Why Brands Should Utilize Automation in Search
Over the past few years, it's no surprise to any marketer that the digital marketing landscape has become crowded. There's an overwhelming number of search technologies, data management systems, targeting partners, and automation systems to name a few. As marketers navigate the ever-changing, complex ecosystem, many question how to best incorporate automation into their strategy, especially within search. There are five main questions we ask to help marketers assess the best route for them. Answering these questions will help determine not only how to incorporate technology into a marketers' search strategy, but also the optimal approach to capitalize on it:
1. What problem am I trying to solve?
2. What operational efficiency does this create?
3. What costs or risks are involved?
4. How does this technology affect my bottom line?
5. What's the level of effort involved in implementation?
After answering these questions, most marketers will come away with the need for a mix of a team plus technology approach. There are many considerations when creating the strongest strategy, and having the right combination of people and automation will ensure nothing is falling through the cracks.
Automation is a word thrown around often in the industry, so we want to set a few ground rules on what we mean by it in this conversation.
Automation is:
- Identifying repeatable tasks
- Freeing up time to be strategic
- Delivering faster than the competition
- Facilitating at scale
Automation is not:
- A “Set-it & Forget-it” approach
- Handing over control
- A complete replacement for talent
Automating all tasks isn’t the best use of resources, time, or money; however, there are some digital marketing tasks that lend themselves well to automation. Paid search is a great example of a digital channel that has a series of predictable and programmable ongoing tasks that drive performance. Below are three impactful tasks marketers can automate that could have a large impact on the success of search campaigns:
1. Automate Bids Across Thousands of Keywords: Rather than making manual keyword bid changes to thousands of keywords on a daily basis, allow Google smart-bidding or bid management platforms to do the work for you. Automated bid strategies use machine learning to incorporate multiple factors such as a user’s location, time of day, or device type to determine the ideal keyword bid. This gives smart bidding an advantage to manual optimizations and also allows these changes to take place at scale.
2. Automate Audience Creation & Optimization: Increase customer reach by expanding to new audiences and demographics using Google’s Similar Audiences. It automatically creates your audience based on active lists within an account.
Bid management platforms such as DoubleClick for Search allow advertisers to include automated bid modifier adjustments to audience lists within a bid strategy. This saves significant time and allows a more efficient approach to managing audience lists at scale.
3. Automate Search Term Keywords: Say a brand has 25,000 active broad match keywords in their paid search campaign. These keywords could show up in about 2.5 million search queries, making it very difficult to know which ones are actually performing well. By utilizing a new Rise technology, it’s now possible to automate the creation of exact match keywords for the ones that are driving the most results, which allows for more control over them. Exact match keywords also have a lower average CPC.
In order to determine which tasks are best to automate, take a look at your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Then, determine where technology can help through the lens of efficiency, performance, and ROI. Finally, adopt a team plus technology approach to stay competitive and utilize resources most effectively.
To determine if automation would be helpful within your search strategy, contact Rise and speak to our search experts.