Trends in the marketing world are shifting faster than ever, due to abrupt changes from the pandemic to privacy restrictions to innovations in digital media. As professional (and passionate) marketers, it is our role to stay ahead of and informed on trends to provide the strongest recommendations and strategies for our clients and partners. We’ve been looking more closely at the latest news in PPC advertising, and here are five hot-ticket trends we have our eyes on:
Imperfect Data
As privacy restrictions continue to increase, Google is offering more data based on machine learning versus providing raw data that allows marketers to extract and analyze. While this is a helpful resource for smaller advertisers, it may hurt more savvy marketers who would prefer to rely on making their own observations. Marketers are shifting to utilizing the machine learning-based data to guide their campaigns to target more of a specific audience and are focusing on collecting first-person data to supplement any imperfect data provided by machine learning.
Customer Journey
The customer journey is the basis of any good marketing strategy. We must understand how the customer traverses through the process of making decisions and where/when your brand can interact and guide towards a purchase. This journey, and the various stages involved, should be a major indicator of how you structure your PPC ad buys. By first knowing who your audience is, where they are in their path, and how you want to speak to them at each step, you can set up your PPC campaigns to reach people with the greatest potential of conversion. And this includes not just keywords, but also ad copy, ad groups and landing pages, among other things.
Automation
Advances in PPC automation have greatly evolved and improved over the years, allowing you to save time, improve campaign performance, and reduce wasted ad spends. While the automated assistance can help optimize performance, it still needs to be managed by marketing-savvy humans to manipulate these systems and ensure the marketing and media strategy, bid approach and ad buy is producing the best ROI. These optimizations should align with your objectives set by your marketing team, and not solely based on Google’s scores and recommendations.
Diversify Platforms
As privacy regulations change, a loss of control in Google will likely lead to more companies shifting PPC dollars to other search engines such as Microsoft Ads. It is necessary for marketers to diversifying their PPC skillset beyond Google Ads, testing YouTube, Verizon Media’s native ads, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, even TikTok if the audience fits. By considering options outside of Google, it creates more opportunities to target audiences on platforms that best suit your customers, provides the customization and data that your team is looking for, and allows the marketing strategy to best tested and compared across multiple environments. Plus, other avenues offer more opportunities to outshine your competition in the marketplace.
Introducing Google Screened
Google Screened is the latest badge offered to professional service firms that demonstrates Google has taken the time to ensure that business is a legitimate, properly licensed, and insured business. It is a free certification, but it can be quite laborious to get. Only firms that provide professional services including Law, Financial Planning, and Real Estate are eligible for the Google Screened badge, and will see the Google Screened icon next to these businesses. In the future this offering could expend across more marketing categories, so keep an eye open for your industry.
(Source: Revlocal.com)
While brands rely on PPC to drive major portions of their revenue, marketers are actively making plans to optimize and adjust for reduced functionality and data transparency. By staying ahead of industry changes such as these, Morgan & Co. is providing ideas and solutions that generate a big impact for brands. If you’re looking for guidance on how to create and maintain a successful PPC campaign in today’s media world, contact Morgan & Co. today.
