Last year has been replete with uncertainty and drastic change. Especially in the digital marketing realm, the change is expected to stay. First, Google is going to lose five percent of its revenue from advertising. Its digital ad space is projected to shrink up to 29.4 percent from 31.6 percent—all because of changing consumer behavior.
The swiftly transforming consumer preferences have changed the pay-per-click (PPC) requirements too. Here are the PPC trends to look for while formulating a strategy.
1- Dynamic Search Ads
Dynamic Search Ad campaigns are becoming popular every day, both in B2B and B2C enterprises. The recent search query report update can give the search terms a few people have used. DSA campaigns can help identify more keywords.
The search query report of these campaigns can fulfill the gap in keyword coverage. Hence, focus on the DSA campaigns to generate traffic on the website and let people know about your enterprise.
2- Diversified Campaigns
The digital ad space is highly competitive. Businesses need to stand out from the crowd and bring potential customers to their site. That is why marketers are rolling out multiple campaigns in addition to the typical search and display ads.
Discovery Ads are proving to be more beneficial in terms of Click-through rate (CTR) as well as cost per lead (CPL). The investment in this campaign is expected to rise in the coming year. Notably, the performance would visibly improve after four weeks of the campaigns. Try not to change them during this period.
3- Audience as the Center
Understanding the behavior of internet users has become even more important to catch the attention of the target audience. The ad campaigns and strategies need to focus majorly on this factor. A people-centric strategy has become even more relevant after the advent of New Google Analytics. It has introduced consumer-centric measurement to help businesses understand how people interact with their enterprise.
4- Website’s Structure on the Forefront
With Google hiding data and automation taking over, the need to focus on people’s preferences becomes even more important. PPC is instrumental in generating traffic. However, high traffic can only be useful for business if it converts. The conversion rate will be high only when the website has the capability to make an impression on the visitor. The website should be structured, organized, and be compatible with your digital strategy.
If your site is organized and structured well, it’ll create high search excellence. Not only for search engines but also for your regular visitors or potential customers.
5- More Automation, Less Keywords
Automation will take over the digital space, trespassing the platforms. Google Ads has already given way to it no matter how skeptical the marketers are. If utilized the right way, automation can help a lot. Even if you optimize your keywords in your PPC ad campaigns but do not incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI), your strategy would be futile.
Even though there is limited control and data, you can leverage your campaigns through attribution. Attribution models can help increase conversions by bringing some data to the marketers. The audience targeting cannot be the only arrow in the quiver for PPC campaigns. One needs to be creative and adaptive towards rapid changes.
Below are some awesome resources to save you some time & money by automating your paid campaigns:
- https://adespresso.com/blog/google-ads-automation-features/
- https://revealbot.com/blog/google-ads-adwords-automation/
- https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/10/01/google-ads-automated-rules
6- Stretch Across More Platforms
The space for PPC is expanding vis-à-vis network and platform expansion. Facebook, Microsoft, and Google are a sine qua non for PPC campaigns. Now Tik Tok and Amazon will accompany these platforms and might transcend them in importance for PPC ads.
Amazon already introduced more optimization and analysis features in 2020. Other features include negative keywords and improved segmentation. Although there is a scope for improvement, it can be the next big thing for paid ad campaigns. As for Tik Tok, the platform is new but manifests huge popularity among the masses, which means better engagement and view rates.
7- Filter and Remove
Competition in digital space will intensify—giving smaller yet more budget campaigns. It will necessitate a focus on improved performance and visible results. That is only possible when you shun away the redundant stuff.
It can be the campaigns that are not compatible with brand goals or reduced keywords volume. Just like any other goal, the paid advertising goals should be SMART. Marketers should know which campaign qualifies as result-oriented and which one is redundant.
Another thing you need to remember is that your ad content should be well articulated. 2021 is going to be the year of content. As mentioned earlier, consumers have become more than just data. They need to be understood as an entity, and the key to do that is using the right words to communicate your message.
