10 Important PPC Trends to Watch in 2021

As we all are already aware, the year 2020 wasn't what you call a normal year. In this year, many things got impacted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic - more people started to shop online rather than go to a retail store, companies began to adopt a remote-first culture, and in-person conversations transformed into video conversations. So, one can easily say that the last year brought along a variety of changes. During this time, something similar happened in the advertising and marketing turf as well.

The recent trends in PPC show that marketers have started to use Artificial Intelligence and Automation for creating data-backed ads. Plus, they are focussing on the buyer's journey now more than ever. Therefore, whether you're an agency or an advertiser, you need to be abreast with the newest trends and features to take your PPC game to a whole different level.

Let's discuss the 10 important PPC trends to watch in 2021 to help you with the same:

1. Understanding your Audience and Buyer Journey is Important

In 2021, the most successful PPC marketers are concentrating on their target audience. At a time when there is less control because of AI and automation, what matters most are the people who are seeing your ads. Doing so helps in driving qualified clicks.

In order to move ahead of the pack this year, advertisers need to think about their customers and how they decide to purchase. Spend time thinking about the following questions:

• What information do they require?
• Where do they interact?
• What are they searching for?
• How to measure success at every step?

Tip: It is important to know who has the likelihood to convert versus who is worth prospecting. This knowledge will help you segregate and independently manage both of them.

2. Remarketing

In 2021, we definitely expect to see remarketing getting the recognition it truly deserves.

Hence, remarketing is a marketing tool that demands all your attention. It is an excellent means of engaging with potential customers that, in your knowledge, are already warm to what you offer. It is also more affordable as compared to other marketing methods.

Let's know a remarketing fact after which you may end up rethinking PPC:

Remarketing conversion rates rise over time

It is found that conversion rates tend to rise as more users look at an ad within remarketing campaigns. The click-through rates may decline with time, but those who click on your ad after seeing it a few times in the past are the ones who become likely to convert.

It is important to remember that people can be busy or involved in one or the other stuff going on in their lives. Keeping this in mind, remarketing acts as a gentle reminder to end what they began on your website, all while reinforcing your messaging and branding to the user when they see you.

3. Video Ads and PPC

Let's begin to understand the impact of a video with some stats - People remember 95% of a message from a video.

Now, let's check how the video will impact PPC this year:

• An increasing number of marketers will begin linking to products in video ads.
• Marketers will start including virtual reality (VR) to offer real experiences to viewers.
• Instagram Stories in video marketing will not cease to dominate.

Google has added one of the most fascinating video ad features called Bumper Machine. It makes use of machine learning to make 6-second bumper ads from videos (90 seconds or less) in order to display across Youtube.

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The full-funnel video strategy helps marketers in managing 6-second bumper ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, and skippable in-stream ads.

If you want to foster positive interactions with your potential customers, take note of the following online video advertising trends for this year and beyond:

• DIY videos: With the help of DIY videos on video-sharing platforms such as Tiktok and YouTube, you can easily promote your business. You don't need a ten thousand dollar camera and a professional film crew to create an engaging video ad on these platforms. The thing that matters the most in online video advertising is that you should be able to grab your audience's attention with your concept. For this, focus primarily on your video's content when you decide to create DIY video ads for these platforms.
• Storytelling: With so many videos and ads on the internet, your content should be able to grab eyeballs. A story helps create a connection with your audience and appeals to their emotions. To use this trend, think of how your services or products can impact people's lives. Ask yourself these questions - how were their lives before you came into it? How did they overcome their challenges with the help of the tools you offered? How is their life after using these tools?
• Silent films: A lot of times people see a video ad without the audio. So, you can create your video ad in a way that captures the viewers' attention even when the audio is turned off. For this, you can ensure the visuals in your video ad are gripping. Also, you can use captions in these ads to tell your story.

