Regardless of what many marketers may believe, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is still one of the most common and effective digital marketing strategies. Like other areas of digital marketing, PPC is also ever-evolving. You need to understand the latest trends to make successful campaigns if you're going to use this channel.
Here are some of the key trends to watch out for during the rest of 2019 and beyond.
PPC Automation Is Going Strong
Automation is making its way to various practices, including PPC. PPC automation started out as a risky practice, but now it is becoming more integral to marketing strategies. In fact, some dub it as the future of paid search.
What makes PPC automation effective is that it allows you to easily launch successful PPC ads but, of course, the initial process of data gathering requires manual work. However, as machine learning and logistics improve, PPC automation will become more efficient and might soon eliminate the tedious process of collecting data manually.
Personalization Over Keywords
SEO and content marketing will still be powered by keywords, which is not the case with PPC. If you want to increase the penetration of your campaigns, then you'll need to prioritize personalization over keywords as these are what people will be more focused on in the coming years.
Instead of investing time finding the perfect keywords, focus your resources on gathering audience data. This way, you'll have a better understanding of their viewing habits, and you'll be able to create more content that's tailor-made for them.
Going Beyond AdWords
To this date, Google AdWords remains to be the premier platform for PPC. However, more platforms are emerging, and you'll need to expand your horizons. Some of the emerging platforms are Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and Pinterest.
There are many other PPC networks to choose from, and as competition grows stiffer in this field, it's vital for you to adapt and use more than just AdWords.
Of course, AdWords will still be one of the premier platforms out there so you should keep investing in it, at least for now.
More AdSpend On Videos
Gone are the days when internet users were irritated over video ads in their content. More platforms are starting to make use of video ads in between content, and surprisingly, consumers have adapted well to it.
Facebook now plays at least one video ad that is three minutes long or more. If you avoided placing ad spending for videos, then you may want to reconsider your decision.
When making ads, make sure to create ones that are less than 30 seconds long. Facebook video ads are typically 15 seconds long. You may have trouble engaging the audience by creating content that's longer than that.
Bottom Line
PPC is here to stay despite the fact that social media and email marketing are soaring to new heights. The big takeaway from these trends is that PPC advertising is still worth the investment. If you want to maximize the reach of your digital marketing strategies, then you'll need to include PPC as one of your approaches.
Infographic URL: https://serpwatch.io/blog/ppc-stats/
Josh Wardini, Co-Founder
Serpwatch