Hello, dear search marketer, and welcome to 2023.
It’s time to make some New Year’s resolutions, or at least get ready to make some changes for the New Year.
Unlike my New York Jets, there’s ample opportunity to ditch the crappy “guru” you hired, budget (even in a recession), play around with a new bidding strategy, make memes about Performance Max/GA4, and give it to Bing. (I still refuse to call it Microsoft Advertising) a worthy fighting chance.
Also, don’t forget to migrate your Twitter ad budget to something truly stable.
So let’s discuss what you should do now, what you experienced in 2022 and what you should do in 2023.
Think of this as a really nerdy and “snarkastic” visit from three ghosts.
What Should You Be Doing Right Now?
Contents
It’s early 2023, so you’re running a little late, but you can make up for lost time.
Forecasting A 2023 Budget
You’ve seen how search budgets are forecasted year after year: the old “Determine impression share (IS) budget lost and saw a 3-5% increase in CPC while staying the same strategy” method.
Then came the pandemic, and predictions became a little more rigid. Now, that method lacks some weight.
The reality is, if you stick with that approach, well, not the end of the world, but understand that cost-per-click (CPC) growth, especially in brand terms, saw obscene growth in 2022 (starting in April).
Why? There are several theories, but for now, let’s call it “inflation”.
If you maintain a typical outlook, expect to add 10-15% growth in Q1, and possibly in line with 4-7% growth in non-brands. This is our internal estimate – yours should vary.
Then comes the ugly elephant in the room – Performance Max. But it’s more difficult if you also migrate smart purchases to Performance Max.
There are two ways to predict this, and honestly, neither will be as accurate or enlightening – I apologize in advance.
Like I said, neither option is great.
If you want to adjust your search strategy (not applicable for Performance Max), look at your lost IS in rankings and practice the nifty formula that PPC Hero published a while back.
It will help you understand where your current strategy/bids are, causing you to miss out on opportunities.
Now is a good time to get ahead of your budget (if you’re like me, you have a budget that you plan to spend every day of the year, which will change based on projected demand).
Content Calendar/Seasonal Flighting Planning
Often this is less applicable if you are new to a business, but it should 100% be part of your plan.
If you’re not new to the business and haven’t done this, then you’re Mr. Wilson of the Jets and you deserve to be banked.
Make sure you know your deals, the seasonality of peaks and troughs, and everything you want to do creatively and on budget.
It allows you to build, approve and schedule all your assets for deployment in advance.
Screenshot by author, December 2022
Assessing What You Didn’t Do
Life and work are busy. This happens to all of us. Chances are you set some plans that you couldn’t execute by 2022.
Now is the time to determine what to build, test, flight plans, etc. last year, which you never did last year and which you prioritized to determine if you should test them in 2023.
I like to use this thought process when making that assessment:
Was this for “fun” or a necessity (ie, is this effort something that would affect the business, or just to test it out and see if it might help or hurt)?
Has failure to do this had any business implications (positive or negative)?
Consider what you have experienced.
Much like dealing with your weird aunt/uncle who said something inappropriate over the holidays, you need to sit back and process what happened to your SEM campaigns in 2022.
This will help you decide whether everything is good, bad or in between and what you should carefully consider in 2023.
Look at both the big things and the little things.
Performance Max
Whether you’ve migrated to Performance Max by choice or by force (anyone using Smart Shopping or local search), it’s likely to have both a negative and a positive impact on the year.
Negative: You literally have no idea when/where your ad is showing, and all you can think (and you’re probably right) is that Google has wasted some of your direct-to-consumer (DTC) funds. Google Display Network Location.
At the same time, you have very little information or ability to explain to your boss why Google has essentially relaunched Adwords Express 2.0 as a SMB-oriented version and just ruined your transparency.
Negative: You’ve auto-upgraded a local campaign to Performance Max and found out how many bugs there are, or you’ve let Google create your YouTube video, and the music is a lot more shrill than you expected.
Positive: Especially for those running foot traffic campaigns, you’ve (hopefully) seen the cost of store visits become slightly more profitable and your eCommerce (for Smart Shopper) cost per action (CPA) has improved. .
