PPC strategies evolve at an extremely rapid pace, but it pays to keep up. The secret to standing above the competition often depends upon understanding the latest PPC advertising innovations. Here’s our roundup of coming online trends and PPC strategies you can use to succeed. The methods highlighted here can work across all industries.
Your Best PPC Strategies for 2018
When developing PPC strategies, consider the following trends to grow your business in 2018 and beyond:
1. More Powerful Personalization, Targeting and Campaign Analysis Capabilities: The capability for ever-more-specific PPC ad personalization and targeting (plus re-targeting) is available, but underused. You can, of course, target demographics and persona characteristics like age or income, customer type or purchase history/level (existing, repeat, prospect), sales funnel position, company role (for B2B ads) and more. Beyond these basics, you can now map the customer journey, learn how the visitor came to you and/or see much of the path taken to buy. This “attribution” insight can significantly improve the ROI of your 2018 campaigns; you’ll see what’s working and what isn’t, for better PPC strategies.
2. Voice Search Comes into Its Own: It’s time to start optimizing your ads for voice search: The ease of use and prevalence of virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, as well as Google’s Voice Search (“OK Google…”) make using vocal search utterly quick and convenient. Voice search accounted for 20 percent of mobile searches in 2016, according to a Kleiner Perkins study quoted by CNN. Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home are on many Christmas Wish Lists this year. Grab the voice searcher’s attention by using the first person question format in your ads and content. Most voice searches are geographically specific, so use correct and popular names for your local neighborhood(s), city, county, and region in your PPC ads.
3. Video Ads Become More Practical: Video engages viewers extremely effectively, but advertisers have sometimes avoided it because of the perceived difficulty in making a video and the high cost of running video ads. Remember, video ads can be very short, from 15 -30 seconds, depending upon where you run them. To keep production costs down, there will be more and more free video tools provided by advertisers who want your business, for instance, Boomerang, free Instagram video ad creator. In 2018, consider YouTube, which offers a variety of video ad formats and, as part of the Google ecosystem, makes a great bet to place effective PPC ads. Consider Bing advertising, especially for higher-end products, since one-third or their traffic earns over $100k. Look at options to advertise with Yahoo/Verizon, Facebook/Instagram, Amazon (for product ads), LinkedIn video ads (for B2B) and more.
PPC Takeaways to Dominate the Marketplace in 2018
- Use all your targeting powers for PPC ads and get used to the new Google ad options and any other platforms you’re using. Ad timing has never been more important and targeting has always been crucial. Now it’s more so to ensure you get the most from your ad dollar.
- Use voice search to your advantage by skewing your ad strategy toward answering questions customers need to know (intent), rather than just including keywords. Search engine AI for voice and mobile search is getting more sophisticated and better at serving results that meet the user’s intent, therefore PPC best practices will be continually refined.
- Consider video advertising even if you’ve shied away before. With today’s creation tools, as well as targeting and tracking data provided with your campaigns, it’s harder to make mistakes. Still wary of video ad creation or placement costs? Consider the next best thing, a Facebook slideshow ad.
Get the Best PPC Strategies for Your Business
At Ballantine, we specialize in developing a PPC strategy tailored to your company’s unique needs. Let us help you move ahead in 2018. Contact Ballantine today.
I'm the Director of Digital Services and Partner at Ballantine, a family-owned and operated direct mail & digital marketing company based in New Jersey. and started in 1966 by my great uncle!
