One of the latest PPC marketing optimisations is automation. We know—automation is one of those marketing buzzwords that gets tossed around often. But these days, automation is a powerful tool that’s become feasible for nearly any company to implement in its ongoing PPC campaigns.

Broadly, PPC automation uses machine learning and AI platforms to manage, monitor, and optimise your marketing efforts. As your company grows, you may find that your PPC efforts become too time-consuming to manage across all of the network and platforms in your arsenal. When you reach this point, automation offers a life-saving solution.

An encroaching theme in 2021 is loss of control, for better or for worse. We became all too familiar with this theme in 2020. Google is restricting data visibility while we have to rely on automation and hands-off tools to get the job done.

This means that companies need to get more invested in the factors they can control like managing the buyer’s journey. Companies need strong alignment between their ad targeting efforts and the specific touch-points their customers undergo throughout the purchasing cycle.

Get control of audience data and create clear delineation between prospects and those most likely to convert—those in the early stages of the marketing funnel and those near the end.

One noteworthy trend is Google’s ongoing push away from complete data visibility and control.

We’re seeing Google Ads remove granular controls for user-specific targeting, and instead they ask businesses to rely more on its machine learning. This is a shift away from data transparency and a move toward a system that’s more reliant on Google’s algorithms.

Combine this with increased data handling regulations across the globe and the loss of tracking cookies, and we must learn to do more with less. There aren’t many concrete solutions to this issue other than to readjust the way we approach their strategies. The overall theme here is we must be willing to make decisions with imperfect data and work within Google’s framework to generate results.

Google Ads take up so much of the PPC pie that it’s easy to forget how many other platforms there are. And with Google tightening the leash on how marketers use its platform, 2021 may be the perfect time to diversify your ad management skillsets.

Consider how you could build out your PPC efforts beyond Google Ads to reach more of your audience. For example, Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing) may not have the impressive reach that Google Ads has, but it captured over 27% of paid mobile click share at the end of 2020. For many companies, this is a big enough share to justify buying some ads on Bing.

But don’t limit yourself to search engines. Consider paying for ads on social media: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to name a few. Each represents a unique market segment and has paid advertising opportunities worth looking into.

Responsive search ads is a time-tested strategy for campaign optimisation. It allows us to develop 15 headlines and four descriptions per ad. These copy variations are combined to create different ads that may or may not be successful at capturing your audience’s attention.

Of course, responsive search ads aren’t a new strategy, but they’re increasingly important as Google further limits access to data.

Another common trend in 2021 is a restriction on how companies use data. Regulations like the GDPR are changing the way consumers view privacy, and they’re forcing updates to how data is collected and used. The balance between data privacy and usability will be a top priority in 2021 as we adapt to a loss of tracking cookies and other third-party data sources.

We will need to increase efforts behind collecting first-party data segmentation and analysis. Companies can customise and segment first-party data at a more granular level than third-party sources, and first-party data can be applied across multiple digital channels. It’s more work than relying on information provided by search engines, but it can pay off in the long run.