PPC advertising has always been a core part of any digital marketing strategy, and a perfect complement to SEO tactics.
However, with changes in users’ search behavior and the rise of AI-powered search, such as AI Overviews (previously known as Google Search Generative Experience, SGE), some marketers are beginning to question the value of PPC advertising. Nonetheless, it still remains a hugely important form of advertising for many brands.
What’s happening with PPC?
As well as the increasing importance of AI in search, there have been other noticeable changes recently in the search world. This has also led to several challenges, which we discussed recently on the DMI podcast. Let’s look at six of the key challenges in more detail below.
Competition is increasing
After the pandemic, demand dropped as people moved away from online, but there was still a huge amount of competition for clicks. One of the battles that PPC specialists are fighting is to keep their cost per clicks down in the face of this competition.
Temu, the online retailer, spent about $15 billion on PPC ads alone in 2023. When you’ve got a huge spender like that, it increases competition for everyone and you have to work even harder to keep your cost per clicks down.
Brands need to move away from ROAS
Marketers often feel stifled because they think they need to meet traditional key metrics (such as ROAS), which could distract them from taking a more holistic or strategic view of their campaigns. Metrics alone can sometimes give a distorted picture – such as how they did during the pandemic, when people were purchasing much more online.
Costs are rising
It’s not just competition that’s driving up costs: Google is charging for clicks based on complex and sometimes opaque criteria that PPC experts can do little to control.
Although Google search remains a key part of any customer journey (and one that marketers can’t afford to ignore), PPC has become a very costly channel for many brands.
Marketers need to grow brands
Marketers need to look beyond the specifics of their PPC costs. This means they should examine their campaigns holistically and supplement PPC KPIs with brand searches or brand growth.
So, even though costs per click have increased, a PPC campaign might still be finding new customers and still helping the brand to grow. Whatever you do in one place will always have an effect outside of that one place, so you can impact the way that people think about your brand when they’re doing other things and they’re in other channels. You improve their receptiveness to other channels of advertising.
Search’s role in the marketing funnel has changed
One of the big changes we’ve seen is that paid search has moved up the funnel. Brands are buying against more informational keywords, when people are still in the Awareness and Considerations stages.
Google has realized this opportunity and come up with new campaign types within Google Ads (such as Demand Gen). These enable marketers to move up the funnel. In response, brands are becoming more willing to accept more expensive costs per click if they feel that they are attracting more new leads or potential ecommerce customers during the early stages of the customer journey.
Marketers have to use AI and automation strategically
AI and automation can help marketers be much more efficient in their PPC campaigns. However, marketers need to be strategic in how they do this.
It’s important to recognize when the AI systems might not be making the best decisions for your brand. If you decide to use the AI and automation elements within Google Ads, you’ll only get so far. You’ll cease to have a competitive advantage, and your results will be mediocre.
Strategies for success: Thinking beyond search
Given all these changes and challenges in the PPC world, how can you best optimize your paid search campaigns?
1. Use YouTube ads
When crafting your PPC campaign, don’t forget to consider other channels, such as video and display. This enables you to reach customers across the Google ecosystem, including Google Display Network (GDN) and YouTube.
If you manage your spend effectively, this can be a very effective way of broadening out the scope of who you’re actually targeting and moving beyond just capturing people through search. There are great opportunities for you to show relevant ads to people as they move across the Google ecosystem, but you need to manage that campaign objective.
YouTube can be a particularly effective channel because many brands treat it as an after-thought in their PPC campaigns. This is a chance for you to shine in a space where your competitors may not yet be very active.
It has got so many hours of content uploaded, and it’s user-led content. And it is the top streaming service in America. In fact, 8.6% of YouTube users are watching the content on their TVs in their living rooms with their families. For now, it’s a very cost-effective ad space.
However, bear in mind that there will come a time when large brands recognize the power of YouTube and we’ll see the costs starting to go up, particularly as linear TV continues to degrade. But right now, as a small brand, with YouTube ads you can appear in somebody’s living room at evening prime time.
2. Explore Demand Gen campaigns
Keep in mind that the Google Ads suite is an advertising platform and an ad buying tool. When you set up a new Google Ads campaign, you’ve got options such as a search campaign, a video campaign, and Demand Gen.
A Demand Gen campaign enables you to use native ads to generate leads and demand at the top of the marketing funnel (during the Awareness and Consideration stages). It is essentially Google’s play for the social media advertising space, with YouTube being one of the largest demand-generating social media platforms available. This enables Google to generate demand even before people start searching for solutions.
When your search campaign is maxed out, you can use a Demand Gen campaign to literally generate demand and then stimulate more searches.
3. Optimize landing pages
Often when people are crafting a PPC campaign, they forget to consider what happens after people click the link. This is why it is so important to consider the landing page that searchers are brought to after they click. Google examines landing pages to assess the quality of your ad campaign.
Ask yourself:
- What questions are people asking Google? (Their search keywords)
- What response are you giving to these searches? (Your PPC ads)
- Where are you going to take them to complete their task? (Your landing page)
Your landing page is the one part of the search journey you can completely control, unlike the ad auction or what happens in the PPC marketplace. So rather than just sending searchers to a page on the website, consider creating a bespoke landing page that enables the searcher to do what they want to do – and what you want them to do, using data capture content.
