Many things have changed after a year full of unprecedented situations generated by the coronavirus. Companies are shifting to telecommuting, people prefer to shop online instead of going to a physical store, and conversations between people have turned into video calls.
A lot has changed this year, even from the point of view of ads and marketing in general. Advertisers have started to use automation and artificial intelligence more to create data-driven ads. Likewise, they have prioritized the consumer's buying journey to get the most out of it. That's why I present to you these three trends we will see from these changes.
In early 2020, Google announced that it would stop allowing third-party tracking pixels due to security concerns. This is how the unreliability of third-party pixels for YouTube metrics led Google to invest in Ads Data Hub.
This tool allows you to get customized analytics aligning data with specific objectives, while maintaining privacy and security. It also offers advertisers different types of analytics to measure the effectiveness of their ads across different types of devices.
This is how Ads Data Hub will become a gold mine for advertisers as it will provide them with specific statistics about the behavior of their consumers and how they interact with their ads.
An essential aspect of a PPC campaign is to know how your consumers behave with your ads, at each stage of their buying journey. Understanding each of these stages of your audience will help you create better campaigns.
Here are 5 stages of the consumer buying journey and how to get the most out of your PPC campaigns for each stage.
At this point, consumers are learning about your business and your offering. People are looking for an answer to their questions. In other words, they are looking for someone to solve them, so at this stage their needs are not well defined.
How to take advantage of this stage?
Help them understand their needs and align your offer accordingly. Use ads with your brand identity to gain their attention. Use the keywords they use when they make their queries so that when they see your ads it generates curiosity in them and motivates them to inquire more about your proposal and your brand.
At this stage, the consumer knows more about the answer that solves their problem. At this stage, the potential buyer is sure of their need and probably knows different ways to solve their situation. Here they see you as part of the range of options and evaluate your value proposition, the comments and testimonials of other buyers, etc.
How can you help?
At this stage, you can reach out to your audience and build long-term relationships. To do this, you can use Facebook lead generation ads to address your customers' problems. This type of campaign will help you solve your potential buyers' doubts.
In this step, consumers evaluate different offers and find those that best suit their needs. At this stage, your potential customers know the market prices, the comments of other buyers and the ratings of the pages where your products appear. This is a good opportunity to create an ad in which you can identify your audience with the use of cookies to reinforce your brand positioning.
At this point your customers are already aware of their needs. Here they have already discarded the options that did not convince them and are ready to buy. This is where you must have a very strong call to action in your ads to motivate this audience to buy your product. A convincing call to action should lead your customers to make a purchase, so retargeting actions will help your customers to always keep you in mind when making their purchase decision.
Finally, your prospect has become a customer, so all your efforts at this point should be focused on retaining them. The best way to achieve this, in addition to top-notch service, is by segmenting your audience into different retargeting groups with ads that draw their attention to your other products or services.
According to Statista, the size of the automation market will grow between 71.5% and 83.2% during 2021.
According to this analysis, automation is expected to be a revolutionary trend during this year. This is because thanks to Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technologies, advertisers will be able to automate tasks that allow them to find the right place for their ads. This topic will also be very important when testing different types of campaigns and will help you to:
As AI learns more about audience behavior and how they interact with your ads, you can create campaigns that improve your PPC performance.
As an advertiser, I recommend that you incorporate these PPC trends into your marketing strategy to get the most out of your campaigns. During this year, automation generated by Artificial Intelligence will be at the forefront. Also, understanding the stages of the customer journey will be very important to respond to the needs of your audience.
In addition to these trends we will see an increase in video ads for virtual reality and advertisers will probably turn their attention to other platforms such as Quora, LinkedIn, Reddit to reach more and more potential customers.
I hope that knowing these trends will help you better understand where the industry is going and where you should focus your efforts in order to improve your PPC campaigns.