Retailers are facing tough times with the decline of brick-and-mortar stores, the surge of ecommerce, and the looming dominance of Amazon. While there may be a rare few who can survive without an online presence, the majority must prioritise their digital investments.

Amidst the complexity of digital strategies, paid search stands out as the starting point. For retailers, PPC should be the focal point of their digital marketing efforts, serving not only as an avenue for ad expenditure but also as a rich source of valuable data and insights.

Mastering PPC isn’t simple, yet these three principles lay the groundwork for success.

1. PPC should both shape and be shaped by your wider marketing strategy.

Paid search continuously produces vast amounts of valuable data throughout the duration of a campaign. With a well-crafted data strategy, you can transform account data into audience insights that resonate across all marketing channels and benefit the entire business. Furthermore, enhancing PPC performance is achievable by incorporating insights from various other sources into your paid search strategy.

Translating Paid Search Insights into Wider Business Practices

Let’s delve into some client cases illustrating how insights gleaned from paid search can revolutionise broader business strategies.

• Product Strategy: The search landscape serves as a goldmine of consumer trends and behaviours. Analysing search terms offers invaluable insights that can shape a company’s product offerings. For instance, with a retail client, we provided weekly reports detailing fluctuations in demand for specific products. These insights enabled strategic adjustments to promotions across various advertising channels and the company’s website
• Messaging Optimisation: Paid search functions as a dynamic digital laboratory, facilitating continuous testing and rapid data processing through automation. Leveraging insights from PPC testing can refine marketing campaigns and brand collateral. We’ve developed multiple open-source scripts to assist advertisers in keyword analysis, which can subsequently inform broader marketing strategies.
• Offline Sales: While the notion of online advertising driving offline sales is well-established, the key lies in tailoring paid search strategies to suit the unique challenges faced by physical stores. For instance, with one client, we employed location-based variations in discount codes to better manage their impact on local foot traffic.

Paid Search Enhanced by Wider Business Insights

• Close Integration of Business and PPC Data: For several retail clients, we seamlessly integrate live business data to dynamically adjust bidding strategies. This approach ensures that during critical periods, such as high-demand seasons, we can optimise aggressiveness while maintaining target profit margins.
• Utilising Business Intelligence for Ad Copy Optimisation: Understanding your audience goes beyond quantitative metrics; qualitative insights play a crucial role. Data gleaned from surveys, for instance, can be leveraged to enact meaningful changes in ad copy. Successful products or brand attributes identified in other channels can be mirrored within paid search campaigns. This underscores the importance of cross-channel integration in driving success.

Synergising Paid Search with Wider Business Operations

The exchange of data between paid search and other channels holds immense potential.

• Leveraging PPC and Business Data Integration: Beyond paid search performance, business data encompasses a wide array of information from various channels and offline sources. Combining these datasets can yield valuable insights into product strategy, market positioning, and audience behaviour.
• Facilitating Collaboration between Paid Search and Product Teams: Building upon the aforementioned point, some clients have adopted dedicated platforms for seamless information sharing between PPC and product teams. This collaborative approach allows each channel to mutually inform the other, resulting in substantial performance enhancements.

2. Expand Your Perception of PPC: It’s More Than Just a Sales Driver

Paid search holds immense potential beyond its traditional role as a bottom-of-the-funnel sales channel. It can also play a significant role in shaping customer perceptions and building brand awareness.

Consider These Alternative PPC Strategies:

• Prioritise Traffic Over Sales: For certain brands, website traffic holds greater importance than immediate sales. This is particularly relevant for companies aiming to foster long-term relationships with their audience or those seeking to manage the pace of revenue growth. With advancements in Google’s AI, options like ‘Maximise Clicks’ offer flexibility in optimising search campaigns, ideal for retailers focused on driving traffic rather than immediate conversions.
• Target Customers During the Research Phase: Identify the queries customers use when researching the market and tailor ad campaigns to target them. This approach not only expands your customer base but also attracts individuals who may have been previously unaware of your brand.
• Utilise Paid Search for Branding: Beyond merely securing top positions in brand campaigns, PPC can effectively create brand awareness by bidding on trending keywords. Moreover, PPC can seamlessly integrate with other channels to bolster broader branding efforts.

3. Customise Automation to Suit Your Business Requirements

While Google’s AI capabilities, as showcased by DeepMind and Google Search Console, are undeniably ground-breaking, it’s important to recognise that the automation within Google Ads isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for paid search management. The suitability of automation depends heavily on the specific needs and nuances of each business.

Various automated bidding strategies can be highly effective in certain scenarios while proving unsuitable in others. Instead of delving into a detailed analysis (for those interested, refer to my previous post on smart bidding), let’s examine a couple of client examples that underscore the significance of tailoring automation to your business.

Prioritise Control Over Efficiency

In some cases, maintaining control holds greater importance than optimising efficiency. This is particularly true in the initial stages of a search account when data is limited for meaningful machine learning. Additionally, in volatile markets, maximum flexibility in approach becomes crucial. Take, for instance, the risk of brand reputation damage with Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs), which can generate inadvertently humorous yet potentially damaging text ads.

Invent Custom Automation

For one of our clients, cost-effectiveness was paramount in their paid search endeavours. While Google Ads offers smart bidding strategies like “Target CPA,” it doesn’t provide the flexibility to apply this strategy at a product level. Leveraging our in-house tech team, we developed custom automation tailored precisely to address the client’s needs. The results were remarkably impressive.