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Last week our marketing agency started a discussion on consistency in marketing and how it applies to the success of your brand and business.
A couple takeaways from our previous article include:
- Consistency doesn’t imply stagnation
- Consistency keeps your branding alive
- Consistency doesn’t work unless you do
We want to shed light on how consistency is often undervalued and overlooked, why we should pay more attention to consistency, and how to implement consistency in your marketing plans.
One key aspect of consistency is the fact that even if you have a proper marketing strategy in place, it will only work with consistent execution.
While consistency is a core driver of success in many areas of marketing, it is arguably the most noticeable in the area of pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. You could probably get away with keyword research on a less frequent basis, but you can’t do the same with PPC.
This is because of the following 3 factors:
- Seasonality
- Novelty
- Behavioural Evolution
Let’s dive into these 3 factors and how consistency plays a part in each.
1. Seasonality
Your core offering will likely stay the same throughout the year, with the same keywords driving the majority of traffic to your site. If you’re selling a product or service, your most consistent driver of traffic will most likely be “Service” + “Location” in the form of “ice cream in vancouver” or “snow tires burnaby” as an example.
But with many service or product offerings, seasonality plays a big part in how popular your key search terms may be in a given season. Since your business is active at all times of the year, your paid marketing campaigns need to adjust accordingly.
In these cases, you need to consistently monitor the performance of your ads in order to spot potential opportunities.
Are fewer people clicking on your umbrella ad in the summer? Perhaps consider changing the copy from:
- “Protect yourself from the rain / Wide-brimmed umbrellas on sale”
In favor of:
- “Have you heard about summer umbrellas? / Protect yourself from UV rays”
Once you have an idea of the seasonal changes that come up each year, you can act accordingly to update ads, adjust budgets and tweak extensions on a proactive basis.
2. Novelty
It’s not an understatement to say that we live in a very unexpected world. Trends frequently change. World events occur, and the effects are felt at the regional level. The internet itself is also growing at an alarming rate – 15% of all Google searches are brand new (as of Q4 2019).
The fact is that you can’t predict everything, even if expected seasonality occurs. This is why you need to consistently manage and review your ads on a weekly, if not daily, basis.
Consistently monitoring the search terms that people use to click on your ads, is one way to get into the heads of your core customers, and figure out what they’re looking for at different times of the year.
With paid advertising, it’s important to set up multiple campaigns to optimize for your known, consistent drivers of traffic while also allotting for broader matches of newly-searched terms. This allows savvy marketers to test for potential opportunities, without jeopardizing the structure of campaigns that consistently perform well.
When testing for potential opportunities, it’s important to keep geographic locations, demographics of your target audience and how broadly you’re targeting your ads.
3. Behavioural Evolution
The last payoff consistent of PPC management that we’ll be discussing, is the topic of behavioural evolution.
We are all aware of the shift away from desktop traffic towards mobile phones that took place in 2016 (really – this only took place less than five years ago!)
You’re probably also aware of the potential future of VR marketing and voice search.
But what many people fail to consider is the speed of adoption. Even after mobilegeddon occurred in 2016, many industries failed to adapt to mobile websites, to the frustration of many consumers.
To this day, some businesses are still struggling to adapt to changes in the market as simple as having an optimized website. It can be a slow progress – but you can stay ahead of your competitors simply by executing small, frequent changes on a consistent basis.
By keeping tabs on the search terms, ad performance, competitive bids and industry trends, you’ll be able to get a better picture of what it means to be a customer of your product. This allows you, as the PPC manager, to provide behavioural insights that form the foundation of your advertising portfolio.
At our marketing agency, we use these insights in device bidding adjustments, SEO research, marketing strategy and more.
Are You A PPC Manager?
Consistency in management, is consistency in quality.
We know that not everyone has the time or resources to manage their paid marketing campaigns on a consistent basis, which is a shame because consistent improvements result in consistent growth.
At our marketing agency, we provide PPC management services to help grow your business even if you aren’t a direct PPC manager. If you’ve ever wanted to integrate PPC with your SEO, social media or branding efforts, we’re more than happy to provide professional marketing help!
Did this article add a fresh perspective to what’s going on in your organization? Let us know on LinkedIn or Instagram – we would love to hear what you think about this topic!
Would you like to speak to one of our Cool Cucumbers about your current marketing?
Give us a shout at 604.559.7509 to set up a discovery meeting, or stop by our marketing agency in Vancouver – we always have chocolate!