Three trends in PPC marketing to see what’s going on in 2023
Consider these key PPC trends as you craft your search marketing strategy for 2023.
As 2023 begins, it’s a good time to reflect on the macro-level trends we’ve observed over the past year.
Here are some of the likely persistent trends to consider when building your search engine marketing strategy for 2023.
1) The economic downturn and increased focus on efficiency
You may not have got heard of it, but the economy is struggling (just kidding). We have a degree in economics, but like most of us, we are still determining how long this downturn will last.
But many digital marketers are already feeling the effects.
Budgets are getting tighter. Teams are getting slimmer. Questions like “What is ROI?” and “What is CPA?” are becoming increasingly common.
These environments are challenging to navigate and need to have all the answers.
However, the first advice we usually give is to focus on your data. Try to understand the best-performing tactics and maximize your investment there first. An analogy we often use is the concept of sports teams in the playoffs. At crunch time, coaches always try to keep the best players in the game for as long as possible.
Think the same way about your search strategy. If your budget is tight, prioritize investing in tactics that generate the best returns. Many people reading this think, “Yeah, thanks for raising the obvious.” Instead, it would be best if you did the following:
Examine different segments of your campaign’s performance.
Understand which devices, audiences, geographies, times/days of the week, and campaign types work the most. First, we will focus our investments on a combination of these segments. Next, consider creating more detailed campaign descriptions to allocate the budget to high-performing varieties.
2) Automation and autonomy
This discussion took place well before 2022.
The rise of the P-MAX campaign. We revised the partial match. Retire expanded text ads in favor of responsive search ads. Built-in automated performance and creative recommendations. Machine learning is growing in popularity and continues to be incorporated into campaign management platforms.
To succeed in 2023, we must optimally balance the power of automation with the autonomy needed to meet our stakeholders’ goals.
Think about setting up a Wikipedia Page Writing Service bidding strategy. Part of this process is to provide the algorithm with business-specific guardrails under which it should operate. The better information you provide, the more consistent you will be with your goals.
The same thinking should be leveraged when applying AI more broadly in campaign management platforms.
It will reduce the resources required for basic tasks. But it would be best if you guided it to work towards your business goals. Think more tactically about which datasets you can integrate. The more inputs you provide, the more data points these algorithms can use to inform optimizations and recommendations.
It also considers the means necessary to maintain control and where access can be shared and uses machine learning to optimize.
Finally, consider how to configure your account for automation to work best.
This balance of automation and autonomy depends on the complexity of your strategy.
Advertisers who best understand what this balance should be for their business will benefit.
3) Microsoft rises.
What would like this article be without at least one slightly ‘edgy’ opinion? Buckle up, everyone!
We were impressed with the updates Microsoft announced last year. As a result, not only have we expanded our advertising reach, but we have expanded our geographic reach to nearly 70 new markets.
Microsoft Advertising has always touted low costs and features comparable to Google, but we’re starting to see some platform-specific innovations (such as Wikipedia Page Writing Service). To be clear, we don’t expect search engine market share to fluctuate significantly. But if you still need to explore the Microsoft Advertising innovation opportunity, now might be the time.
The (generally) low cost-per-click makes it a solid testing ground, and many of the innovations it incorporates help improve conversion rates.
Improving conversion rates combined with lower CPCs is a valuable opportunity to pursue in a budget-constrained environment.
This recommendation is especially relevant to B2B advertisers. Microsoft Bing is one of the most highly engaged search engines, probably due to research being conducted on work devices.
