The future of search engine marketing

This is for all you B2B marketers (and founders) out there: Search Engine Marketing is changing, and fast. This is how we get ready:

SEM used to be a data driven exercise but i’m noticing a shift in the industry. There’s less information to make your decisions with than ever before, and as a result there are less insights you can use to scale other parts of your business.

If you spend any time in Google Ads, you will have noticed the majority of the platforms innovation is centered around AI. It’s clear what Google thinks is the future of their business: “Give us budget and assets, and we’ll figure out the rest”.

For Google, this means a higher reliance on their platform. If they get you results, fantastic, you’ll probably just invest more, but you’ll never know why something is working (see Performance Max).

So what does this mean for us demand gen folks and how do we prepare for something like this? IMO: Thought leadership and excellent content are really the only way out i.e. BRAND. Your brand needs to be distinguishable, reliable and shareable as the expert of your domain.

Now more than ever, you have to be the go to resource for specific information in your niche. You’ll have to give away more information to build trust within your niche and be the no brainer option when a buyer is ready to invest. This means your content has to be as excellent as your product, and they’d both better be the BEST.

I don’t say this lightly, I started my entire marketing career on Search 6 years ago and I’m a full time demand gen consultant with a focus on PAID. But the writing’s on the wall, this channel cannot exist in a vacuum. Success with paid will rely on nailing BRAND. Its best we start preparing now.

Is Google dead? definitely not. I will continue to encourage people to use it as a must have source of high intent engagement. But its not what it used to be. You can’t just fund an account, curate your keywords, write some copy and expect long term results.

You need more than Google, you need to be a recommended Brand.