Wow, what a crazy year 2020 has been for search engine marketing! Online transactions increased by 26.7% in October compared to January 2020 (Statista). And, for the first time in 2020, digital ads accounted for more than 50% of U.S. advertising expenditures (WSJ).
For eCommerce superstar Amazon, demand kept ad sales strong amid COVID-19, even as digital advertiser competitors Google and Facebook suffered slowdowns (Quartz).
So, closer to home, what was the scoop around QuanticMind in 2020? According to some fancy analytics, our blog readers (you!) were interested most in these 5 topics:
1. Marketing Dashboards
We’re really excited about the wins and ROI gains our customers are seeing by adopting custom, automated dashboards into their daily marketing activities. Some of them are saving fifteen hours a week now that they aren’t doing manual reporting!
What is a marketing intelligence platform and how might it change your day? Here are the must-reads:
- The Dashboard Components Every Marketing Manager Needs to Fuel Next-Level Growth
- The Top 4 Performance Tracking Dashboard Components for Digital Marketing Analysts
- The 5 Essential Components of a CMO Dashboard
2. Paid Search Optimization
PPC and Display were huge this year, to no one’s surprise, as online traffic and purchasing soared during the COVID-19 pandemic. Logically, optimizing paid search campaigns was also extremely important to digital marketers. Here are some of your favorite paid search optimization articles:
- Manual Bidding is Inefficient: Why You Need Automation for Paid Search Optimization
- What Are Bid Adjustments and Why You Should Be Using Them
- Drive Efficiency by Creating a Bing-Specific Strategy
3. Artificial Intelligence and AI Bidding Technology
Hot on the heels of paid search optimization is the idea of automating that optimization. We have just a few things to say on the subject of the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence in search engine marketing:
- The Art of Data Science and How it Can Empower More Effective SEM
- Everything You Need to Know About AI-Powered Bidding Algorithms
- Why Humans are 100% Necessary for PPC, Even with Artificial Intelligence
4. Travel
The travel industry took a hard hit this year thanks to COVID-19. It was high on search engine marketers’ minds when it came to strategy and recovery. Here are the must-reads:
- How Travel Marketers Can Begin to Recover From the Coronavirus Crisis
- Travel and Tourism PPC Tactics | The Ultimate Guide
- 7 Marketing Challenges in the Travel Industry Today
5. Google
Google recorded their first ever decline in ad revenue in 2020 (Quartz). However, that doesn’t change their behemoth status and impact on the paid advertising landscape. Here are the things you should check out about advertising with Google:
