What to Know About Search Marketing for the Holidays
We haven’t even reached October yet but it’s never too early to start planning for Christmas – is it? Not according to Martin Software, which recently released “The Search Marketer’s Guide for the Holidays: Ten Tips for a Successful 2010.”
The report is meant to equip online retailers and e-commerce merchants with “better visibility into search marketing and online purchase trends for the 2009 holiday season, and highlights the relevant best practices to help prepare for the upcoming holiday season.”
Marin starts off by pointing out the obvious: search volumes see a noticeable spike around the holidays. In 2009, search volumes surged 40 percent in the days leading up to Dec. 24 from October, but quickly plummeted during the next few days.
Despite the more competitive auctions and higher keyword prices, a normalized cost and performance data chart for paid search campaigns shows that profits easily overshadow the costs, especially from the end of November through the middle of December.
In fact, from November to December, impressions rose 110 percent, clicks rose 18 percent, conversions increased 66 percent, conversion rates rose 42 percent, costs increased 71 percent and profits surged 77 percent.
The key dates for your campaign calendar are simple enough: Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and “peak week.” Conversion volumes start booming around Thanksgiving, and begin to come slowly decline about 10 days before Christmas Eve.
Marin also notes that Sundays appear to be the busiest day for online shoppers, and that Sundays outperformed other days of the week all throughout the holiday season in terms of average conversions, conversion rates and profit.
Ground shipping is usually cut off a week before Christmas Eve, and this is when online holiday gift buying starts to slow down. On Dec. 22, 2009, last-minute shoppers got busy, boosting conversion rates by more than 50 percent.
The company provides 10 tips for the 2010 holiday shopping season:
- Prepare campaigns in advance
- Create a boost schedule
- Adjust daily budgets and max bids
- Pay attention to negative keywords
- Promote special offers
- Use holiday messaging and gift cards
- Manage bids to inventory
- Identify “break out” items
- Plan for free-shipping day
- Leverage social media
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