With the new year just around the corner, it’s time for marketers to review their strategies and campaigns. Like with any other marketing strategy, PPC (Pay-Per-Click) changes and evolves each year.
The main reason is that emerging trends have a major impact on digital marketing but also modern technology that influences the trends themselves, as well as consumer behavior.
That’s why it’s important to prepare in advance and make the necessary adjustments to your strategies so that you can remain both relevant and competitive in the market.
All companies want the best results without having to spend too many resources at once. And, if they are about to spend a lot of resources on their PPC campaigns, they want the best ROI (Return on Investment) possible.
That’s why it’s of vital importance to keep an eye out for the emerging trends that may change the way you advertise yourself, as well as your products or services.
Although paid advertisement has resisted major changes for years now, some factors became game-changers.
With that in mind, here are a few important PPC trends for 2022.
Photo by Launchpresso on Unsplash
1. Say goodbye to third-party data
Third-party data has been the foundation for many PPC campaigns for years. Companies acquire data from other sources so that they can perfect their strategies and learn as much as they can about their target audience.
Well, that’s about to change. The fact of the matter is that online consumers have growing concerns about their privacy. Furthermore, major browsers, such as Mozilla and Safari, have already implemented third-party cookie blockers.
Even Google is considering the same, but since most of their income originates from ad capital, they’ve pushed their decision until 2023. Nevertheless, come 2023, Google Chrome will have built-in third-party cookie blockers as well. So, what does that mean exactly?
Simply put, companies will have to rely on the first-party data they manage to gather themselves. In other words, you’ll be able to use data acquired directly from your audience, such as website visitors, social media etc.
Here are a few things you can do to boost first-party data analysis that will strengthen your future PPC campaigns.
- Gather the data from behavior and actions taken across your website, apps or product itself.
- Collect data from your CRM.
- Collect data from your social media platforms.
- Focus on data from your email subscriptions.
- Collect data from surveys and polls.
- Ask for customer feedback.
2. SEO and PPC integration
Due to the fact that it will become next to impossible to use third-party data, many marketers are considering SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC integration.
Undoubtedly, you’ve heard experts arguing that PPC and SEO are very different, but, in fact, they complement each other quite well.
Marketers finally agree to put these two together because they serve the same purpose even if they have different approaches. Still, by integrating PPC and SEO, companies will be able to achieve business goals much more efficiently.
Moreover, SEO can help companies gather first-party data organically, which they will later use to craft PPC campaigns. This type of data acquisition may prove to be more difficult. In that case, you can always hire a professional PPC marketing agency to help you out.
After all, it all comes down to choosing the right keywords, crafting an exceptional copy or content piece and using those to reach a specific audience. Considering the circumstances, SEO and PPC integration is likely to become a trend that will continue beyond 2022.
When two seemingly different marketing strategies join forces, the effectiveness of both tends to improve tenfold. It would be such a waste to ignore this trend and the potential it has to revolutionize advertising as we know it.
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
3. Using AI for automation
It’s a well-known fact that most marketing strategies are affected by modern technology. PPC is no different in this case. Modern technology has advanced rapidly and now we have artificial intelligence (AI) that’s being used more and more in different marketing campaigns.
The trend of using AI in PPC automation is likely to gain momentum in 2022. The main reason is that AI with its machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing capabilities can, in fact, improve the effectiveness of PPC campaigns.
Here are a few things AI can help with:
- Predict future ads click rates.
- Assess ad quality levels.
- Determine specific consumer conversion odds.
- Identify and analyze bids that are likely to produce more traffic.
Although we are far from having fully-developed AI, this technology is still pretty advanced. The only thing you have to do before being able to leverage this technology in the PPC automation process is to help it learn.
In other words, you have to teach AI which best practices to use so that it can draw its own conclusions. Here are a few things you should do.
- Identify your target audience.
- Identify the right keywords and long-tail phrases.
- Create high-quality copy.
- Focus on high conversion bids.
- Identify the best bidding strategies for different purposes.
4. Leverage social media
Social media popularity keeps increasing year after year. There are currently over 3.6 billion active social media users around the globe. Moreover, that number is expected to reach 4.41 billion by 2025.
Social advertisements have been a thing for a while, but it’s difficult for marketers to ignore this ever-growing market that’s full of opportunities.
This multi-platform approach that social media networks provide have the potential to bring brand awareness, product promotions and online visibility to a whole new level through paid ads.
Almost every social media platform has some form of paid ad feature you can explore. Here are some of the most common social media networks that marketers use for their PPC campaigns.
- YouTube
Each platform has its own unique audience and its own unique approach. For example, TikTok is a relatively new social media network that has recently introduced paid ads features for businesses.
The main difference is that TikTok is a platform mainly populated by the Gen Z audience. Therefore, if Gen Z is your target, TikTok might be a platform worth exploring in 2022.
Furthermore, the way products and services are being advertised on social media is also changing. For instance, video ads are more and more popular and many marketers are adjusting their strategies to include visual content in their PPC strategies.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
5. Remarketing strategies
When someone clicks on your ad, it doesn’t mean they’ll take action right away. This behavior is quite common in the PPC world and marketers are well aware of it. People either change their minds or they simply aren’t ready to convert.
Over the years, marketers have developed remarketing strategies to recapture leads that haven’t converted yet. This trend will become even more relevant in 2022 due to the fact that advertisers will have to rely on first-party data more than ever before.
In other words, every lead matters and you shouldn’t just let them go without trying to convince them to take the desired action. That’s why it’s vital that you work on your remarketing strategies in 2022.
Such strategies have proven time and again that they’re more than effective at sparking consumer interest.
They also make sure that ad clicks don’t go to waste so that you’re not throwing money away. So far, Google allows businesses to retarget leads while they browse numerous Google partner sites that belong to the Google Display Network.
However, once third-party cookies are out the window, retargeting and remarketing will become increasingly more difficult. Fortunately, that won’t happen until 2023 so there’s still time to leverage retargeting as it is now.
But what happens afterwards? Google says they’re experimenting with Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). This enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behavior of individual users. What it really does is provide privacy-preserving methods for interest-based ad selection.
What that means is that when users browse the web, the FLoC algorithm will determine their “interest cohort” and pair it with thousands of other browsers with a similar history.
Advertisers will, therefore, be able to display ads to parties that share the same interests and not target specific individuals. That said, remarketing will still work, just not the way it does now.
Closing words
PPC advertisement has seen a few changes over the years, but it seems like new trends will reshape PPC as we know it. PPC is designed to obtain results in a fast and reliable way, which is why so many companies opt for this strategy to begin with.
Still, the changes ahead of PPC may not look promising, but it’s not as bad as it seems.
Companies will simply have to redesign their campaign so that they can adjust to the new trends and new ways of doing things. After all, a change in the approach is sometimes necessary to get better results.
Author’s Bio
Christopher is a Digital Marketing specialist, Project Manager and Editor at Find Digital Agency and a passionate blogger. He is a dedicated and experienced author who pays particular attention to quality research and details. Focused on new web tech trends and digital voice distribution across different channels, he starts the day scrolling his digest on new digital trends while sipping a cup of coffee. In his free time Christopher plays drums and Magic: the Gathering.
