As we kick off the new year, it is important that paid search advertisers evaluate potential trends to help push their campaigns forward, generating bigger and better results. Consequently, here are five potential trends and how to strategically take advantage of the opportunities.

Increased competition
In 2012, along with advertisers investing more of their budget in pay-per-click (PPC), we will see more first-time investments in PPC. The increased competitiveness and ability for advertisers to pay more for PPC traffic will result in an increase in cost-per-click rates.
 
In order to stave off bidding wars that can lead to unprofitable results, make sure you have a solid understanding of your maximum cost-per-lead, and optimize your bids based on what you know is profitable. You should also utilize the fairly new “top vs. other” AdWords reports to analyze your optimal positioning for conversions and overall results.

Mobile
Mobile PPC was last year’s hot topic. In 2012, its prominence will be maintained as more and more companies focus on developing strategic mobile efforts, including mobile-specific websites and goals.

To ensure that you are entering the game tactically, set goals for your mobile campaigns at the onset, keeping in mind that the goals that drive success for desktop/laptop campaigns do not always translate successfully to the mobile user. In addition, make sure to keep your mobile and desktop campaigns separate. Furthermore, be sure to send users to a mobile-friendly site, as the mobile optimization of a landing page is now a factor in quality score when targeting mobile devices. If a phone call is a conversion for your mobile campaigns, test the “call-only format,” even if you have a mobile-optimized landing page — with this we’ve seen tremendous results. Furthermore, don’t forget that advertising platforms like adCenter have mobile PPC options, which can be a great way to drive more mobile traffic if you are seeing profitable results from your mobile efforts.

Call tracking
With the introduction of bid-per-call in AdWords, we may see more and more advertisers opting to include a phone number in ads using call metrics. 

To avoid jumping on the band wagon and potentially wasting advertising dollars for phone calls, have a phone tracking system and process in place before you get started. This should also include ensuring that you have a person or team ready to man the phones. Advertisers who are able to route calls or return calls quickly have a better chance of closing the deal. Additionally, by having a system and process in place to track phone calls from your PPC efforts, you can more accurately attribute leads and sales back to your campaigns and make better optimization decisions.

Blending PPC and media
As PPC platforms continue to offer more “online media” type features, such as remarketing and display, the lines between PPC and online media will likely continue to fade as we move through 2012. 

While remarketing and display can be managed through PPC platforms like AdWords, it is important for advertisers to understand how they perform in comparison to search campaigns.  It’s a push vs. pull strategy, which requires different campaign structures, optimizations, and, perhaps, goals. Metrics like view-through conversions, reach, and frequency are important to evaluate when analyzing the performance of remarketing and display campaigns to truly understand the overall impact your PPC media campaigns are having on your business.

Social and PPC
With Google launching Google+ and, shortly thereafter, AdWords launching Social Extensions, it’s likely that social will integrate more and more with PPC in 2012. 

Social Extensions on AdWords allows advertisers to link their Google+ page to their AdWords account to tally the +1’s from your Google+ page, website ads, and search results, for an aggregated total of +1’s for your brand/domain. As Social Extensions was just recently launched, it’s early to predict where social and PPC may go in 2012. However, with social’s explosive growth in 2011, it’s hard to imagine that social will have no impact on PPC in 2012. In addition, we might actually see an impact on position, CTR, or quality score. Time will tell, but this is definitely a trend to monitor in the coming months.

These trends are just the tip of the iceberg, and as the year moves along, new trends and opportunities will undoubtedly reveal themselves. The key for any PPC advertiser is to always evaluate the trends and opportunities versus their business and PPC goals before jumping in.

Crystal Anderson spearheads the paid search division at SEER Interactive.

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