PPC (pay-per-click) can be a difficult beast to manage, there are so many technical elements that don’t make sense for a start and keeping up with the latest trends and techniques in the world of PPC is a full-time job in itself. Companies are often convinced that they can do it themselves which is true of some cases but we’ve seen a few accounts that show how people haven’t managed to keep up with it, they overspend and target the wrong keywords. We’ve spoken about why it is sometimes beneficial to hire a Pay-Per-Click agency to help you out!
Here, we’re going to give you an insight into the 2020 trends of PPC and how you can overcome the drawbacks to keep your accounts running in the right way. If structured in the right way, your PPC campaigns could start to bring the leads though in an unbelievable rate!
1. Machine Learning
Machine learning is one of the most exciting things that could happen to the digital marketing world. While this does apply to SEO and a number of other sectors, PPC could benefit greatly when it comes to the advancements of AI and Machine Learning!
It may allow for a PPC specialist to streamline their processes and offer a better service over time. This is because as you teach the programme to develop a set of processes, it will know how to react to certain situations and interpret the ways in which we could overcome problems. What’s more, having that logical ‘mind’ working for you means that it can make quick decisions based upon previous data which is likely to mitigate any adverse effects that could have an impact on your PPC campaigns.
Many PPC specialists are worried about job security with machine learning and AI introducing itself into the PPC industry, this is unfortunate because the human element will always be necessary for the success of a campaign. While the technology is progressing rapidly, it still lacks the ability to relate to a human and so, convincing a user to purchase a product or enquire about a service still remains with the PPC specialists of the world. This is because there is a big reliance on the psychology of marketing to a person and how to target their intentions.
Similarly, the human decisions will always be needed to make sure that the actions of the AI are in the best interest of the client. This is due to the fact that while a logical ‘mind’ may be able to reference past data to forecast the future results, it can’t always take the whole picture into consideration. Whether that’s an environmental impact (like Brexit or a market crash) or the way that a person would feel when seeing an advert.
2. Re-Marketing Ads
The best way to explain remarketing adverts is to say that you’re just recycling your website traffic that didn’t convert the first time. Google Remarking is ideal for those that are seeing a lot of traffic for their website but the conversions aren’t where they should be.
So, remarketing is going to take that wasted traffic and target the user with an advert for your website, services or product to make sure that you’re getting the most out of the people visiting your website. The best part is that the users that are seeing your remarketing ads have already expressed an interest in you and are more likely to convert into a lead, ready to purchase something. This is due to the fact that they must have already visited your site. For example; if you were to visit a kitchen worktops website but left before making a call to them, you would then see an ad for that company’s worktops elsewhere on the internet.
If you’d like to learn a little more about how remarketing could help your business, give us a call on 0115 971 8908.
3. Demographic Targeting
The targeting of a demographic became something of a hot topic throughout the year of 2019. For years, the big companies we’re able to dominate the market and that number one position by funnelling money into their PPC ads. With this, they didn’t worry about targeting the right audiences because they had the right reputation and the right amount of money to stay on top. with a tighter targeting strategy, the smaller businesses will be able to focus their PPC efforts on the right demographics and rise to the top of that page.
This is due to the effective use of the right targeting to increase account performance as a whole. This will mean that the quality score for your chosen keywords will be higher and which will, in turn, lower the cost of displaying your ads each time a user searches for that particular keyword. While the big companies may have the budget, the won’t have the quality score and budget will run out sooner or later.
With the changes in targeting, this might mean that the ad groups become smaller and offer a narrower target to maintain a good CTR (click-through-rate) and increase the overall quality score of the account.
4. Responsive Search Ads
Google’s responsive search ads seem to be the future of Google Ads at the moment. They offer a range of features that could be beneficial to your campaigns so it’s worth checking them out. Responsive search ads are a great way to tailor your PPC ads to each and every individual that searches for a keyword that you’re targeting.
These are a part of the aforementioned machine learning that could be used to optimise your PPC campaigns with ease. The responsive search ads allow for an ad the cycles through the variations of your Google ads to effectively perform an A/B test or split test. In doing this, the Google Ads platform is able to take some manual work out of a split test in order to streamline the processes and make sure that you’re getting the most out of your budget as time goes on.
These responsive search ads can have as many as 15 different headlines lined up and ready to be tested. You can even pin headlines and other fields so that the pinned item will show every time the ad does. Keep in mind that the pinned item will show in that specific spot too. So, if you pin a headline in the ‘headline 1’ position, it will always show here.
5. Platform Diversity
Rather than just using one PPC platform, whether it’s Google Ads or Facebook Ads, you want to make sure that you’re testing other platforms in 2020. testing is the only way that you’ll find out whether or not a platform will be beneficial to your marketing efforts and so you should be putting a little portion of the budget aside so that you can do these tests.
Social media marketing can be just as complicated as any other but it can be just as beneficial in the right industry. Facebook offers it’s own PPC interface so that you can get started and try it out. With the right budget, keywords and adverts, you could be bringing in the leads in no time. In 2020, social media is only going to get bigger. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even Tik Tok they could all be more effective than you thought in 2020!
6. Personal vs Sales Ad Copy
Most of the time, a PPC specialist will sit down with a company and talk about how they might be able to increase the conversions and bring more leads in for the company. They’ll then proceed to create ads that are all about selling a product, the problem with this is that a because most of the users have grown up with the internet, they can spot a ‘sales-y’ Google Ad from a mile away. This means that they’ll just ignore it and move on, what’s more, the PPC specialists that do this are often stuck in their ways and won’t change their approach.
In 2020, a personal approach is going to be more effective than a ‘sales-y’ style of ad copy. The right Ad copy is a completely individual thing for each and every company because you’ll have your own brand message and tone that you stick to. This is great because you’ll have a ubiquitous intonation throughout your online presence. However, appealing to the user and making sure that you’re able to take a personal approach is likely to work well.
No one wants to deal with a big faceless entity with no personality from the get-go. So instead, offer a friendly, maybe even humorous tone that appeals to the person that might use your service.
7. New SERPs (search engine results page)
The teams over at Google are always improving their SERPs to make them look nicer and streamline your experiences so that you can find exactly what you’re looking for as soon as possible.
What does that mean for PPC? — Well, it could and should mean that the way that your Ads look will change from time to time. Google love to test their new SERPs before they run with them, over the last few months I, personally, have seen a few different ones rotate through my laptop and they have all affected the way the Google Ads look. One of the biggest changes that you can see from the image above is that they’ve scrapped the ‘ad’ icon. Long gone is the little green icon that tells everyone that it’s an ad. Instead, a small, subtle piece of art that uses a black, bold font to illustrate the advert.
The URL has also moved from under the heading to above it, so you know exactly who’s advert you’ll be clicking on.
In Summary
PPC is only going to get better from here, as long as we don’t take a step back. Pushing for innovation is a great way to make sure that we, as an industry, are staying effective and making a difference to our client’s accounts and companies.
Everyone at Imaginaire is excited to get the new year off to a great start, we have new strategies to implement and new clients to help. We’ve always wanted to try and streamline our processes because it means that we’re able to spend more time on the effective parts of PPC and make sure that our accounts are performing as well as possible. We strive to provide the best practices for PPC and help businesses get found online as fast as possible.
If you’d like to start a PPC campaign, or if you need help with your existing one, let us know 0115 971 8908 We’ll do all we can to help you!
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Imaginaire
