2020 was the year of unpredictable changes. It forced businesses to change their marketing tactics and find new ways of attracting customers.
As the hunt got on for viable strategies for promoting brands, products, or services to the right audience, paid search emerged as a clear winner.
Retail and consumer goods businesses experienced an 11% growth in their ad spend on paid search. In comparison, B2B services saw an 8% growth in their ad expenses.
It was once an indulgence for big organizations. But now, PPC has become a vital strategy for businesses of all sizes. You can serve your message to a specific target audience by displaying your ads in relevant online locations. Since you only pay if your ad gets a click, PPC helps increase the ROI on your online advertising campaigns.
That’s what makes it one of the most profitable and promising marketing channels.
While we can’t be sure of what to expect in 2021, we know that paid search matters for your success. As more advertisers turn to PPC, emerging trends show us some encouraging results for this tool’s future.
Let’s explore some of these developments:
Paid Search Trends #1: Increased PPC Automation
Instead of having to spend time manually optimizing your ads or bidding, you can get better results faster with the help of automated solutions. PPC automation can stop low-performing ads, create ads based on consumer behaviour, generate automated ad performance reports and optimize ad copy using Google Scripts.
The incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) has also made PPC automation useful for monitoring campaign performance. With automation, you can watch your best performing ads, check your brand’s performance, enhance CPC efforts and increase your conversions.
Paid Search Trends #2: Ad Placements On Facebook & Instagram Stories
In the quest to enhance their monetization strategies, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow ad placements on their stories.
These story ads are similar to organic ads. But what’s even better is that you only need to submit two lines of copy. Audiences can easily read them during a 15-second story on Instagram.
Moreover, you can use hyper-lapse, boomerangs, integrate polls, and even promote IGTV videos through story ads.
The ads are optimized for mobile screens when it comes to Facebook stories, and they are less than 15-second long. Ad placements on Facebook stories have proved to yield high engagement rates and increase brand awareness.
Paid Search Trends #3: Highly-Refined Audience Targeting
Google Ads and other platforms have some exciting new ways to understand target audiences and serve them ads on a personal level. You’ll be able to get in-depth information on your ideal customer, such as their income, age, and so much more.
Therefore, in 2021, PPC marketers should focus on the buying journey to see what people are searching for and the time it takes to get through the buying process in its entirety.
Understanding your target audience and specifying your prospects and conversions will help you succeed with your PPC marketing efforts in 2021.
Paid Search Trends #4: Smart Bidding
Smart bidding is a part of automated bidding strategies that use machine learning to enhance your ads for more conversions depending on your goals.
For example, in Google Ads, you set an advertising goal and let smart bidding create an entire plan to achieve that goal within the predetermined budget.
It can now get new customers at the desired cost per acquisition, target return on spend, and increase your conversion rate.
Moreover, Google is now introducing value rules that allow advertisers to determine the conversion values depending on the device, location, and audience type.
Paid Search Trends #5: Integration Of Voice Search In PPC Campaigns
According to recent reports, 71% of consumers prefer to ask a query by voice instead of typing. It means that the businesses that fail to integrate voice search in their paid search campaigns will not show up in voice results.
To incorporate your PPC campaigns with voice search, you need to integrate long-tail keywords and phrases that start with questions such as “what” and “where”.
Moreover, you need to understand the buyer’s awareness stage to target them with the right keyword. When it comes to voice search platforms, you need to focus on Google and Bing as they serve as the default search engines with voice assistants.
Paid Search Trends #6: Shift To Other PPC Platforms
Although Google and Facebook have dominated the digital marketing space for a long time, now businesses are moving on to different platforms. For example, professionals spend most of their time on LinkedIn while consumers tend to shift towards Amazon to shop.
There are several other PPC platforms that you can leverage to optimize your campaigns. It includes:
LinkedIn serves as an excellent platform for advertisement if you are a B2B company. You can easily target other businesses and professionals by their job titles, companies, industry type, interests, job level, and much more.
Quora
Quora has been attracting several marketers’ interests, and its monthly user base has now reached up to 300 million active users. Advertisers can monitor the content and target the audience by assessing their behaviour and activity on the platform.
Amazon
With over 197 million people visiting Amazon each month, it serves as a goldmine to advertise, especially if you are a retailer. You can easily direct the audience to your online store by advertising with Amazon DSP without registering as a direct seller.
Paid Search Trends #7: The Rise Of Video Advertisements
As the video ads show promising prospects of getting more clicks, especially on YouTube, you will see it as an essential part of an effective PPC strategy. That is because 58% of customers trust the brands that display videos over brands that do not.
In 2021, businesses are predicted to use Google vertical video ads while marketers will be linking their products in the video ads. It’s also estimated that you will witness a rise in virtual reality ads to offer real experiences to potential customers.
Bumper Machine is another video ad feature introduced by Google. You can make 6-second bumper ads from long videos and displays them on YouTube.
You can even incorporate a blend of TV and video ads in your marketing strategy. It will get you in front of more people and increase your conversions.
In Conclusion
If you are an advertiser or a digital marketer, be ready to use the trends mentioned above. It will increase your brand’s reach and make the most out of these ads.
Marketers who focus on automation, voice search, video ads, and advertising on other platforms than the market giants will be leading the pack in 2021. If you want to increase your bottom line and place your brand for success in 2021, book a free consultation with Noah Digital and get in touch with paid search experts.