Think about where people are in their journey and what action they need to take. If people are searching for a product, bring them straight to that product page, not the homepage.
Pro tip: Make sure you have the relevant product in stock. Otherwise, you could be wasting money on clicks that don’t convert.
4. Know when your search campaign isn’t working
Sometimes, search is not the most effective channel for your product or service. You might, for example, be serving a very niche market, or using keywords that just don’t drive traffic.
Consider on a case-by-case basis. Ultimately, search might not be the answer because if you can’t get searches, you can’t get searches. Maybe a content marketing strategy is more appropriate, for example, especially if your market has not yet developed.
You might have a great product, but there’s just not much search volume for that particular keyword. In this case, you might need to focus on building demand for your brand. So rather than trying to get people to search for that niche keyword, get people to search for your brand name.
Remember, digital marketing has become established enough that you can build a build solely using digital platforms. Focus on driving interest for your brand (using, for example, ads on YouTube). And then, when people are ready to buy, they’re going to remember you and come back searching for your brand.
5. Have accurate measurement and reporting
Measurement is probably one of the biggest challenges faced by marketers at the moment, especially with the challenges of Google Analytics 4 (GA4). You may need to supplement your GA4 data with other sources (such as backend views from Shopify) to really understand what’s driving conversions for you.
Think beyond the monthly report, and look holistically at campaign performance over the long term. If you can extend your view on performance to look at performance over six months or a year, you can supplement it with metrics that are more important. For example, how many new customers have you added? How many people are looking for your brand? What does your share of search look like?
Marketing mix modeling
One way to get a holistic view of a campaign is to use marketing mix modeling. This is a type of qualitative research and statistical analysis to try and understand which of your marketing investments has had the biggest impact on your marketing outcomes.
You look at the cost inputs on the channels that you’ve used and then look at your sales at a top level. This lets you do statistical analysis to discover which of those channels and investments have had the biggest impact. However, this takes a long time and it needs a large amount of data.
6. Get to know GA4
The GA4 interface is complex and evolving,with tweaks, AI features, and recommendations that need to be carefully navigated.
Google Ads has been around a long time, and it’s very good at what it does, enabling you to show ads and ultimately make money for Google. And now GA4 is enabling you to automate many decisions with its AI integrations, nudging you towards what Google thinks are best practices. (There’s even an option to apply all recommendations, with a hard-to-resist blue button!) However, it’s worth taking the time to carefully judge whether GA4 is making the right decisions for you.
7. Change your bidding strategy when necessary
With Google Ads, you can automate your bidding with Smart Bidding.
However, it’s worth doing some optimization through A/B testing to see whether Smart Bidding is more effective for you than manual bidding. You may, for example, get a higher impression share or lower cost per click with manual bidding.
Pro tip: You could use a combination of manual and automated bidding. For example, you might find that careful manual bidding is more effective at the start of a campaign. You could then decide to switch to automated bidding once the campaign is up and running for a few weeks. And then, if the results start to decline after a while, you can choose to switch back to manual bidding.
8. Change default location targeting, if necessary
In Google Ads, the default option for location targeting is people who are in your physical location. However, you may not want to target people who are in your area.
If you’re targeting the UK, that means people who are in the UK and people are interested in the UK or on the UK version of Google. So obviously the most important location setting is people who are regularly in your target location.
9. Use negative keywords strategically
Unless you are promoting free versions of a product, you should add the negative keyword ‘free’ to your campaign, so people aren’t looking at free versions of your product.
However, Google is matching different language searches. Say, for example, you’re targeting campaigns across Europe. Then, if people search in Spanish for your English keyword, Google will still probably match that. But you need to have the Spanish word for ‘free’ as a negative keyword.
Use ChatGPT to give you a list of the words ‘free in relation to price’ in all your target locations’ languages and then use these as negative keywords. So you can just add that word ‘free’ as a negative keyword on a phrase match to your campaigns across Europe. And it means that while you’re already negating any free searches in English, if Google decides to translate it, you get that too.
10. Set up proper conversion tracking with one goal
A common mistake among digital marketers is incorrect setup of conversion tracking. And it can throw everything off kilter. You need to carefully set up your conversion tracking, validate that it’s working, and make sure that you’re tracking the right conversion (and not multiple conversions).
Remember, many campaign decisions are made based on conversion tracking, so it’s very important to get it right. For example, you might be tracking the wrong type of conversion, or maybe you’re counting the same conversion multiple times. In such cases, any decision made after that by you or the Google algorithm is going to be based on incorrect data.
Pro tip: Having one goal for the campaign is often a good way to ensure that you’re tracking the right conversions, because this helps to give the campaign focus. For example, say you have two goals: add to cart and purchase. Then, if someone completes both actions, Google reports that two conversions have happened there. However, in some cases, you might only want to track who’s made a purchase.
Conclusion
Although PPC has become an increasingly complex and fluid space, it can still be a powerful channel for driving people to your website and increasing conversions. While, you need to be aware of the nuances of effective PPC advertising and know how to use the latest features, such as AI, automation, and Smart bidding, it ultimately boils down to:
- Keywords (questions)
- Ads (answers), and
- Landing pages (conversion points)
When designing and managing campaigns, use this simple process to your advantage and make your marketing more aligned to human behaviors.