Automation is expected to be one of the biggest PPC trends in 2020. PPC automation is something heard very often in the world of Digital Marketing nowadays. Companies, marketers and agencies are continuously looking at ways to use automation in their digital campaigns. 

However, we cannot automate every single process of the digital marketing campaign. 

Tasks that are well defined can be automated. Suppose you follow the usual steps every time you do something. For example: setting budgets, finding keywords to add them as single keyword ad groups, etc. You can automate well-defined tasks through a few different tools. Basically, every task that can be done by someone without having to ask questions, can be automated.

If you need help with your digital marketing campaigns, book your free consultation today. Just a friendly reminder. Moving on…

How do I automate my Digital Marketing campaigns?

Using scripts

Google Ads allow the usage of JavaScript code to automate your campaigns. The automated processes free up your time, which you can use to focus on more important work like optimizing the performance of your ads. You can use scripts on Search, Video, Shopping, and Display campaigns. 

There are pre-built codes available online which you can choose, or you could hire someone to do it for you. The online community for automation is huge. Check out this particular page that gives you a hundred Google AdWords Scripts you could use.

Automated bidding strategies

Bid strategies automatically change the bid of your ad to help your campaign meet a certain goal. The goal may be to get more conversions, clicks, or a better position on the search results page. Each type of automated bid strategy helps you achieve different goals in your campaign.

This is effective when you have historical conversion data. Google Ads use this data to help you achieve your campaign goal.

Types of automated bid strategies:

• Maximize Clicks controls your bid to help you get as many site visits as possible.
• Target Impression Share controls your bid in such a way to make sure your ad appears on the top of the search results page. This increases the visibility of your ad. 
• Target CPA controls Search and Display bids to maximise the number of conversions at the target CPA you set.
• Target ROAS (return on ad spend) controls bid to get the highest conversion value at the ROAS you set. 
• Maximize Conversions helps you get the most conversions within your budget. This is done by controlling your bids automatically.
• Maximize Conversion Value automatically controls the bid to help you get the most conversion value while spending your budget.
• Target outranking share helps you outrank your competitors’ ads.
• Enhanced CPC adjusts your manual bid to a higher or lower value to maximise conversions.
• Viewable CPM is an automated bid strategy available only on the Google Display Network and it focuses on viewable impressions for your campaign.
• There are also other automated bid strategies like Maximum CPV (cost per view) which is used to get more views on your video ads on YouTube.

Automated Rules

This schedules your ads to appear on specific times of the day, controls bid according to time, seasonal factors, and even control your costs by only displaying your ads at specific times you choose. You can use it for scheduling ads, pausing low-performing ads/keywords, adjusting bids based on CPC, and controlling budget and cost.

Google Ads machine learning

Along with automation, we often hear the term “machine learning” a lot. Let’s take a look into how machine learning has transformed our Digital Marketing campaigns.

• Responsive search ads: These are ads that adapt to show different text and more relevant messages. Create multiple headlines and descriptions for your ad. Google will use machine learning to decide which text to use according to the search term used to view the ad. Google Ads will test different combinations and learn which text combination works best. Google Ads serves your potential customers with ads that closely match their search queries. This greatly improves your campaign’s performance. 

When using responsive search ads, make sure that your ad text makes sense on their own and when combined with another text you have created.

• Smart Shopping campaign: Machine learning is used to optimize where your Shopping ads are shown.
• Smart Display campaign: manage different variations of display ads. Use Smart Display campaign to display ads in almost all formats across the Google Display Network.
• Dynamic Search Ads campaign: DSAs target ads to relevant queries, with relevant ads and the right landing page. It uses Google’s web crawling technology to target relevant search queries based on your company’s website content. This is especially useful for large sites with a lot of different products. It might prove to be a challenge to keep search ads in sync with the products they currently offer.

Third-party tools

There are some third-party tools that many digital marketers use to automate their campaigns. These tools are comparatively easier to understand and use. Many of the automated features in these third-party tools are ready to be used. You can apply them to your campaigns quickly.

So having read all this, you must have realised that there are tons of tasks that can be automated. So does this prove to be a risk? Are robots really taking over our jobs? Well, every campaign needs a human element. We are not great at responding to robot-sounding ads anyway. The way I see it, automation paves way for a re-imagination of our jobs as marketers. As more processes are being automated, we have to find creative ways to bring out human elements to our marketing campaigns.

If you need help with your digital marketing campaigns, be sure to reach out to us. We’ve got an amazing team of digital marketers, copywriters and web developers, and we’d love to help you out. Book your free consultation today.