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.

Consumer buying behavior has undergone rapid changes in recent years. With so much marketing noise these days, users rarely make a purchase decision immediately after seeing an ad. They evaluate their purchase options several times before deciding.

When they are busy searching online, the various options available to them can be overwhelming. It is why Google terms this stage of a buyer's journey the "Messy Middle."

It's crucial to reconnect with your prospects, especially when they are evaluating their options. Remarketing is the only way to target such customers. Businesses generally use remarketing ads for brand awareness, but you can also use them to send the right marketing messages at the right time. Remarketing ad campaigns can boost your revenue by increasing conversions and ROAS (return on ad spend).

In this blog, we discuss in detail remarketing ads and how to use them effectively to get the most from your paid campaigns.

What is Remarketing?

Businesses are increasing the number of interactions with website visitors to boost sales. Since a user enters the sales funnel the first time they visit the website, it is your responsibility as a marketer to send them the right marketing messages to propel them further into the sales funnel. It increases their awareness of your brand, so the next time they make a purchase, they will consider your brand too.

Remarketing helps businesses achieve various objectives such as promoting awareness, increasing registrations, and driving sales. Initially, you can try both Google and Microsoft platforms for remarketing as both have distinct features. As a market leader, Google is known for its mind-blowing search volume. Meanwhile, Microsoft is known for less competition and affordable prices compared to Google.

Why Are Remarketing Ads so Important?

You can use remarketing ads on both Google and Microsoft to increase the impact of your regular PPC campaigns. Google gives you access to reach more than two million websites and apps through GDN (Google Display Network). Meanwhile, the Microsoft Audience Network allows you to reach users on reputed websites such as Forbes, Yahoo, AOL, and Amazon. You can produce engaging ads, leverage automated bidding, and extract performance reports using remarketing campaigns.

Types of PPC Remarketing Ads

Most remarketing ads target past visitors as they browse different websites on Google Display Network. Since the retargeting feature of PPC ads has a tremendous impact on your conversion rate, you can try several types of ads in this category. Some of them are:

A. Dynamic Remarketing Ads

It is highly customized and, therefore, highly effective. During dynamic remarketing, marketers try to bring users back to complete the buying cycle. They systematically show potential customers ads of specific products that they visited on their website. Highly targeted, these ads get the best results if shown at the right time.

B. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

Remarketing lists target the customers that perform follow-up searches after they see a product on a website. RLSA allows you to customize your search ads campaign for your website visitors. It also allows you to customize your bids and ads when these visitors search on Google and partner sites.

C. Video Marketing Ads

YouTube also allows you to remarket to the people who have viewed your videos or visited your YouTube channel. It is also an excellent way to generate leads and increase subscribers.

D. Customer Match Lists

Customer match lists allow advertisers to create paid ads to target prospects on different channels such as Search Network, Gmail, Display Network, and YouTube. They use a visitor's contact informationāphone number, email address, or physical address.

A customer match list is highly result-oriented. With it, you can match around 50.40% of your email list to real users who you can target through your ads. It allows Google Ads and Microsoft advertising to show ads online.

How to Implement Remarketing?

Although remarketing ads are a proven way to drive results, your strategy may vary according to your client's business goals. You can use the following to narrow down your campaign's focus and achieve your client's objectives.

A. As far as access to visitor information is concerned, Google advertisers are on top, and they can target most website visitors and app users. Therefore, you can use the "Google ads optimize list" to reach your website visitors, app users, and your audience at other places.

B. You can also use MSFT (Microsoft Corporation) ad targeting options on Microsoft platforms. It will help you experiment with innovative bidding techniques to optimize conversions.

Here are a few intelligent bidding strategies you can use to drive conversions:

A. Enhanced CPC (cost-per-click): It can help you tweak manual bids so you can target interested potential customers.B. Target CPA (cost per action): In such remarketing ads, you need to optimize your bidding to get maximum conversions at the predefined cost per action.C. Target ROAS: It allows you to generate more revenue at a predefined ROAS.

Tip: You need to raise your bid if you want to reach more customers and improve ROI. Consider making a bidding strategy to stay competitive and achieve a high-quality score and improved ad rank. With a better quality score, you have a higher chance of being seen on the Google Display Network.

How to Set Up PPC Remarketing Ad Campaigns?

A. You need to target lookalike audiences or customers with similar characteristics to those on your existing remarketing list.

