Latest Trends in PPC Reporting and Analytics for 2021

If the shift in consumer behavior due to COVID in 2020 has taught companies anything, it is to be ready to be flexible. If advertising spends of companies like Microsoft and Google are any indication, it is safe to say that digital advertising has been instrumental in helping companies across the globe keep their business afloat during this pandemic. This is due to the fact that more and more customers are looking online to fulfill their retail requirements. If your company has been thinking of outsourcing PPC services in order to increase its digital outreach, let us first take a look at the latest trends in reporting and analytics in 2021.

Learn From Your Mistakes

Due to the rapid escalation in COVID situation, the decisions that businesses took were more reactive than anything else. But now things are different. We have more than a year’s experience and many lessons learnt to guide our actions for the future.  It is the perfect opportunity to take proactive steps to identify the right marketing and PPC strategies and PPC optimization techniques for your business. 

Undertaking Competitive Analysis 

One should not embark upon this only to fight a crisis nor should it be left for the last moment.  Conducting competitive analysis in advance is another PPC trend that helps you to strategize key metrics and is also the window through which you get to have a better idea of your PPC tasks. You should be able to use them to make your or your clients’ business more profitable. So, look at all the ways you can ‘up’ your strategy digital advertising.

Privacy and Advertising

With Google’s FloC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) comes a new way of reaching out to people without the use of third-party cookies. The algorithms developed collect data of users’ browsing history and clusters them based on shared interests into cohorts. The information on the cohort is shared with companies for their advertising purposes.  The idea is to increase an individual’s user privacy by hiding their web history while at the same time being able to reach out to them with relevant content. Google is expected to start testing FloC with advertisers in Q2 of 2021 and have further revealed that it is 95% as accurate as cookies. Another factor of this PPC trend is that these cohorts are stored within the browser, locally and not on the server of the third party.

Keeping Lines of Communication Open with Stakeholders

It is crucial that you as a business keep the communication lines open with your stakeholders as well as clients especially with changes going on in search marketing. In your communication, make sure to inform them what they need to expect, how you will handle it and how it can affect them. Such dynamic moves on your part will help them to be up-to-date as well as relieve them of their fears pertaining to the changing landscape of search marketing which ultimately is also one of the objectives in your PPC strategies.

Schedule Your Reporting And Communication

A great way to show pro-activity to your stakeholders is to schedule PPC reporting and communication which will inform them on news, KPIs and when to expect updates. They must be seamlessly connected to the key metrics that matter to them as different metrics may matter to different groups of audience. Without going into too many jargons, the information provided must make sense and explain how it matters to them and their business.

Google Analytics 4 And What It Means For Your Business

Formerly known as App + Web properties, Google Analytics 4 is useful in measuring app and website usage.  It can help businesses get a better understanding of what people do when they are on their website. It allows to record event interactions including at what point your users drop off at. You can set these up manually or use Google Tag Manager feature to automate your choice. To give an idea of the typical uses for event tracking, here are a few – tracking when users download a document or media files onto their computer or mobile, time spent watching videos, information regarding when users drop off while filling or submitting forms online, etc.

By engaging your virtual PPC expert to implement the above objectives, you are showing you care about user privacy where possible. Ensure that permissions are sought, information are cleared out once its purpose is served and communication is made clear regarding what is being done with their information.