Trends &; Predictions For 2011
Digital Marketing Trends
The announcement of the Google AdWords call tracking program validated this prediction, but the word “beta” at the end of the program indicates I was a little premature.
So what should marketers expect to see for 2011?
Rising Costs-Per-Click
Only three things are certain in a search marketer’s life: death, taxes, and rising CPC’s. With ad dollars continuing to migrate from the offline to the online world, costs per click will continue to rise for years to come.
To combat this cost increase, marketers will have to double down on match type and negative keyword management, creative testing and campaign structure optimization to lower costs and increase conversion rates.
Expect tool vendors to respond with increased automation, allowing marketers to succeed with these optimizations at scale. Advertisers will be forced to re-evaluate the right level of automation for their business, and put the necessary controls in place to ensure automation delivers high quality results.
Rise Of Mobile and Social Platforms, Fragmentation, And The New Rules Of Marketing
With an ever-increasing number of mobile and social users, now advertisers must deliver content on more platforms, in more formats and account for more contexts.
Advertisers will need to look past the website towards investments in mobile applications, Facebook pages, twitter feeds and even sites like Groupon or Google Places. Look for advertisers to increasingly convert users off site, whether via mobile, local or social apps. As they do, advertising campaigns will become tailored to the requirements of specific platforms, increasing complexity for the marketer without necessarily increasing revenues. As this shift occurs, early adopters will benefit from building a multichannel customer base at a time when acquisition costs are still relatively low.
Google Gets Social, Facebook Gets Serious
Look for Google to respond by overlaying a sentiment analysis on top of its organic results. This new, more social search algorithm will allow users to rate search results or even websites, and have user “likes” factored into ranking algorithms.
Google is getting more social, Facebook will get more serious. To expand the value of its ad network, Facebook will extend its ads beyond Facebook to participating publisher sites. This new ad network will enable 1:1 targeting based on demographic and placement characteristics, increasing CPMs for publishers and offering the first true challenge to the Google Display Network.
Search Engine Marketing Trends
- CPCs Will Continue To Increase By 12-15% per Year
- Cross Channel Optimization Will Become More Important Than Ever
- Bing Will Continue To Gain Marketshare After A Short-Term Marketshare Loss
- Smarter, Bargain-Centric Customer
- Mobile Will Finally Take Off. (Several start-ups are working on enabling mobile ecommerce. Google itself announced that it is working on a phone that will replace credit cards.)
CREDIT: SEARCH ENGINE LAND
