10 Tips for Online Marketers This Holiday Season
Marin Software recently shared a white paper titled “The Online Marketer’s Guide for the Holidays: Ten Tips for a Successful 2011.” It aims to put the 2010 holiday season into perspective and offer best practices for the 2011 holiday season.
The paper points out that with an October baseline, search volumes rose by about 40 percent in the days leading up to Dec. 24, followed by a quick decline in the following days. November saw a spike in search volume of about 125 percent.
“During this time, we saw a steady escalation in paid search spend resulting from increased search volumes and higher keyword prices,” the paper notes. However, the higher costs were more than offset by strong increases in revenue.
According to Marin Software, using October as a baseline, impressions jumped 27 percent in November and 20 percent in December during the 2010 holiday season. Click-through rate (CTR) rose 21 percent in November and 32 percent in December. Meanwhile, revenue per click (RPC) increased 21 percent in November and 28 percent in December. Cost per click (CPC) increased 12 percent in both November and December.
Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, ground shipping cutoff and post-holiday bargains are all key time periods to mark on campaign calendars, according to Marin Software.
The top five days by conversion volumes in 2010 were:
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Cyber Monday: 26 percent
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Black Friday: 23 percent
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Dec. 6: 17 percent
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Nov. 28: 17 percent
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Nov. 30: 17 percent
With four of the top five holiday shopping days in 2010 happening in November, shoppers may open up their wallets for holiday shopping even earlier this year, the white paper notes.
When preparing for the 2011 holiday shopping season, Marin Software offers these ten tips:
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Prepare campaigns in advance: Ensure a timely launch by giving yourself enough time to align your campaigns with your promotional calendar.
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Create a “boost schedule”: A boost schedule is a roadmap that helps to determine when and how much to increase your bids to adjust to shifts in consumer behavior.
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Adjust daily budgets and max bids: Be sure to revise your daily budgets to reflect higher costs from October through December.
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Pay attention to negative keywords: Filter out unwanted impressions and maximizing your CTR to decrease the number of unprofitable clicks, and improve your Quality Score and reduce your CPC.
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Promote special offers: Reach value shoppers with incentives like free shipping, sales and coupons. Conduct A/B testing if you have time.
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Manage bids to inventory: Monitor inventory levels on a consistent basis and pause relevant keywords when approaching a stock-out scenario.
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Test your attribution model: Make sure your conversion-tracking system is set up correctly so you don’t inaccurately attribute revenue and waste ad spend.
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Develop a mobile strategy: Meet consumers where they are and create separate mobile campaigns.
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Use YouTube to extend reach: YouTube is the Internet’s second largest search engine, so take advantage.
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Amplify your message with social media: Ensure that your social initiatives stay focused on measurable, revenue-generating activities.
According to a separate survey Shop.org eHoliday survey conducted by BIGresearch, 92.5 percent of online retailers say they plan on offering free shipping at some point this holiday season, up from 84.8 percent in 2010.
The survey also found that 31.4 percent of respondents said their free-shipping offers would start earlier in the season compared to last year. Additionally, 56.3 percent said their budget for free-shipping promotions this year is somewhat or significantly higher than last year.
Sources:
http://www.marinsoftware.com/downloads/2011_holiday_guide_US.pdf
http://www.nrf.com/modules.php?name=News&op=viewlive&sp_id=1227
