Predicting the future can be a challenging task, especially in the ever-evolving world of Pay-per-click. With 2019 quickly coming to an end, it’s time to prepare for 2020 and put a PPC strategy in place as to prepare for the changes and new trends being introduced to the industry. In this article, we will discuss the biggest PPC trends coming in 2020 and how businesses can improve the performance of their paid search campaigns while keeping up to date on the latest changes.

Visual Search

The search results are becoming more visual, users now being able to upload images to search engines in order to find results of a high relevance based upon other images that are similar to those initially uploaded. This is a development that originated from the social platform Pinterest when their first visual search tool was released to the public almost 5 years ago in 2015. Since then, their visual discovery tools have been improved, updated and refined, the Pinterest Lens subsequently being introduced to its platform in 2017.

As tools such as this become more popular, other major social platforms have been seen to jump aboard this growing development, Snapchat and Instagram also working to provide their users with image searching capabilities. Snapchat has even announced a recent partnership with Amazon based around the visual search craze which allows for the search of products found on the Amazon site directly from the Snapchat lens. So, what do these developments mean for PPC?

Ensuring preparation for the growth in popularity of visual search may help to make it easier for potential customers to find you and your business in the near future. It is important that any companies looking to embrace this change begin to consider the images they can use to successfully showcase the products or services on offer by their business websites. It is also to be ensured that these images use the correct ALT text so that they can be picked up by the search engine result pages.

Make sure that you are using the best imagery in your campaigns that you possibly can. All photos should be of both high-quality and relevance, prioritising the showcase of your products and services at all times.

Voice Search

ComScore predicts that, by 2020, 50% of all searches made will be voice searches. This means the search terms and keywords used to trigger ads appearing will change as users interact in a different way to previous methods of search. While we’re still a while away from seeing the features of paid search used within voice search, it could still prove beneficial to prepare you campaigns. To do this, business owners should begin to use more conversational terms within the keywords that they are targeting for their ads, helping them to better target voice search users and reach a larger audience as a result.

Automation

Automation is already a large factor within building a successful pay-per-click campaign, however, this is set to become an even bigger part of PPC in the following year to come. Automation is already seen regularly within both PPC optimisation, automating abilities used for the identification of opportunities to improve PPC performance, and account management, automating rules in your account that are followed as to effectively manage daily account management tasks as well as bidding.

In 2020, it is predicted that focus will be fixed on improving marketing performance, with businesses and clients needing more reporting, planning, and data analysis. With even more companies beginning to advertise online, the competition will be seen to rise dramatically, meaning automation tools to help with optimisation and daily tasks such as account management will become more prominent within marketing strategies.

There are a number of ways that you can utilise automation to help get ahead of your competitors. For example, investing in optimisation servicing tools and adopting the use of bidding rules to effectively manage the overall performance of your campaigns are both great ways to begin optimising your account and PPC campaigns overall. The setup of automated account reporting can also provide a great way to use automation tools to your advantage, saving you time spent on manual reporting as a result.

To conclude, there are multiple ways in which PPC strategies are predicted to change and evolve in 2020, helping businesses to further optimise their ads and stay ahead of their competitors. To learn more about the PPC techniques used to build a successful paid campaign, get in touch with our PPC experts at In Front Digital and discover what we can do to help you and your business goals.