PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising can help you achieve your sales and marketing goals. PPC is a powerful tool that can support many parts of the sales funnel, aligning website traffic drivers to end goals.
Some powerful benefits of using PPC are:
- PPC is measurable and trackable
- It can meaningfully contribute to business goals
- PPC puts you in complete control over an extensive range of options to reach potential customers
- It works well with other marketing channels such as SEO
- PPC has incredible targeting options that help you reach customers who have been exposed to your brand as well as those who aren’t yet on your audience list
Considering the benefits of PPC, you should have already started planning your 2023 PPC strategy because the new year is just around the corner.
Paid ads convert better as shown by statistics. According to the data, organic results only get 35 percent of clicks, compared to paid ads at 65 percent.
This means ad clickers are 50 percent more likely to visit and buy products than organic visitors. Therefore, it is important for every marketer to keep up-to-date on the major PPC trends for 2023.
PPC Trends to Look Out For in 2023
In this post, we will be discussing five PPC trends that will help you create an effective search engine marketing strategy in 2023 and beyond.
#1. PPC Automation (AI and ML Mechanisms) 
Automation in PPC is not brand new, however, it will play a much bigger role in ad testing moving forward.
PPC automation improves campaign performance by reducing costs and increasing efficiency, thereby allowing businesses to completely focus on selling products or services.
PPC automation uses AI and ML mechanisms to track and optimize the bids. This automated strategy saves time and ensures a faster workflow, allowing you to focus your efforts elsewhere.
AI systems are expected to get better at understanding language and context.
With these improved capabilities, search engine algorithms will be able to better comprehend how users search for products or services. This will help them make recommendations based on those searches.
Automation will allow you to automatically set your bids for keywords and ad groups, which will help you save precious time as you don’t have to manually adjust them every day.
Automated bidding will help you optimize your cost per conversion and maximize your ROI quickly and more conveniently, as compared to manual bidding.
#2. Integration of PPC with Social Media Platforms
If you are not including social media in your PPC strategies, you are missing out on a big opportunity. The number of people checking at least one social media platform on a daily basis continues to increase.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are some popular social media platforms that people use on a daily basis. In fact, many segments of the populace, especially the younger demographics, use multiple platforms every single day.
Even though Facebook is the top social media advertising platform when it comes to targeting and reach, you should consider expanding your horizons.
Paid search and social media together have the potential to create a more complete user experience.
For example, customers may be able to purchase your product directly from your ad on Facebook or Instagram, instead of asking them to click through to your own website first.
It is very likely that people will become comfortable with the idea of purchasing products via Facebook or Instagram, as they will find it easier to make purchases on social media platforms.
#3. Video Ads
The human attention span has seen a 25 percent drop from 12-to-8 seconds since the year 2000. This means you have only 8 seconds to impress your prospective customers, trying to convince them to explore your product further.
When you have such a short timeframe, video ads are a better option compared to traditional text. A video ad can pass on much more information in 8 seconds.
An interesting visual coupled with a good voice-over can incite curiosity, ultimately leading to conversions. Video ads have the potential to attract the audience’s attention more effectively.
72% of customers prefer to learn about a product or service through videos. They also prefer video over text for receiving branded market information.
#4. A Surge in Voice Search
Voice search sales are expected to be on the rise in 2023, as the number of people talking to their digital assistants and smartphones will increase.
With the number of consumers searching for local businesses online using voice search growing, you will see an increase in voice search integration with PPC in the coming year.
Paid voice search advertising hasn’t become mainstream yet. However, personal assistant speakers such as Alexa, Siri, and Cortana have taken off in a big way.
Due to rapidly changing and evolving technology, it is almost certain that we will start seeing paid voice search advertising becoming mainstream soon.
#5. More Focus on Target Audiences
If your product is only for a certain demographic, audience targeting will help you narrow down the people who can see your ads. This feature will help you squeeze the most out of your ad budget.
Audience targeting allows you to specify the age group, location, or gender that your product targets.
If you think your ad will not appeal to a certain audience, this feature provides you with the option of setting ad preferences to exclude them.
For example, let’s say you are selling women’s dresses. With audience targeting, you can exclude men.
Or perhaps you are selling luxury cars. For this group, you might want to exclude people with a yearly income of less than $100,000.
The audience targeting feature allows you to use keyword targeting and demographic targeting together to create more relevant ads.
Other Trends to Be Aware Of
Remarketing, SEO and PPC integration, and collaborative filtering are a few other PPC trends to look out for in 2023.
Collaborative filtering is a grouping system that aims to group users based on their interests, preferences, age group, location, and so on. With this grouping, you can better guide them to content that would appeal to them.
Wrapping Up
Keep an eye on how the PPC market is evolving each year if you want to remain relevant and stay competitive.
The PPC trends explained in this post will allow you to stay ahead of the curve and reach more customers at a faster rate.
Since digital marketing along with PPC continuously evolves, your marketing strategies should also be constantly evolving if you want to build a strong position.
Always strive to stay at the forefront of new technologies. And you can begin with these PPC trends to give yourself a jump start.
All Images taken as screenshots from various Google reporting and advertising platforms.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
This guest post brought to you courtesy of Return On Now, Professional Austin SEO and PPC Services Company.
Andy Beohar
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- 5 PPC Trends to Look Out For in 2023 - January 17, 2023
