Hello, my fellow search industry friends. It’s already November 2021, which means if you haven’t done it already, you’re behind schedule on planning for 2022. I recognize most of us have still not recovered from the dumpster fire that was 2020 (just look at my beloved NY Jets as an example). But 2020 left us one more little PITA Easter egg, too: The inability to truly company email list use historical annual data from last year to plan for 2021 or 2022. Take a deep breath and accept that you’re already way behind the 8-ball here. Let’s discuss how you’re going to do this. How Strategic Planning Typically Goes In Search Marketing First, an important note: This process applies if you’re working toward the same game plan as the prior year, without dramatic sweeping changes. What this doesn’t apply to is if you’re moving from a lead generation to an awareness approach. The most common way new year search planning goes is by examining historical data.
Here, you examine YoY growth in costs per click (because let’s be honest, it rarely ever goes down). All of this is done by the engine, so you end up with behavior for Google Ads, Bing Ads, and (for some advertisers) even Yelp. You examine seasonal, monthly, even day-of-week behavior across all your campaign segments including PLAs, brand, non-brand, high volume, etc. Once this is done, you look for front and back end traffic variances over the company email list past 2-3 years. You’re looking for highs or lows caused by time or macro factors that often repeat annually, or are a one-and-done scenario. You’re probably keeping a close eye on impression share data (especially impression share lost). Then you apply expected growth, increase in spend, etc., across 365 days, flexing up or down for recurring seasonal, quarterly, monthly, weekly, or daily events. And BOOM! You’ve got your anticipated needs and delivery for 2022 all put together in a nice neat little package.
That worked pretty well – until 2020 came along. What Made 2020 A Planning Nightmare For SEM Pros? Well, if you’re wondering that, you either have a unique and different form of planning, you lived in a shack without the internet off the grid, or you’re only a year deep into the industry. These are all acceptable answers. More than one factor played into the company email list chaos of 202 in a big way: The pandemic: This totally eliminated some verticals (i.e. travel), crushed others (i.e. retail banking), and was a “golden age” for others, such as direct-to-consumer consumables and home improvement. Election season: This hit some verticals a lot more than others as politicians ran ads that targeted key terms in adjacent/halo categories such as Medicare/insurance, healthcare, and law.