Positive: Performance Max is slowly becoming more reliable, and the ability to move into other leader-driven verticals has become an option.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
I’m going to go ahead and say what we’re all thinking (and it’s already been posted several times):
My god, this analytics platform was clearly made by someone who only interacts with barnyard animals and has insight, not someone who made a team of users.
If you somehow managed to survive the GA4 rollout, now you’re probably cursing the lack of intuitiveness or being frustrated with no bounce rates or conversion rates until months later when they rolled out.
All is not lost, however; I recommend deploying immediately (if you haven’t already) and running GA alongside UA, so you can work out the kinks and learn the platform while gathering historical data.
Google may have woken up to this platform and decided to choose chaos and probably wasted weeks of your life trying to understand; so keep that in mind when you evaluate what you didn’t do in 2022.
Bing Multimedia Ads
You saw the buzz in September, especially on the video side, and thought: Finally, Bing is getting into the video ad game.
But then you realized you needed a raw video file to upload and how little it would rotate.
High hopes, high chances, but no volume.
I know this article is focused on SEM, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t address this, as it’s still a competitive medium.
Each brand has different views on brand association, but if you have a brand safety concern on GDN, MSAN, YouTube, etc., don’t advertise on Twitter until it’s addressed.
Some of these changes in 2022 affected you in different ways, good or bad.
The question is, can you learn from them, use them and move forward in 2023, with or without them?
What You Need to Do In 2023
I’ve done several of these “What to expect for SEM in the New Year” articles over the years, but the last two could never anticipate what’s happening now…again.
That said, I’m going to go with what I think will mostly happen, and you can take it with a grain of salt:
2023 is going to be a wild year in search, and you need to be prepared for it.
But you can’t move forward until you’ve evaluated and processed the past. By doing this, you can plan for the future.
Best of luck, find the merchants. We will all need it.
Featured Image: 3rdtimeluckystudio/Shutterstock
What are 3 good smart goals?
10 examples of SMART goals
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What are the top 3 things smart goals should include? SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Defining these parameters in a way that is relevant to your goal helps ensure that your goals are achievable within a given time frame.
What are hopes and dreams for students?
â explained Melita Alston, principal of Pittsfield Elementary. “Hopes and dreams help students reflect on their personal goals, connect with school, and see the joy of learning. This essential question sets a positive tone at the beginning of the school year.â
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Research shows that hope is a learnable and measurable skill that has a significant impact on student success and persistence in school. Hopeful children also have higher self-esteem and social skills, are more likely to set and achieve goals, and bounce back from adversity more easily.
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Hope is ranked 23rd by US News & World Report and is one of only 64 colleges and universities recognized for offering outstanding undergraduate research/creative project opportunities, counting among universities such as Yale, Stanford, MIT, Princeton and Northwestern.
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What are the 5 smart goals for students?
What are SMART Goals? SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. These criteria can be used to guide goal setting.
What are the 17 goals meant to do?
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with 169 targets, form the core of the 2030 Agenda. They balance the economic, social and ecological dimensions of sustainable development, and place the fight against poverty and sustainable development on the same agenda for the first time.
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Which development strategy has 17 goals to develop our world? At the core of Agenda 2030, there are 17 Sustainable Development Goals that clearly define the world we want, applying to all nations and leaving no one behind.
What is the purpose of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals?
In 2015, the United Nations created 17 Sustainable Development Goals and aimed to achieve them by 2030. All 193 member states of the United Nations agreed on these 17 goals to end poverty, ensure prosperity and protect the planet.
What is a set of 17 goals defined by the United Nations to end poverty protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all?
17 Goals for people, for the planet The Sustainable Development Goals are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and opportunities of everyone, everywhere.
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What is the 17th goal?
17. objective. Strengthening the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development and strengthening the means of implementation.
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What are the 17 goals called? The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals are a collection of 17 interrelated goals to serve as a “shared plan for peace and prosperity for people and planet now and in the future”. Our goals are: No poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being.
