Will traditional PPC agencies die out in the age of automation?

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“Robot automation will take 800 million jobs by 2030″

Now, that’s an attention-grabbing headline. It’s enough to send most people into a frenzied panic that, for the most part, just isn’t called for.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not screaming “fake news!” at every automation headline out there. The fear is definitely real, particularly for some industries like warehousing, automotive and manufacturing.

But when it comes to PPC and digital marketing, you haven’t got much to worry about. Trust me. Automation is to be embraced, not feared.

Automation is changing the future

There’s no denying that technology and automation are impacting your everyday life.

You go grocery shopping and use self-checkouts. You can
order McDonalds off the screen, not the counter.

Even Amazon opened a supermarket in Seattle with no checkouts, using tracking technology to know what customers removed from the shelves and charging their account as they left the store.

But change is a natural part of life. It may shut some jobs
down, but it will always open new ones up. Think about it.

NASA used to have human calculators. All clothing was made by hand. Farmers and ranchers comprised over 50% of the U.S. workforce.

Nothing stays the same forever. If it did, I wouldn’t be writing this article. I wouldn’t even know what a computer or the internet was, never mind make a career from it.

There will be jobs in 20 years that we couldn’t imagine today. In fact, a 2018 report predicted that automation will create 133 million new jobs by 2022.

As long as the internet is around, PPC agencies will still
exist.

It’s not us vs. them

I’ve read articles that claim that machines are better at humans at PPC 80% of the time. But that’s rubbish.

It feeds into this annoying myth that we seem to be at war
with technology.

We’re not. It’s not
robots vs humans.

Why? Because no matter how good automation and AI gets, it
will never have empathy, creativity or emotion.

If robots start developing a heart, then maybe it’ll be time
for us all to worry about our jobs.

People buy with emotion. Without intrigue, they wouldn’t
click on the ad. Without passion, desire or even fear, they wouldn’t convert.
It takes a human to understand this emotion when advertising to customers.

Take shaving razors for example.

The real reason customers buy razors is because they want to
feel good about themselves. Because they’re nervous about a job interview and
want to make the best first impression. Because they’ve got a brand new red
sparkly dress for a wedding anniversary and want the confidence to wear it.

What makes a great PPC agency isn’t just knowing how to set
up campaigns. It’s having the creativity and understanding to really connect
with what customers want, and create engaging adverts that they’ll actually
want to click.

Let’s look at some examples:

Now the advert above isn’t bad. But there’s no emotion in
it. It’s bland and doesn’t give the customer a reason to explore more.

Now, let’s compare it to this advert:

There’s so much more emotional string-pulling. It connects
to what the audience wants, making it far more engaging than the first example.

This creativity will
never be replaced by a machine.

Automation and the human touch

When you combine time-saving automation with the human
touch, you get something really special.

Take Jonny for example. Now, Jonny is a PPC specialist for a
major insurance company.

He came to Adzooma to save time on his campaigns, without surrendering total control. When using the software, he was suggested to increase his budget on a particular set of ads that were performing well.

If he was just relying on automation, that would be the end
of the story. He would have applied the changes and moved on to the next
task.

But Jonny knew that
this was only one half of the story.

So he went back to look at the data regarding the adverts that were performing well, to see why they were getting more clicks than the others. All of these ads had one thing in common: they all mentioned “free consultations.”

With that information in mind, Jonny created a new set of
ads to test.

These ads didn’t just mention “free consultations,” but also worked to build trust and take away any fear about customers being locked into agreements straight away. He saw the data that automation had given him, then added a human, emotional response to get the full story.

In the end, the new ads outperformed the initial set.

You can read Jonny’s Capterra review here, where he describes how our automation features allow you to “shave serious time off your day to day optimizations” and also “easily identify themes and points of weaknesses in your accounts” to shape your overall strategy.

The bottom line?

Automation and humans
need to work together.

Sink or swim

Once you’ve accepted that automation isn’t going to take your job, some people then decide to just ignore it and carry on as normal anyway — as if sticking your head in the sand was a way to solve any of life’s problems.

The truth is if you
don’t embrace automation, your PPC
agency will be in trouble.

Automation is the future of PPC. It’s designed to save you
time on manual processes and make it easier than ever to do your job, without
competing with you for it.

Just take a minute to think about what you do every week. I
bet in there, there’s so many jobs that you wish you could speed up. Tasks that
are repetitive and take up too much valuable time to complete.

If you’ve ever wished there was an easier way, automation is your answer. It’s actually the reason why Adzooma developed its platform in the first place.

Without automation, you’ll be left
behind by the agencies that have implemented it.

And no, automation isn’t something that’s only accessible to the big players. As we’ve already touched on before, there are plenty of AI options for small businesses.

You need
to embrace automation and use it to take your business to the next level.

Or,
don’t. Watch your company fall behind the competition and be left in the dust
at the side of the road.

The choice is yours.

Taking the automation plunge

If you’re
smart, you’ll make the choice to bring automation into your business.

The best
way to do this? Think of where most of your time is wasted right now, then get
on the market and test them. There’s bound to be one (or more!) of them that
will work perfectly for your business.

Full disclaimer, I work for one of them, Adzooma.

But I’m not about to give you a lecture about how our
platform is the only product in the world that you’ll ever need. That it will
solve all of your problems, land you that promotion you’re desperate for, and
double your earnings.

I don’t want to sell you on promises or pipe dreams. What I
will give you is the cold, hard, facts.

And that is Adzooma has a number of automation tools and
features that will save you a lot of time and effort, including:

Automated rules to remove repetitive tasks through custom rules so you’ve got more time to dedicate yourself to other aspects of your business
Custom alerts to keep you in the loop, so you have full control over your PPC campaigns
24/7 monitoring of your accounts, with over 50 suggested opportunities designed to improve your accounts — most of which can be applied instantly with a single click.

It’s something I’ve recommended to friends before, including an old work colleague of mine, Charlie. One of the top features he loved was the ability to generate custom, white-label reports.

Before, he had to spend hours manually trawling through the
data and formatting reports to send clients. It was the part of his job he
hated the most, particularly when he felt that his clients didn’t even read
them.

But with Adzooma, he could drag and drop the elements he needed, add a logo, and they were ready to go. Even better, Charlie could save them as templates which would automatically update when he needed them.

But
enough about Charlie. This is about your business.

So don’t just take my word for it. If you think Adzooma could work for your company, try it for free.

But even
if Adzooma is not the right call, you need to take advantage of automation. Its
arrival isn’t going to kill your PPC agency. But not embracing it might
leave you stuck on that road, watching everyone else drive into the future
without you.

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