Consumers will begin their shopping soon. Upcoming webinar will help you prep your campaigns.
With back to school in full swing you know that means the holiday shopping season will be here faster than an eight year old can unwrap a present. 2011 was a record breaking holiday shopping season with Cyber Monday exceeding $1.25 billion in retail sales, and nine additional shopping days in November and December also topping a billion, according to comScore. So, search marketers, while everyone else is enjoying the last vestiges of summer, you need to put on your reindeer sweater, grab a mug of hot cocoa and get into the holiday spirit by preparing your 2012 holiday shopping campaigns now if you're going to take full advantage of all the season has to offer.
The majority of shoppers will start well before the holidays.
Source: Yahoo! Pre-Holiday Intentions and Attitudes Survey *Yahoo! Holiday Shopper Study December 2011; Q2: When do you typically START thinking about holiday shopping?
Sign up for our upcoming webinar to help prepare your holiday search campaigns.
During the holidays, consumers use search to help them find the season's hottest gifts and best deals. To help our advertisers optimize their campaigns, we are holding a holiday webinar, "Let It Snow…With Search Ad Success," on September 12 at 11am PT. Click here to register.
Just as consumers have their gift lists to work through, we have created a list of five tips to help search marketers optimize their search campaigns in time for the holidays. Some of the highlights we'll be covering in our webinar include:
1. Budget for increased volume
Start reviewing last year's search activity to identify what worked (or didn't work) the prior season, taking note of key dates and times that lead to increased sales. Increase campaign daily/monthly budgets and increase insertion orders appropriately for the additional volume. For Retailers, this is the highest demand period of the year. Running out of budget, or limiting traffic during peak periods is like leaving sales…and money…on the table.
2. Build out keyword lists
Download the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence tool (free!), leverage your Yahoo! account team, and ensure you are not only expanding your current keyword set, but are optimizing at a seasonal level (e.g. Cyber Monday).
3. Bid up early and often
Make sure to use explicit bidding for each keyword match type. And remember that ads displaying in mainline (top of the search page) positions 1 through 4 can expect to see higher click through rates than ads positioned on the sidebar (right side of the search results page).
4. Give shoppers an incentive
Do your ads include a call to action? Free shipping, expedited shipping, discounting a percentage off, flash sales, countdown promotions — these types of tactics can be leveraged in the title and description of your ad copy to incent users. Be sure to optimize using params to help increase your ad effectiveness.
5. Make mobile a priority
How consumers research and consume content is changing, with more consumers using tablets and smart phones to shop. Break out mobile traffic into separate campaigns. Send users to mobile optimized landing pages and use specific offers where appropriate. And bid for first position in the mobile space.
Please join us on September 12th for the webinar to get additional insights and best practices to help you with your holiday search campaigns.
