The general tone around the digital marketing industry lately has been somewhat bleak. Over the last handful of years, specific channels have gotten more and more popular, driving competition to high levels. These factors have together increased prices for many digital channels across all verticals. To continue the difficulty of the market, consumers are becoming more educated on how to interact with paid and organic search results, which has caused a recent downturn in engagement in larger engines (specifically Google).
Gain Insight To ‘Real-Time’ Market Testing
It is particularly important to consistently test new markets and audiences for your business, whether they are truly brand new or indicated by other channels as being of further interest. PPC, unlike many marketing channels, can provide near real-time data on those tests. The best way to use PPC for this purpose is to cast a wide testing net to determine where your customer pockets may be, then narrow down the focus of a campaign to that audience and build from there.
One small word of warning: don’t let the almost instant data collection aspect overshadow the need to allow for true results to populate. While it can be easy to allow the expedited information to prompt a knee-jerk reaction to the test (good or bad), statistical significance must always be the top priority. There are definitely tests where the honeymoon period projects stellar results and others where momentum was apparently the key and they performed much better with a little time. Keep all of those possibilities in mind, allow for enough time to truly complete the market test and then use those results to target new audiences full time.
Read more in the full white paper: The Impact of PPC On Your Business
