Customers, their purchase journey and what incentivizes them are constantly changing. As marketers, it’s our job to figure out how to continue resonating while evolving. Doesn’t that sound kind of exhausting? Good thing we don’t have to do it alone. By utilizing the many paid media marketing automation and machine learning tools available, we become better equipped to reach the right customers, at the right time and at scale.
In an article by Think with Google, industry experts Nicolas Darveau-Garneau and Adam Deif used their experience to develop five rules to drive success in the age of automated paid search marketing.
Optimize to Improve Long-Term Growth
Paid media algorithms are getting faster, smarter and more accurate. Marketers are able to define a conversion goal (or multiple) for ad campaigns, and rather than merely optimizing for clicks or impressions, the ad platform can automatically set bids to maximize the number of conversions while spending the budget.
Here’s the caveat: “Machine learning is only as good as what you ask it to optimize.” Take a second to let that sink in. If you’re optimizing for micro conversions like clicks on the landing page or informational form submissions, current KPIs and campaign efficiency will look stellar in the short term. But in the grand scheme, this strategy won’t move the needle. When making optimizations to paid media campaigns, focus on long-term profitability and primary conversion goals like product purchases and sales.
Identify & Invest in the Most Valuable Customers
Question: On average, are you investing the same amount of time and money to acquire each new customer? If so, it may be time to shift your thinking.
The 80/20 rule states that 80 percent of a company’s sales will come from only 20 percent of its customers. According to Google, top marketers utilize paid media marketing automation and machine learning to identify these valuable 20-percenters. Then, they reallocate the majority of the paid media budget to targeting these customers that will bring the business more long-term value.
Nurture Your Existing Customer Base
After you’ve identified and targeted those MVCs (Most Valuable Customers), it’s time to nurture them. According to Google, the most successful marketers also focus on increasing the lifetime value of their existing customers by incentivizing them to come back to the business again and again. Setting up a retargeting ad campaign to reactivate existing customers with targeted and unique offers helps keep them engaged after their first purchase.
Use Automation to Personalize Ad Creative
Machine learning opens the creative floodgates when it comes to digital ads. By utilizing automation, marketers can personalize the ads that are served to their customers and improve the user experience in real time. For example, Google Ads’ responsive search ads create unique text ads from a list of predefined headlines and descriptions. Then, based on the customer’s search query, it will automatically serve the most applicable variation to the customer at that time.
Customer Experience On Mobile Matters
You can do all the optimizations in the world. But if the landing page experience—particularly the
mobile landing page experience—isn’t up to par, conversions will fall flat. Not only will customers who’ve landed on the page not want to continue through their journey, but the machine learning algorithms take notice as well.
“With automated marketing, machine learning bidding algorithms automatically drive more customers for better-converting sites,” the article states. It’s important to make sure the mobile landing page experience is fast and frictionless. Not just for current users, but future ad campaign effectiveness as well.
For more information on these five rules for winning with automated marketing, check out this article by
Think with Google.
