Tips for your 2019 PPC Campaign & Strategy

Are you looking to stay ahead of the crowd in 2019 and focus your digital advertising efforts? If so, we have some top trends you should be focusing on:

Amazon PPC

The largest online retailer, that just keeps getting bigger! Since the emergence of eCommerce websites, Amazon has been the main platform for retailers to sell their products through. However, over recent years, Amazon has become a huge advertising network. A lot of clients aren’t tapping in and utilising this network fully and the opportunity really is endless.

The majority of global PPC spend continues to be absorbed by Google products. Despite the likes of Bing, Facebook and other territory-specific search engines taking their share, it’s the growth of Amazon Marketing Services that Google will be most fearful of.

For product retailers, Amazon has a large appeal, especially if Google Shopping has not been providing the desired return. We have seen retailers try and become less dependent on one channel to market, and Amazon offers a very attractive alternative with its huge audience and specific targeting. We’ve seen this in 2018, and we fully expect further uptake of AMS in 2019.

The one potential issue Amazon faces is the sustainability of small advertisers. With the platform taking a large percentage cut of product sales, coupled with ad spend, retailers need to make sure their margins are high enough to remain profitable. Smaller advertisers may find this challenging.

Video

There is an increased understanding from smaller businesses that brand awareness is a vital aspect of any successful online marketing. As a result, more campaigns are now being designed with that being the primary objective, and in turn, a video format is the desired media choice.

Reach, aesthetic appeal and low costs are all reasons why video is commonly used. With more inventory options available to advertisers where video formats can be displayed, we anticipate further increased activity in 2019.

One of the main inventories is, of course, YouTube, and there is a real focus of effort from Google to support smaller businesses to start video advertising. New product releases which allow the advertiser to measure, and even pay, using conversion metrics rather than reach. This is seen as a massive change and one that’s welcome. There will now be visibility on what end value your video campaigns provide. There is also the challenge of creating ad assets, an area where Google is offering support. With a number of shooting and editing tools, it’s never been easier to create an ad. And for certain regions, Google now offers a YouTube Director onsite video service where a professional will come and shoot the video for you.

Think about your ads

Ultimately, no matter what PPC platform you’re using, great ads will always be an important key to PPC marketing success. With all of the new ad options released in 2018, figuring out how to create the right ad in the right format for the right audience is more important than ever,

Is your Remarketing Strategy Working for you?

Remarketing has been an important part of any digital marketing strategy for years, but consumers are now well aware of what these ads are and how they work. To really make the most of your remarketing ads in 2019, you need to rethink how you approach remarketing.

To date, most businesses have run remarketing campaigns under the assumption that the 98% of web traffic exits your site without converting might convert if you could just get back in front of them. All you have to do is run the same sort of content in front of these people again and they’ll return and make a purchase, right?

That might work…if everyone who clicked on your ad was ready to buy right now.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, only about 4% of the people who visit your site are ready to buy.

This presents a bit of a conundrum. If only 4% of your traffic is ready to buy and you’re already converting 2% of your traffic, that means your advertising is already converting half of the available opportunities. If all you do with your remarketing is push the same message you used the first time around, remarketing might—at best—enable you to convert 4% of your traffic.

But what about the rest of your traffic? The ones who were interested enough to click, but not ready to buy? Can remarketing help you with them?

The answer, of course, is yes, but in 2019, it won’t work to ads with the goal to get people to “Buy Now” or “Convert Now”, you need to create ads that help convince people that they are ready to buy—and buy from you.

Done properly, remarketing in 2019 actually falls much more in line with the audience-based marketing approach we discussed earlier in this article. Instead of trying to beat people who aren’t ready to buy into buying from you, you need to use what you know about your audience and where they are at in the buying cycle to create ads that help them get ready to buy.

Need any help in developing your PPC strategy for 2019? Get in touch now and our specialists will help you.