B. Reconnect with the website visitors who abandoned their shopping carts.

C. If you have a list of customers, use it to upsell or cross-sell your secondary or complementary products. They are more likely to buy. You can also customize your ads for them and create remarketing lists for specific products.

D. To prevent inundating customers with an overwhelming number of ads, limit the number of times your visitors can see your ads.

E. Schedule the ads when your target audience is most likely to see them. You can use Google Analytics for this purpose.

Tips for Creating Effective Remarketing Ads

A. Use custom ads and keep the content relevant to your audience. Maintain visual uniformity, and use strong calls to action (CTAs). You should also test your ad copies frequently through split testing.

B. Use responsive display ads. They adjust to fit any space neatly. It will save you time and improve the user experience across different devices.

C. If you have a remarketing list that is more likely to convert, you can increase bids on it.

Conclusion

Since remarketing ads are created to help you reconnect with users who have already shown interest in your products, you should continue experimenting and tweaking your bidding strategy to improve your ROAS. In trying to connect with your ideal customers, focus on the objectives you want to attain.

If you need expert help with remarketing ads, DashClicks should be your one-stop destination. As a white label PPC agency, we will run your campaigns as per the latest market trends to achieve the best results. To learn more about our remarketing services, click here.

When creating your marketing blueprint and deciding how to allocate your time and resources to it, you should consider a few crucial distinctions. SEO and PPC (Pay Per Click) ads are two major digital marketing strategies, but you need to understand the difference between them to adopt the right approach for your business.

This article will explain whether you should invest in SEO or PPC to achieve better traffic and conversion results. It becomes even more critical when you are on a shoestring budget. SEO helps boost your search engine ranking and makes your website more relevant to users' queries.

You can't pay to rank high in organic rankings, this can be either a good or bad thing depending on who you ask. Furthermore, Google is committed to keeping organic search content extremely relevant and trustworthy for the users.

On the flip side, PPC ads are paid advertisements that we see next to the organic search results if you are looking at SERPs and also at other places online. It's important to note that running paid ads will not improve your SEO rankings and Google refutes such false claims.

SEO vs. PPC: Which One is Better?

Google started with organic search results, and still, it is its biggest USP (Unique Sales Proposition). When you perform a search on Google, organic listings come just after paid ads or sponsored results.Ā

Organic Rankings: What is SEO?

It's crucial to optimize your website properly to increase the visibility of your website. With increased visibility, your site will show up quite often when relevant search phrases are used. When improving your site's SEO, there are several things you can tweak.

What is PPC, and When Do We Need It?

Google Pay Per Click advertising offers many solutions, and Google Ads is one of them. It allows marketers to bid on the chance to appear as an ad next to the organic searches when a user makes a query to look for what you have to offer. However, in this case, you pay when someone clicks on your ad.

These ads provide you the opportunity to be in front of a wider audience online. You also have the freedom to tweak your ads at any point in time to target a specific customer segment by demographics or interest.

Apart from that, it also allows you to promote a specific deal. It's an excellent opportunity for small businesses and startups who cannot invest in their SEO. Still, at the same time, they need enhanced visibility to keep themselves in business by promoting sales.

Google Display Network

Beyond Google search, Google Ads also allow you to be in front of your audience through your ads on relevant websites in the Google Display Network or GDN.

GDN comprises thousands of websites on the Internet, where you can access many potential customers.

You can also have the freedom to pick specific sites from the network and select the type of audience you would like to target. You can also let Google create a customer list to meet your objectives.

It's important to note that Google Ads don't provide the same results as SEO, and it will also not help you improve your natural search rankings. However, they give so much flexibility that you can grab your potential audiences' attention right when it's crucial for you. It also helps you even if you are a startup and don't have enough resources and money to invest.

Why Won't PPC Help Improve My SEO?

The ultimate objective of Google is to provide relevant and high-quality search results to users. If businesses are allowed to pay for higher rankings, the user experience will suffer and users will not get the required information through Google search. It will defeat the very purpose Google was created for.

Google Ads (SEO) Tools

Google Ads can't boost your SEO, but when you create a Google Ads account, it provides you several tools that you can use to optimize your site. For example, you can use its Keyword Tool to create a list of phrases and keywords relevant to your business. These keywords are frequently used and have the potential to generate a lot of searches. You can include these keywords in your site's content to boost your search rankings.

Google also offers some ad tracking tools through its ads account to measure the impact of tweaks made to your website and ad campaigns, leading to more visitors and conversions. Such insights are beneficial in optimizing your website and campaigns in a much better way, which is not possible without using these tools.

