If you’re an online retailer you know the drill and if you’re an online retailer and don’t know the Holiday SEM drill – listen up.
Believe it or not, you’ve got to start your holiday SEM campaign sooner than you think. Holiday keywords are searched regularly as early as AUGUST!
Sadly, it’s true. And it’s true for E commerce business of all sizes
Small BIZ: this is your chance to brand yourself and inform people on how cool and unique your products are.
Bigger BIZ: search always helps with branding, but it can also keep potential clients updated on new offers and products you have. Also, use your SEM campaigns as an extension of other advertising you might be running (display/print).
We can help you get your fundamentals ready now. According to Google, in first 30 days of Q4 $15,000,000 was spent in online shopping.Take advantage of this huge market! Below are a few tips on just how to do it.
- Build SEM around stats and spikes in sales from holidays in years past. Plan for this holiday season based to how your campaigns preformed this time last year. Take a look at your holiday sales trends from last year – review keywords, ads, referring sites and popular buying times.
- Run a complete competitive analysis on your competitor’s holiday campaign. What are they offering for the holidays? What keywords are they bidding on? Know what you’re up against. If they don’t guarantee shipping by a specific date – maybe you can. Savvy online shoppers will notice.
- Write campaigns with buying cycle in mind: Interest, Research, Purchase. Keywords and campaign will evolve and change as client searches and needs change. By November many shoppers are doing a lot of price comparisons.
- Write ad groups specifically around popular products - if you have a few items for sale that run the chance of selling out. When that product is gone you can easily turn off the campaign. You’ll save money by not paying for clicks that won’t convert and save time by just turning off one ad group instead of painstakingly searching through long keyword lists and irrelevant ads.
