4 Paid Search Trends To Watch Out For in 2015

In a highly competitive and increasingly crowded digital landscape, paid search marketing offers the best chance to stay ahead of the game.

When done strategically, paid search can provide a greater return on investment compared to other forms of online marketing. Unsurprisingly, online ads will continue to play an essential role in the digital marketing matrix in 2o15.

So, where should you direct your resources in the New Year? Here are the most important paid search trends to look out for in 2015:

The uninhibited rise in mobile ad spend

The year 2014 was definitely the year of mobile. Not only did the number of smart-phone and tablet users increase globally, marketers also began paying attention to the fact that customers are increasingly using their mobile devices to complete transactions.

The coming year will see more and more advertisers optimizing their paid search strategy for mobile. This includes optimizing the entire range of properties including the ad format, ad message, landing page and the shopping cart experience.

Interestingly, the cost per click for desktop ads is much higher than mobile CPP. This trend is likely to continue to the end of 2015, given that advertisers have only just started dedicating a mobile paid search budget.

This means going beyond targeting mobile device users with ads and instead focusing on making the conversion process as simple as possible.

Increased interest in conversion optimization

As mentioned, optimizing the conversion process will be a top priority for paid search marketers. Up until now, the focus has largely been on correct keyword selection and utilization, and customer segmentation to increase ROI.

However, 2015 will see a heightened focus on automation and conversion tools to improve the rate at which customers move further down the buying cycle. A special focus will be on the ad format and the landing page as the key determinants of conversion.

In terms of ad format, marketers will be keen to pay for additional Adwords features to make their ads stand out more. Automated landing page conversion tools will also be on demand.

A focus on people-based marketing solutions

In 2014, digital marketing was prominently characterized by big data. The generation of data will continue into 2015 in an attempt to fully understand online users’ behavior.

The widespread use of mobile devices will see advertisers focus on the aggregation of location-based data. From this type of data, advertisers will gain insight into where specific consumers spend most of their time online and offline, and where and how they shop. This information will inform paid search campaigns for better targeting and relevant messaging.

A particularly interesting trend with regard to people-based marketing is the ability to craft ad messages that are so specific that they target particular individuals whom you have already connected with on other platforms such as email. In a way, paid search marketing will integrate with other effective forms of marketing such as email to deliver the greatest return on investment.

Audience-targeting using relevant messaging

PPC automation has been quite popular in 2014 as marketers rushed to invest in software that would help them to optimize campaigns.  In a sense, automation dominated much of the online marketing space as a whole and the trend will peak in the coming year.

Many expert marketers have observed that while automation became increasingly popular, the focus on creative ad messaging took a back seat. With online users become more discerning, it is likely that 2015 will see marketers focus on crafting messages and A/B testing these messages to ensure that they actually trigger a conversion from the target audience.

A focus on the message means that marketers will spend more time analyzing user intent based on search behaviors. This information will be useful in creating conversations and points of engagement that are relevant to the target audience.

Importantly, 2015 could see a shift from keyword-based optimization toward optimization based on topics and areas of interest to the target audience to assist the creation of PPC campaigns.

A Promising Year For Some

Without a doubt, 2015 will be a promising year for marketers who are able to stay ahead of the curve especially with regard to mobile search. Optimizing conversions for mobile will be the key differentiator between those who reap positive ROI and those who do not, at the end of the year.