4. Voice search for PPC campaigns

50% of consumers could be voice shopping by 2022. Therefore, it is more important than ever to create PPC campaigns for voice search and get featured in voice search results.

The three significant ways in which voice search impacts PPC are:

• Natural language: People tend to use a more conversational and natural style when they use voice search. Thus, the use of short-tail keywords may not provide you an advantage.

• Question-oriented: A lot of voice searches begin with question-oriented keywords.

• Mobile-first: Even though plenty of devices have voice search, it is used more on mobile devices.

Here's how you can optimize your PPC campaigns for voice search:

• Analyze current search terms: Check the specific search terms which people have used to see your ad to better optimize for voice search. Visit Google Ads and head over to the Search Terms tab to click on Keywords. Now, see the searches that start with:

a. Hey Sirib. Ok, Googlec. Where do Id. Alexa

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• Concentrate on long-tail keywords and question phrases: Compared to text searches, voice searches are longer and more conversational. A majority of voice searches begin with questions such as how, where, what, etc. Tools like Answer the Public aid you in discovering long-tail keywords and question phrases.

• Know the searcher's position in the buying cycle: Usually, people who use the terms what or who are at the awareness stage. On the other hand, people who search for where or when are closer to the conversion stage. For PPC, bidding on where and when keywords may provide an advantage.

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As you have researched long-tail keywords, question phrases, and current search terms, you can create a keywords list to optimize your current campaign or incorporate them in a fresh campaign.

Note: When it comes to platforms, concentrate on Bing and Google. This is because Bing is the default search engine for Alexa. On the other hand, Google is the default search engine for both Apple and Google products.

5. Diversification is Key

Loss of control in Google may result in more companies shifting PPC dollars to Microsoft Ads and other search engines.

PPC marketers should diversify their skillset beyond Google Ads. Advertisers must become fully aware of the advertising platforms which provide them more control over their reach, messaging, and spending. One cannot depend heavily on Google Ads like earlier.

Remember, diversification is vital for an effective PPC strategy. It is time to diversify advertising beyond Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads Search and Display. This means testing Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and Verizon Media's native ads.

There are many alternative PPC platforms you can use to diversify your ad spend. Here's a list:

• LinkedIn: This is an ideal advertising platform if you are a B2B company. You can reach millions of users using targeting options such as company, job title, education, industry, company connections, and interests.
• Quora: Quora has about 300 million monthly unique visitors. To influence people when they are at the consideration phase of the buyer's journey, advertisers can target the content or users as per their activity on the platform.
• AdRoll: AdRoll helps businesses in running ads on different channels from one place.
• Bing: For every search on Bing, 34 searches are made on Google (Ahrefs, 2021). So, you can definitely use this platform.

6. Perfecting The Ad Message

How you articulate your ad message is of paramount importance in 2021. You must, therefore, focus on gaining deep insights into buyer personas. A wrong message is an opportunity missed.

How to craft a successful text ad?

To reach your potential customers, your ads should be alluring, hold relevance, must empower, and be specific. Let's discuss the best practices for writing excellent text ads and the mistakes you need to avoid:

• Highlight what makes you different: Tell people about the services, products, or offers that make you competitive. For instance, if you provide free shipping, then mention it in your text ad!
• Include promotions, prices, and exclusives: People often conduct a Google search to decide about something. Hence, mention if you have an exclusive product or are offering a limited-time discount.
• Prompt the person to take action: If you are selling something, inform the potential customers what they can buy. If you are providing a service, share your contact information. Calls to action such as call today, browse, purchase, get a quote, etc. provide clarity about further steps.
• Include at least one keyword: Keywords in your ad will depict your ad's relevance to what people need. For instance, if you want to include a keyword called basketball hoops, your ad headline can be buy basketball hoops.

• Ensure your ad is matched to your landing page: Take a look at the landing page (the page you link to from your ad). It should feature the products or promotions in your ad. Your potential customers can leave your site if they don't see what they came expecting.

