John Gagnon’s Predictions for 2016

Welcome to 2016! You may have the post-holiday blues or you may be going full steam ahead to catch up on time lost. Either way, you’ll likely want a glimpse at what’s ahead. Luckily we teamed up with some of the biggest names in PPC and have a few interesting insights to share with you as the year kicks off in our 2016 Predictions eBook:

Digital and Local Marketing Predictions: 2016, The Year of Audience Targeting in PPC

Bing Ads Evangelist and frequent speaker at conferences like Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, PubCon and more, John Gagnon, spoke with us about what he’s most looking forward to in 2016.

(Fun fact: Gagnon’s prediction inspired the eBook’s title!)

Here’s what he had to say:

John Gagnon’s Predictions

As we head into 2016 the fingerprints of mobile devices are littered everywhere in digital marketing from better insights on cross-device behaviors to a growing number of mobile conversions. 2016 will be no different, but the impact will open up new ways to hit our audiences!

The year of Audience Marketing in PPC

Search is one of the purest forms of intent a marketer can harness. A user comes to a search box and tells Bing or Google what they want at the moment they want it. Search will continue to be a strong channel, but marketers will exploit a tactic on their WishList in 2015 – Remarketing.

In 2016 a more serious effort will be made to integrate signals from across all marketing channels. We’ll move beyond tried and true tactics of remarketing like cart abandonment, reengaging mobile visitors, excluding past converters, and targeting loyal customers with special deals. Working with other marketing groups digital marketers will be able to reach those you’ve engaged with at tradeshows (pixel on an event registration page) and reengage with folks who’ve signed up for a whitepaper (customer email list).

At the end of the year, Google launched Customer Match and Remarketing in Bing Ads launched, the writing is on the wall for 2016.

Rise of Voice Search

From Cortana to Siri and Google Now, it feels like you can’t buy a device without being able to ask it questions. Personal assistants are baked right into the latest operating systems like Cortana already 110 Million Windows 10 devices to Google Now on a huge number of Android devices – the trend will continue.

At this point, voice search seems like an out-of-reach novelty to search marketers. But there are a lot of clues use of voice search and personal assistants leave behind, like the growth in question phrases like Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. We may not have a direct way to target voice versus text input now, but why wait! Positive or negative keywords are a great place to start.

From Voice Search to driving Audience Marketing, 2016 is shaping up to be an incredibly exciting year for digital marketers!

See what others experts said by downloading the full eBook: