Combining push and pull marketing—How TikTok ads can boost your Google search performance

Push and pull marketing are, as the terms imply, complete opposites. Marketing teams tend to deploy push marketing measures (actively placing a product, good or service within reach of the target audience) on major social platforms, while pull marketing (tapping into interest) is mainly found in Google or Amazon searches. Now, however, TikTok, Instagram and similar platforms can be easily integrated with Google and Amazon. Social media expert Jakob Strehlow delivered a step-by-step breakdown of how it works on a recent episode of the OMR Education Podcast.

No TikTok ads, no search queries 

Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are no longer just social networks. Users utilize these platforms to learn and inspire, while brands advertise there. The latter works particularly well when it doesn’t feel like an ad. At first, these entailed the now ubiquitous UGC (user-generated content) ads and, more recently, fake podcast ads that have gained traction in marketing. So, what can advertisers do to stand out from the competition?

Jakob Strehlow has found the answer: "Ads work well when they aren't too pushy," he says. However, this is only a positive side effect of the new advertising strategy that Strehlow and his team have been testing for clients in recent weeks. They combine push (TikTok) and pull marketing (Google). 

The entire strategic shift started with a poorly performing TikTok campaign. "After we found that ads were not performing well for a client, we went into optimization and paused the ads," Strehlow explains. However, the ad overhaul was delayed, so there were no ads on TikTok for a longer period. This had a surprising side effect: "We noticed that our Google search results dropped significantly during that period." So, did the push marketing channels really have such a strong influence on the pull marketing channels?

From Hypothesis to Strategy  

Once the improved TikTok ads went live again, organic and paid traffic via Google also increased. SEO and SEA sales also went up. The brand Jakob Strehlow worked with is new and relatively small. Naturally, no one would search for it unless they had heard about it through social media or other channels first. By this point, it was clear: Search traffic was linked to social media advertising efforts – in this case, TikTok. Strehlow and his team wanted to further substantiate this hypothesis to refine their advertising strategy.

"We used the new ads for an awareness campaign and worked with a last-click attribution and a promo code to track buyers who came to the shop via TikTok ads," explains Strehlow. The team ensured the promo code was only communicated through TikTok and didn't end up on a deal site. The ads were designed not to target a purchase directly. Instead, users were encouraged to google the brand and click on a specific search result. Lo and behold: Nearly 30 percent of all buyers who appeared to be generated via Google actually landed in the shop through the new TikTok ads. Remarkably, TikTok itself did not record any conversions during the campaign reporting analysis.

Pull helps the Push: Don’t “Buy it” “Google it”

Strehlow went on to explain how he and his team set up the tracking so precisely that they could almost track the entire impact of their push marketing efforts on their pull marketing channels. "The easiest way is to look into the Google Search Console," he says. You need to keep an eye on search volumes for brand and related keywords in the aftermath of such campaigns. After a few days, we observed a significant increase in volume. This works particularly well for small brands. "If you usually only get two or three clicks on the Google ad daily and then after the TikTok campaign you get twenty to thirty clicks a day, that’s a huge increase."

The idea for this new approach is not entirely new and comes from the USA. In many brands' ads, users are increasingly encouraged to search for a brand on Google and click on a specific link in the results. The call to action is not "Buy now!" but "Go to Google!"

This strategy has several advantages. The most obvious is the sale or lead that ideally results from it. Less obvious is that both SEA and SEO benefit from this approach. As more people click on a particular search result, Google is signaled that this content is particularly relevant to users. A search result that previously ranked fifth can thus climb to first or second place organically.

Awareness campaigns create touchpoints 

Not only Jakob Strehlow and his team have discovered this hack on TikTok. Meta expert Florian Litterst has also tried this approach. "Basically, we also see a positive impact of awareness measures on Google search queries," he explains. For a client, he and his adsventure team conducted a search-lift study to understand the influence of awareness campaigns on Google specifically. The result: A full-funnel setup, including awareness campaigns, delivered significantly more search volume on Google.

"It takes several touchpoints before a purchase actually happens," Strehlow says. Awareness ads are a good link between the first and last touchpoints before a purchase.

This sounds great—so what’s the catch? According to Strehlow: "You cannot entirely measure the approach immediately. You don’t see results right away." This is a problem for many advertisers. However, all marketers need to understand that a holistic advertising strategy, where SEA, SEO, and social work together, is significantly more promising in the long term. "It just takes a bit of patience." 

Push and Pull Marketing: How to get started 

What Strehlow is pointing out is not rocket science. By following these three simple steps, you can get started right away: 

1. Involve the entire team! Plan your upcoming campaigns together, paying special consideration to the different awareness stages. 
2. Run awareness campaigns where you show people what to google and which search result to click. Pro tip: Boost the effectiveness even furhter with an exclusive incentive, like a promo code. 
3. Optimize campaigns together by analyzing Google and social media reports.