Tackling the 'missing middle'

My name is Chris Snell and I’m a Client Partner Lead at Microsoft Advertising. I am also a massive fan of Fulham Football Club. Most weekends I take my usual seat at Craven Cottage and hope for a Fulham win.

My wife, however, is not such a big fan of either digital marketing or Fulham (although I live in hope of a conversion one day). After a recent game she asked me what I enjoy about football. It’s just men trying to score a goal. However, to me, it is so much more than that. It’s tactics, it’s strategy and it’s numbers. Sure, the goal is the result, but all the work getting to the goal is the most interesting part. The strategy, the formation, the tactics. If anyone has ever had the joy of watching Pep Guardiola's Manchester City, you will see its all the work done in the middle that matters.

This conversation made me think that it is the same in digital marketing. Some of the most important work in a digital marketing campaign is done in what has come to be called the “missing middle” the part of the funnel we often pay the least attention too.
 

There is no I in team

In football, the easiest statistic to understand is used to determine the winner, for example, Team X won three nil over team Y. The striker who put the ball in the back of the net is the player credited for the goal, and subsequent win. However, it is the post goal analysis, when done right, that deep dives into the assist, and it becomes apparent there were more players who set up the ball for the goal, more who were responsible for the win.

This is not dissimilar to the last click model in search. Still by far the most dominant reporting metric, but one that gives all the credit to the last keyword before the conversion. It ignores all the work that has come before, that greatly influences consumers throughout their search journey.
 

Maximise your middle

As a football manager there are two ways to increase the goal count of your team. The first is to buy a world class striker, but they can be hard to come by and often very expensive.

The second is to focus on their supporting numbers, to understand the ‘middle,’ where the assists are coming from, adapting, and making plays because of that.

In Search, this can be site conversion, search campaign quality, or campaign support. For example, research from Microsoft shows campaigns that run Microsoft Display Ads alongside search improve performance by 35%.

In-market segments allow you to target the right audience, when you know they are in the purchase window. This not only puts your ads on the consideration set, it shows customers why they should search, and buy, from you.

Alongside in-market audiences, incorporating a solid re-marketing plan is both a profitable and powerful way to drive even more incremental revenue, giving your campaigns even more increased performances overtime and assisting you towards achieving your goal.  
 

The changing landscape

Success in football has typically been associated with men’s sport, until 2022 when the Lionesses brought the Euro’s home to England, following this up with an appearance in the World Cup final last year. This has led to a renewed spotlight on female star players, inspiring a whole new generation of future footballers in the process.

In the digital realm, AI and automation have become the new star players and the ‘mid-funnel’ of marketing is one area I believe can benefit the most. 

Microsoft’s ads use deep machine learning and generative AI to reduce the guesswork and legwork from display advertising. It creates multiple ad variations, tests them, and can then identify those that perform best.

AI can also create custom audiences, groups that look like those who have purchased from you before. This allows you to ask the AI to find more of these customers on the web. Increasing campaign reach, engagement, and sale. All targeted to an audience bespoke created for the business you are advertising.

And it’s not just our world that AI is changing, but that of the consumer too. Microsoft’s Copilot in Bing chat experience has seen time spent searching increase by 66% vs traditional search according to our recent insights. The higher engagement is also great for advertisers, who can see three times improvement in click through rate. All this to say, the search resurgence is here. Don’t wait for the post-match analysis, now is the time to review your campaigns, identify the goals and look for the assists. Only then will you become a true challenger to your opponent.