Mobile devices have become in integrated tool in our shopping habits. Whether it’s looking up store locations and hours, comparing prices, or checking out crowd sourced reviews on YouTube, we are burning through our data plans like never before. In fact, Google has determined that “4 in 10 shoppers visited a store online or in-person as a direct result of watching a video online.” They predict that 57% of apparel sales will be influenced by online in 2012.
So what are the latest trends?
Chief Marketer recently published the findings of their Business-to-Business Lead Generation Survey, revealing the strategies that nearly 350 B2B markets planned to employ this year, compared to 2011. What they found was that 51% of the marketers said their companies planned to primarily focus and finding new customers in 2012, no surprises there. The more interesting statistics lie in how they plan on finding those new customers.
The most popular tool for lead gen last year was email, and it was expected to grow from 86% deployment to 90% this year. What sticks out to me are the three tools that were projected to experience some of the biggest percentage jumps in 2012: Social Networks, Pay Per Click Ads, and Retargeted Ads.
Turns out the Penguin update isn’t fully adjusted, according to Google’s Matt Cutts, and that websites can expect several “jolts” in the upcoming months as Google continues to refine the algorithm. As far as the Panda goes, the update is focused on low-quality pages, and is minor enough that we should hardly notice it. Panda will continue to be updated on a monthly basis in this manner.
This one’s for all you AdWords delinquents out there (Just kidding!). Have you ever wished that deciphering why each of your ads were disapproved was easier than hovering over the status bubble of each and every ad, one at a time?
Google continues to forge the way in PPC, leaving its competitors to play catch up again.
With all 435 United States Congressional Seats up for election Google is following the money in this race.
Google AdWords has added a solution to allow targeting of not only specific zip codes, but of actual Congressional Districts. This is great news for anyone involved in political campaigning, or anyone else marketing to these districts.
