from the Vendor. But we do sell this other great solution…” So now the CIO engages with the partner and goes down a different path. Potential lost buyer.

• The Vendor’s partner locator routes the CIO to Partner A’s website homepage.  It’s like starting research all over again and the journey is now influenced by what the partner is promoting on their site. It may or may not be the original Vendor’s product/solutions.  The CIO now goes down a research and purchase journey no longer influenced by the Vendor, and since partners usually sell multiple vendor products/solutions, the final purchase could be any vendor’s product. Potential lost buyer.

• The Vendor’s partner locator is high-level and lists all of their partners – possibly sorted by geography.  Partners often specialize in specific solutions, industries, or regions. What are the chances that the CIO selects the right Partner fit the first time? How many partners will the CIO contact before they give up? Potential lost buyer.

If all you’re doing is directing search traffic to your own site and stopping there, you are only doing half your job.  

If you are hoping buyers will figure out your network of partners on their own and find exactly what they are looking for, well, hope just isn’t a strategy.

And that’s not the only problem. Some Vendors have figured out that their partners need to be found as well, and have allocated MDF to them to spend on shared search engine marketing advertising. On the surface, this sounds like a decent idea, but once you factor in that all of the partners are competing for the ad clicks, and competing with the Vendor themselves, it gets expensive and inefficient – and it may result in competitors winning top spot on the Search Engine Results Page. More potential lost buyers.

Use technology to guide buyers further down the journey

What if instead, the Vendor could guide the CIO directly to their partner who resells the exact solution the buyer is searching for, right from the Google results page? Skip the corporate site, skip the partner locator, and go directly to Vendor content on the best partner’s website?  The buyer never gets lost, and the vendor is always in control.

While this solution may sound too good to be true, that’s exactly how the Google Ads for the Channel Solution works. And, because the Vendor is in control of multiple partners in a single campaign, there is no competing ad spend. In fact, the technology (AI/Big Data) does thousands of optimizations daily across the entire campaign and each partner, continually improving results and reducing the total cost of advertising. 

Here’s how it works.

• We set up a single Ad campaign
• The vendor selects the partners to include in the campaign
• Co-branded landing pages are created for every partner (no work required from partners)
• The vendor remains in control of the campaign messaging and bidding
• Campaigns performance is monitored and reported in a dashboard
• AI/big data optimize campaigns daily, continuously improving performance and reducing costs
• Clicks/leads from campaigns are sent directly to partners and reported to the Vendor
• Ongoing reporting & improvement

There’s no way of knowing what happens to potential buyers after they leave your corporate website, and if you sell through a partner ecosystem, buyers will head off in all kinds of directions.

Google Ads for the Channel is an important element of a Through-Channel Marketing solution. A number of years ago, Google realized this was a problem, and an opportunity to do better. Google approached (now) Impartner and co-developed a technology solution to address it. Impartner’s services arm is its own partners. As an Impartner strategic partner, AscendX Digital offers this service to companies who sell via a partner ecosystem, and who want to amplify their marketing across it.

What does it cost?

We think you should re-direct budget that you are already spending on search engine marketing, not requiring any new money at all. Aligning your marketing budget with your revenue channels only makes sense. Plus, this is an excellent way to build partner enablement, loyalty – and more revenue.

Get started

If you want to explore Google Ads for the Channel to see if it’s right for you, or calculate Through-Channel Marketing (TCM) ROI for your business, contact us.  

AscendX Digital Inc. is the industry’s first TCM-as-a-Service marketing provider. Instead of spinning up a new product in your MarTech stack and putting more pressure on your marketing teams, focus on the outcomes of TCM and engaging as-a-Service. When you do, you can deliver a solution to market months faster, pay only for what you use, drive better partner and customer experiences, and reduce your risk. 

Our team has many decades of technology marketing expertise, and we work with vendors and partners every day. We’d love to help you, too.