8 Best PPC Strategies 2021

Pay per click advertising is in a state of constant development. Each year brings new tools and trends to the PPC world. As advertisers, it’s our duty to explore, discuss and test these trends to determine which ones rise to the top and are viable additions to the way that we conduct our ad campaigns.

This year, there are 8 key strategies that have become crucial for advertisers to recognize, understand and, when applicable, utilize in their campaigns.

1. Continued Maturation Of Machine Learning Tools

Automation is a powerful trend that is driving changes in many different industries. Machine learning has been rapidly maturing over the past several years. Each year it becomes more and more sophisticated and helps us automate more tasks.

Automation is proving to be a powerful tool in PPC. In particular, it is helping advertisers spend less time on tightening the nuts and bolts of their campaigns, thereby freeing up more time for overseeing campaigns and ensuring their overall success.

Tools like Google’s Smart Display campaigns, Smart Bidding and responsive search ads are helping advertisers automate their bidding adjustments, ad copy tests and other exhausting processes.

2. Optimize For Voice Search

Devices equipped with VPAs (virtual personal assistants) as on the rise, which means more and more people are searching with their voice, instead of their keyboard. Voice searches come from smartphone and mobile devices using Siri, Cortana and other popular VPAs, as well as smart home devices, like Amazon’s Alexa.

Voice searches are typically longer than typed queries, which means targeting longer keyword phrases may provide additional value as this strategy continues to grow.

As a first-step, you should check your campaigns and see how much traffic you’re acquiring as a result of voice searches. Pay particular attention to what types of queries your search traffic is making, as this can help you better understand just how your customers use VPAs to find your business and its products.

3. Also… Optimize For Mobile

Ads targeted specifically to mobile devices have been on the rise. Not only do consumers now favor shopping on mobile devices over desktops, but it has also become common practice to use these devices when shopping or researching products, even while standing inside a store.

To help capture these highly qualified leads, PPC managers need to pay close attention to the subtle ways that mobile searches differ from desktop ones.

It’s a smart idea to spend some time optimizing your website and landing pages to ensure that they function smoothly on mobile devices. These users absolutely won’t stand for two things: slow loading times and poor mobile experiences!

4. Friction Is The Enemy

Mobile users aren’t alone in their need to have fast, well-optimized experiences. Friction is the enemy during all of your campaigns. You never want to give any potential customer a reason to click away, or never click at all.

Friction is a particularly dangerous adversary in the later stages of the PPC process. If your landing pages are not helping you turn clicks into conversions, then this could be a sign that the experience is too clunky.

For some businesses, reducing friction is a simple matter of limiting the number of steps that a visitor is required to take before completing the desired action. For example, if your checkout process is overwhelming, many shoppers are leaving before they complete their purchase.

5. Keep A PPC Advertising “Slush” Fund

Because PPC is so dynamic and your campaigns are ever-changing, it’s a smart idea to keep a little bit of your ad budget in reserve. This will give you a nice cushion that you can spend on testing new copy or keyword categories.

If you’ve already accounted for testing in your PPC budget, having a slush fund is still a wise step. The extra room in the budget can be used to take advantage of trending keywords or viral phenomenons.

In short, a little bit of wiggle room in your budget can be a big comfort and even help you capitalize on new opportunities.

6. Combat Click Fraud

There’s arguably nothing more aggravating to a PPC manager than click fraud. This occurs when illegitimate sites “click” your ads. Often, these clicks are fraudulent because they are performed by lines of code instead of actual human beings.

Not only can these clicks cost you money, but they can create inaccuracies in your PPC data.

On Facebook Advertising, you can turn off ‘Audience Network.’ This will help alleviate a lot of your click fraud woes. Google Ads users can also experience click fraud. On this platform, turn off ‘managed placements’ on the Google Display Network.

Alternatively, you can simply exclude placements on sites that are resulting in lots of click fraud, but this can be very tedious.

7. Retarget, Retarget, Retarget

Your site has lots of visitors on a daily, weekly and monthly basis that can be effectively re-marketed to. Perhaps, these individuals were only in the beginning stages of the sales funnel. Now, they may be closer to making a purchase.

So, don’t be afraid to reach out with an offer, or simply remind them of the solutions you provide to remedy their problems. To understand who these users are, your site should have URL tracking turned on, which will help you create lists to retarget with your ads.

Retargeting has always been an effective PPC strategy. In 2020, it may become even more effective, especially as consumers become weary of how their information is being stored and used on the Internet. They may favor a familiar brand over a name they’ve never heard before.

8. Align PPC Campaigns With Messenger And Chatbots

If your business uses a messaging service or chatbot as part of its marketing efforts and customer experience, it is important that this is aligned with the content and messages included in your PPC campaigns.

Remember strategy #4: friction is the enemy. You wouldn’t want a potential lead landing on your page, accessing your chat service and asking questions related to the landing page, only to find that your chatbot isn’t ready to manage those requests.

Conclusions

With these 8 strategies, you’ll be ready to optimize your campaigns to meet the current PPC environment. As always, it is important to pay close attention to what is coming in future months and years. You never know what trends will be impacting PPC next.