• Ensure that your ads are high-quality: Your ads should not have extra spaces, unclear URLs, and strange capitalization.

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7. A Great Mobile Experience is Crucial

Are you amazed to see this in a list of PPC trends? You certainly shouldn't be. If brands want to win this year, they must have an easy-to-operate and accessible mobile site. It may surprise you, but many people have not even checked out their website on a mobile, let alone other devices.

Now, more than ever, it is crucial to have an up and running mobile site. It will only help you get traffic that you can use to your benefit. The importance of a mobile experience that delights visitors and continues to bring them back cannot be emphasized enough.

Tip: There is a high chance that people who see your ads on mobile devices want to call you or know your location. You can show your phone number and location with call extensions and location extensions. Also, think about crafting ads that are specifically aimed at potential customers on mobile devices. For this, use your site's mobile version as a landing page.

8. PPC Automation

One of the significant trends in PPC advertising to look out for in this year is automation the use of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for automating labor-intensive tasks linked with Google and Bing ads.

Automation in PPC is not something new, but it is important to note that it will start to play a significant role this year.

Automation will be used for the optimization of PPC campaigns and PPC experts will willingly adapt it to:

• Put an end to low-performing ads and give priority to the ones producing the best results
• Recognize performance issues within an account
• Dynamically produce ads based on website content and user behavior
• Automatically create ad performance reports

Tip: DashClicks' White Label Dashboard helps you to manage your client's PPC Campaigns. If you are an agency and want a personal white label dashboard for PPC clients and manage things with the help of automation, you can check out DashClicks' White Label PPC. Sign up for the platform today. It's free!

9. Artificial Intelligence

As we are all already aware, AI continues to transform the world. When it comes to PPC, it will help marketers to create outstanding ad campaigns and will be specifically useful in:

• Calculating how ads impact quality scores (a quality score is a value that considers your relevance, landing page quality, and click-through rate)
• Predicting the CTR of future ads.
• Knowing the likelihood of conversion from a particular customer.
• Examining the bids which have the likelihood of getting maximum traffic.
• Optimizing keywords, campaigns, or ads when a particular event takes place (for example, when your CPC falls below a particular amount).

As AI becomes more aware of your audience's behavior, it can create targeted ads more accurately. This, in turn, increases the performance of your PPC campaigns as well as Bing, Google, and Amazon ads.

AI can power up Amazon Ads campaigns in the following ways:

• Make bid changes according to the predicted revenue per click of keywords.
• Automate bids for both long-tail and short-tail keywords.
• Provide comprehensive diagnostic information for active keywords.

The benefits of AI don't end here!

AI is incredibly useful in creating great reports. Adzooma, a Google partner, can make PPC reports in just a few steps. Here's is what you need to do:

• Link your Google Ads account
• Go to the reporting tab in the top corner and click on Create Report.
• Add the elements you need in the report along with images, your logo, and text.
• Choose the metrics you want, such as ACoS, keywords, etc. in the format you require (line graph, table, etc.).

And you are done! Your report will get created.

10. Virtual Reality Ads

Virtual Reality's growing popularity has given rise to new opportunities for advertisers. The goal of virtual reality ads is simple - to help viewers try out the product before they purchase it.

The significant ways in which VR can change PPC ads are:

• VR gives information about parts of the screen that the viewers are interacting with and the parts that they are looking at.
• It makes use of eye-tracking technology for ad activation. When the user looks at it for a few moments, the ad begins.
• The Gen Zers and the Millennials are using VR the most, and hence, it is easier to target them in the upcoming years.
• 360-degree videos are one of the best videos to make consumers know about and interact with your products.

Bottomline

To make the most out of your PPC advertising campaigns, you need to know and leverage these latest PPC trends. This year, there will be an increase in video ads (which also includes 360-degree videos). AI and automation will transform the way businesses make and run ads. Also, marketers who will optimize their ads for voice search are going to see improved results.