Google offers these tools to its ad users for free. The search analytics report comes built-in with Google Analytics, and it can track the queries and keywords that are attracting more visitors to your site even when you aren't using Google Ads. These insights are incredibly valuable from an SEO perspective.

The Pros of SEO

Before you figure out where to invest your marketing budget, you need to understand SEO's main advantages.

Here are some essential facts about organic SEO:

1. It’s the most cost-effective way to improve your website’s visibility.
2. Natural rankings are entirely free.
3. With improved rankings, you can see sustained results for a long time.
4. The results you get are similar to placing your ad on the web for your potential customers 24/7 without paying a dime.
5. It does not depend on the bidding by your competitors, so results are mostly stable.
6. It’s the most cost-effective option in the long run when you expand your operations and number of keywords; this is not the case with PPC as you would have to pay for every click even when you grow.
7. According to a study by Sparktoro, organic rankings can attract more than ten times the amount of visitors than with paid results.

The Cons of SEO

Even with the tremendous advantages SEO offers, it is not the right fit for every business. It has the following cons.

1. SEO takes time, especially for startups and small businesses.
2. There is no way you can start receiving traffic through SEO from day one, which is possible with PPC.
3. Since SEO is vast and involves many things such as content creation, technical SEO, link building, and data analysis; you need an entire team of marketers with a solid strategy to work together on your SEO project. It requires a considerable and continued investment.
4. SEO is an ongoing process that is never complete, so you need to consistently work on it.
5. SEO is not only time-consuming, but it’s also overwhelming and you need to optimize your site for the algorithm updates every year using advanced SEO tools.
6. SEO offers no guarantees for higher rankings but you’ll attain significant results with perseverance and patience if you have a strategy in place.

The Pros of PPC

1. The instant results you get through PPC offer various advantages such as instant traffic and conversions.
2. It is extremely useful for e-commerce websites with multiple products.
3. It is the first thing that the user sees, so it is even more visible than the organic results.
4. It offers more opportunities to attract search users’ attention to your ad as it uses eye-catching pictures and rich text with phone numbers etc.
5. To run PPC ads campaigns, you need a small team of a paid search professional, a copywriter, and a graphic designer compared to a vast team you may require for SEO.
6. It allows you to target your customers using shopping ads, search ads, video ads, Gmail ads, etc. Organic rankings do not offer you such a variety of options to tap your customers.
7. PPC gives you a wealth of data on keywords and ad types that the customers click before making a purchase, providing better insights to tweak your campaigns and improve your return on ad spend (ROAS).
8. It allows you to take a laser-targeted approach to serve ads to your segmented audiences based on different factors such as the time of the day, their location, and the device they are using.

The Cons of PPC

1. Attracting traffic using PPC advertising isn’t free, and you have to pay for every click. Sometimes these clicks are so expensive that you cannot afford them for specific product types where the cost margin is relatively low.
2. You need to spend for every click, so your conversion rate is quite important. If your customers are not converting, it means you are wasting a lot of money on your campaigns.
3. The cost of clicks may rise with every competitor entering into the fray bidding for the same keywords. It makes it difficult and unpredictable.  
4. You may need a high initial investment to get started.

Organic Search vs. Paid Search: Which One Should I Choose?

Ultimately, it’s your call. It’s worth considering that both SEO and PPC have their pros and cons and help your business in different ways. These days, people search online before making a buying decision, which applies to all products and services. People use Google to check business reviews and answers to their queries. They also check recommendations from influencers and verified customers and both SEO and Google Ads help get in front of these potential customers.

While SEO is a traditional approach that gives your business the required visibility and the chance of being found by internet users worldwide, it takes time and organized efforts to achieve rankings on the first page of Google.

If you want to reach out to the people looking for the products you are offering, you can leverage Google Ads. It works immediately without having to wait for your site to move up in natural searches. PPC is helpful regardless of your business's size, and it allows you to customize your campaign while on the go.

The Conclusion

Since we have discussed the pros and cons of SEO and PPC, it's time to address the big issue -- which strategy is right for your business? Even though it varies based on your situation and what you want to achieve, a hybrid model will work best. You can integrate both strategies intelligently and get each oneā€™s benefits as per your situation and requirements. Dividing your budget and using both the techniques as a hybrid will help you bring traffic to your site in the short term and boost your online presence for long-term success.