Sam Page
← All thinking

One of the biggest mistakes I see organisations making is becoming over-reliant on…

People and behaviour2 min readSam Page

One of the biggest mistakes I see organisations making is becoming over-reliant on paid search to drive demand.

What usually happens is you end up spending more and more, and while the results don't necessarily decline, they're no longer efficient, effective or scalable.

Data backs it up too, Google Ads cost per click have risen by almost 13% in a single year, according to WordStream.

It's an easy trap to fall into. Paid search is fast, measurable and reaches people at the exact moment they're looking.

The challenge is that when it's used on it's own, it's only reaching people in a handful of moments, throughout their buying journey.

For a considered purchase, the decision gets built across lots of moments, long before that search and well after it. And if your site doesn't work really hard, you pay for the click and lose the audience as soon as they come through.

And with AI search now arriving right at the very top of the funnel, those earlier moments are even harder to reach with paid alone. In fact 1 in 4 searches now start on AI.

So you can't just use paid, you need different channels to connect with people at different moments in time:

  • Organic content to make you visible in AI and SEO to pull people in
  • Paid to support and amplify it, reaching more people and pulling them back in
  • Experience to engage them and, ultimately, convert them

Get that balance right and paid starts working hard again, because now it has something to amplify.

While paid reaches people at some of the key moments in time, a considered purchase is won across many of them.

Use paid 100%, but use it as part of the marketing mix.

First published on LinkedIn.

More on people and behaviour

One email, every Friday.

What happened this week, what I'm thinking about, and one takeaway for yours.

GEThttps://sam-page.com/thinking/one-of-the-biggest-mistakes-i-see-organisations-making-is-becoming-over-reliant.mdtext/markdown; charset=utf-8

---
title: "One of the biggest mistakes I see organisations making is becoming over-reliant on…"
url: https://sam-page.com/thinking/one-of-the-biggest-mistakes-i-see-organisations-making-is-becoming-over-reliant
date: 2026-10-05
author: Sam Page
type: Post or article
categories: [People and behaviour, Marketing]
reading_time: 2 min
summary: "One of the biggest mistakes I see organisations making is becoming over-reliant on paid search to drive demand."
first_published: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3Ashare%3A7512938458877808641
---

# One of the biggest mistakes I see organisations making is becoming over-reliant on…

One of the biggest mistakes I see organisations making is becoming over-reliant on paid search to drive demand.

![](https://sam-page.com/img/thinking/one-of-the-biggest-mistakes-i-see-organisations-making-is-becoming-ove-li1.webp)

What usually happens is you end up spending more and more, and while the results don't necessarily decline, they're no longer efficient, effective or scalable.

Data backs it up too, Google Ads cost per click have risen by almost 13% in a single year, according to WordStream.

It's an easy trap to fall into. Paid search is fast, measurable and reaches people at the exact moment they're looking.

The challenge is that when it's used on it's own, it's only reaching people in a handful of moments, throughout their buying journey.

For a considered purchase, the decision gets built across lots of moments, long before that search and well after it. And if your site doesn't work really hard, you pay for the click and lose the audience as soon as they come through.

And with AI search now arriving right at the very top of the funnel, those earlier moments are even harder to reach with paid alone. In fact 1 in 4 searches now start on AI.

So you can't just use paid, you need different channels to connect with people at different moments in time:

- Organic content to make you visible in AI and SEO to pull people in  
- Paid to support and amplify it, reaching more people and pulling them back in  
- Experience to engage them and, ultimately, convert them

Get that balance right and paid starts working hard again, because now it has something to amplify.

While paid reaches people at some of the key moments in time,  a considered purchase is won across many of them.

Use paid 100%, but use it as part of the marketing mix.