Incase you don’t already spend enough time on Facebook, the company is moving into having retail stores inside their Fan/Like Pages. If this move toward “social commerce” is successful it could turn Facebook’s hundreds of millions of users into online shoppers. Frank Reed of Marketing Pilgrim has written a post about his experience shopping at JCPenney via Facebook. His initial attempt was met with site difficulties and spam. Even though there are still major issues to resolve, if you own or manage a retail account, “social commerce” is an area to keep an eye on in the coming year.
I know that as PPC professionals, we have been keeping our fingers crossed that online advertising will continue to grow in the New Year. According to Michael Mostert of the adCenter Blog, it will! Mostert uses a Wall Street Journal report to support his first reason for why online advertising will keep growing: it’s predicted that by the end of the year, $3 billion more will have been spent for online ads than print ads. He also notes, to support his claim, that deals are vanishing and Wall Street is making a turn-around. Although 2010 has been a great year, 2011 is looking even more promising.
‘Tis the season – for “best of” lists, that is. Right now everyone’s counting down the best PPC tricks, tips, and news…including Google. Their list of their own ten favorite AdWords tools from 2010 on the AdWords blog covers everything from search funnels, to product ads to the broad match modifier. This list serves as an excellent refresher of all the shiny new toys Google has rolled out over the past year. To make it even better, each listing serves as a link to a further description, making this post a great place to start if you are worried you’ve missed out on anything from 2010.
Google has released a helpful video about shopping smartly. In the video, they talk about how the “Smart Shopper” is always connected and always mobile. They also show pertinent statistics, such as how 51% of shoppers research online before purchasing in-store products, and they often do this using their Smartphone. That being said, this video highlights the importance of a mobile marketing campaign in your Adwords account. Also, having ads targeted to the multiple stages of the buying cycle is another important takeaway of this post.
