Know The 10 PPC Trends That Are Making It Big In 2021
Over the years, Pay Per Click (PPC) has emerged as a major online marketing strategy.
Compared to Search Engine Optimization, it brings results faster even though it is a paid tactic.
You can expect it to grow your online visibility and reach quickly, which is the reason why you should absolutely include it in your marketing plan.
2019 is an eventful year for paid advertising and there is a lot going on. While the focus was mainly on personalization last year, this year seems to belong to automation.
There is much more happening on this front and you need to know it all for coming up with an effective PPC plan. Let us highlight the key trends that are making it big in this space.
A shift from keywords to the audience
Marketing has witnessed a humongous change as a whole, with a paradigm shift from keywords to the audience.
PPC is no exception because customer experience is emerging as the key brand differentiator today.
As a result, the focus of PPC campaigns is now moving from keywords to the audience and context.
Businesses need to pay attention to audience segmentation rather than targeting them as a whole.
At the same time, they need to create ads that are relevant and personalized according to the audience segments.
Therefore, getting audience insights and using them is imperative to the success of your PPC campaign in 2019.
An ad will get you a high ROI only if it has what the audience wants to see.
AI and marketing automation
This year, AI and marketing automation are gaining popularity in the PPC marketing space.
These technologies are being used for enhancing the performance of the campaigns.
Moreover, they are capable of cutting down on the efforts involved. This enables marketers to focus on creative aspects rather than repetitive tasks.
AI helps marketers to gather customer-related data that can yield useful insights to create contextual ads.
On the other hand, automation ensures that processes such as targeting and bidding are no longer dependent on humans.
Together, these technologies are making PPC campaigns more effective and simpler than ever.
Diversification with consistency
Another trend that is emerging strongly in the PPC landscape this year is that of diversification of advertising channels.
The number of content delivery channels is on the rise and businesses need to be omnipresent to gain traction across them all.
Remember that customer journey is no longer isolated to a single channel. Rather, it is important to create blended journeys across search and social to make your strategy work.
Unless you build multi-channel PPC campaigns, you cannot expect great results. While diversity is critical, you also need to ensure that you are able to engage the audience everywhere.
Also, campaigns must focus on delivering consistent user experiences across all the channels.
Consistency is empowering for brands because it makes them recognizable.
Diversification with ad types
While reaching an audience across different channels is important, you cannot ignore different ad types as well.
Diversifying your ad spend is the key because it keeps your investment balance.
You need to think beyond just Google ads. Brands have multiple options such as Bing, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest to connect with and reach a larger audience base.
Each of these platforms has something great to offer. For instance, Facebook offers an ad format which can automatically generate videos with products personalized for the users.
Similarly, Pinterest enables shoppers to shop directly from the product pin while showing prices and availability. Google excels for offering mobile-first ads.
Video marketing wins the race
Video marketing was already there in 2018 but is making it even bigger in 2019.
In fact, marketers recognize videos as one of the most powerful marketing strategies today.
The reason is simple, videos have the power to engage and people prefer to buy what they see.
Not only do they boost your sales but also drive popularity for your brand. Moreover, stats indicate that video ads win the trust of the user and they are more likely to stick with the brands they trust.
Remember that only text ads will not get the desired success for your campaign.
This means that you must create video ads if you want to achieve success with PPC in 2019.
Channels such as YouTube, Instagram and Facebook serve the purpose of posting video ads. Also, make sure that your video ads are optimized for rendering seamlessly on mobile.
Traffic goes mobile
Mobile traffic is nothing new for online marketers. The volume of mobile searches is humongous in comparison to that of desktop searches.
Keeping your PPC campaigns aligned with the mobile, thus, come ahead as a dominant trend yet again. You cannot ignore creating customized mobile ad experiences if you want to win over the audience across this channel.
Devising a mobile-centric PPC campaign requires a great deal of expertise and you can rely on this company for offering it.
The role of the agency you collaborate with is critical for creating a campaign from end to end.
To start with, they will identify the right keywords for vis-à-vis mobile traffic.
Creating responsive ads and landing pages is another critical aspect they will take care of.
Remarketing gets you there
If you want to make a winning PPC campaign in 2019, remarketing should be a part of it.
Essentially, remarketing is the process of tracking and following the users who have visited your site once but not shopped.
Since they were probably interested in your offerings once, they can still be good prospects to sell. Showing them your ads online gives you a chance to get their attention and subsequently convince them to buy from you.
By integrating remarketing in your PPC campaign, you can boost its effectiveness to a significant extent.
This technique is highly personalized because you can show the users the same products they had viewed previously.
You can even track their abandoned carts and show them the products therein. This approach definitely works and you have lesser work to do.
Rethink the ad copies
Another key PPC trend that you cannot ignore in 2019 is matching your ad copies with user intent.
Research indicates that well-drafted ad copies that have relevant content for the right audience perform well and offer a higher conversion potential.
Therefore, it is essential to empower your ad with impressive content that caters just what the audience wants.
Having multiple versions of headlines and testing them to find the performing ones is a good idea.
A hit-and-trial approach works because it gives you a proper insight into what works for your target audience. Besides focusing on having juicy, selling content for your ad copies, also rethink the design for them.
Have a complete package that hits your audience bang on!
Optimize for voice searches
Voice has emerged as the biggest online marketing trend in the last few years and it is all set to grow even bigger.
The audience loves the idea of hands-free searches rather than having to type text to look for a product or service.
With the increasing use of voice assistants, you cannot imagine a winning PPC ad that is not optimized for voice searches.
Basically, your ad needs to be enriched with a conversational tone if you want it to appear in voice searches.
This is because people who search via voice tend to converse with voice assistants just as they do with humans.
Therefore, marketers should adopt the ad content with a tone that the users are likely to use in voice searches.
Focus on building brand value
Without any doubt, the primary objective of PPC is to grow your online reach and boost sales. But in 2019, this strategy is also focusing on building the value of brands in the long run.
Branding is the lifeline of businesses because it drives long-term survival in the competitive landscape. This is critical, considering the ever-growing competition that businesses have to face in the online domain.
So you cannot confine your mindset to selling but have to think about extending the popularity of your brand.
Unless you consider the branding perspective, you cannot build campaigns that are effective enough.
The long-term impact of creating brand loyalty is highly valuable because it ensures that the audience knows and trusts your business.
Simultaneously, it results in increased product demand which is synonymous with the achievement of business goals.
Are you geared up for the future?
This year is a big one for PPC marketing as a lot is happening out there. Following these key trends right now will lay a solid foundation for the future.
If you are not doing so, your brand will probably not be able to keep up with the competitors in the coming time.
So it is better to gear up sooner rather than later.
Having a PPC expert to design and realign your PPC campaign would be the best thing to do.
If you want to win the race in the future, now is the best time to start!
