The Seasonality of Search Engine Competitive Intelligence

No time seems more important to leverage the competitive intelligence available through search engine marketing than the holidays. Savvy marketers know search can reveal often overlooked advertising opportunities all year long.

Search for the Holidays
Thanks to the nimble nature of search, there’s plenty of time to more aggressively monitor the competitive knowledge gained, even deep into the holiday season. Marketers can track product and gift card searches, top sources of traffic to retail sites, and even social networking sites. This makes it easy to adjust campaign strategy or revise ad copy, and the holiday season only raises the stakes.

Marketers also use search to prepare for the “Cyber Monday” effect—the spike in online sales that occurs on Mondays between Thanksgiving and Christmas. To take advantage of the trend, many marketers offer special online discounts. Some report increased online sales for each holiday Monday and develop “Cyber Monday” advertising strategies.

Search Throughout the Year
But opportunities don’t end in the New Year. Developing a seasonal marketing strategy starts with an examination of the merchandising calendar, which matches changing demand to appropriate timeframes and advertising themes.

A merchandising calendar for a sporting goods merchant, for example, might call for swimwear and softball equipment promotions to run March through May, with ski and snowboard deals in the fall and winter. Search can track keywords or phrases competitors target specific to the merchandise or identify top brands being searched. The intelligence gained through search can even help merchants determine peak timeframes to advertise, and marketers can apply competitive findings to many channels, not just search. So why not learn from what competitors do well?

Fundamentals of Search
Unfortunately, knowing the need and ensuring proper execution, don’t always go hand in hand. Although search intelligence is about understanding your competitors’ keywords and landing pages, it also helps marketers improve ad copy, identify seasonal trends, monitor pay-per-click statistics and fix campaign issues. So in order to make sure marketing teams can capitalize this holiday season and beyond, chief marketers should ensure their teams understand the following:

The Stats and the Tools
Metrics such as coverage, share of clicks and conversion rates explain the depth of an advertising campaign’s success. Tools such as AdGooroo’s SEM Insight track actual pre-click data on search engine visibility to deliver unique branding metrics, including coverage – the percentage of times specific advertisers appear for certain keywords.

Hitwise tools use panels to track user click streams as they move between sites. With reports based on verticals, sites and keywords, Hitwise provides several angles to view the effectiveness of campaigns and competitors. comScore offers a media planning toolset as well as a search-specific tool called qSearch to gain insights into the behavior and source of their site visitors or comparative Web site performance. See Tools for Benchmarking a Search Campaign for additional information on search intelligence tools.

Keywords
Learning what keywords competitors target can reveal the effectiveness of individual keywords or phrases compared to one another in total search volume, as well as how well competitors perform relative to your keywords. Competitive keyword intelligence can enlighten bidding strategies and improve search position.

Ad copy
Search intelligence tools pull examples of competitors’ most effective ad copy, based on such factors as coverage and position. With this information, marketers can revise ad copy using more effective terms that generate greater attention and response.

Trademark Infringement
Marketers can bid on competitors’ trademarked terms but cannot use the terms themselves in their ad copy. If trademark infringement occurs, it’s up to the victim to do something about it, and potential risks include loss of sales, traffic and brand equity, as well as the real possibility of setting up the consumer for a bad experience or permanently losing that customer to a copycat site. AdGooroo’s Trademark Insight monitors infringement and submits suspected violations to search engines.

Making It Work
Taking advantage of all search has to offer requires diligent monitoring and a keen eye for new opportunities. Those that do it well during the holidays and beyond will discover insights that make the effort more than worth while.

Using search CI in innovative ways? Want to compare notes? Drop me a line at [email protected].

Michael Kahn is vice president of account management and marketing at Performics.