How to Boost Sales and Stay Ahead of the Game

Transcription

1 How to Boost Sales and Stay Ahead of the Game

2 PPC Holiday Planning Tips For Creating A Strategic Holiday Plan You understand that the Internet plays a big part in your company s future. Online marketing challenges even the most traditional advertising mediums. Some companies choose to tackle pay-per-click advertising on their own, but working with an agency that specializes in all things paid search marketing can give your business the edge you need to succeed. 1 Key Online Shopping Days Know the key days for holiday shopping. Below are a few of the key days for holiday online shopping for 2013: Review Last Year s Holiday Performance You ll want to start your plan by first reviewing 2012 performance and apply your learnings to your 2013 plan. During your analysis you ll want to review: Day parting, Key Days Traffic and Spend, Ad Copy Test Review, Promotions, Ad Extension performance.

3 What Promotions Are Running and When Now that you ve reviewed last year s performance you should have an idea of what worked well and what was well, meh. Work with your company or client to create a promotional calendar for the season and make sure you know what promotions are running, when they start and for how long they will run. What s Your Budget? A budget might be provided to you for the holiday season or you could use your findings from last year to help determine a budget for the upcoming year. Keep in mind the holiday season is a marathon and not a sprint. Be sure to have extra funds set aside for days that are the most profitable and use day parting to pull back on the days and hour of the days that are less profitable to help balance the budget. Put it on the Calendar You ve done your research, Know Your Key Dates, Have Your Promo Schedule Set and Determined your budget now PUT IT IN WRITING! Or at least on your calendar, shared file or project management program. Using a filing sharing systems like Google Docs and Outlook ect. that can help keep one place for everyone to review and set reminders for key days is key. Meet with your team and make sure everyone involved knows their part in the big show and when things are due. 2 Creating Holiday Specific Campaign Best Practices When it comes to preparing for the holiday PPC rush, it s best practice to segment Holiday specific campaigns. Creating separate campaigns allows you to allocate specific budgets and targeting, while keeping your existing campaigns intact and ready to go come January. What To Include in Holiday Campaigns During the holiday season the customer s purchase intent moves from purchasing for oneself, to gift giving. It s important to recognize this mind shift in the purchase cycle and build keywords and campaigns around key trigger items for the gift giver. The gift giver is going to be more conscious on purchasing exactly what is on a list, so be specific and descriptive in your ad copy. Holiday shoppers are also easily swayed a good deal. Including FREE SHIPPING and coupon codes in your ad copy have proven to be very successful during the holidays so be sure to use these in Ad Copy when you can. Below are also a few best practices to keep in mind while building out your Holiday Campaigns.

4 Best Practices: Upload Campaigns ASAP Ad Approvals can take up to 3 business days or longer depending on industry. Also, the more history your campaigns have typically the better the Quality Score, which can lower your CpCs in a very competitive space. Breakout by performance/promotion Segment by either Campaign or Adgroup for high performing promotions such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, ect. The benefit for campaign segmentation allows you to set up start and end dates for specific campaigns and specific budgets. Mobile Adjustments Adjust mobile bid modifiers to prepare for increased competition in Google and Bing. Google States that 84% of holiday shoppers will be shopping on their phones while in a store so make sure you are ready to compete in the space. While we can t adjust tablet bid modifiers in AdWords, we can in Bing so be sure to analyze this data and adjust bids accordingly. Day parting Adjustments Holiday shoppers tend to shop at all hours of the night so make sure you that you are accounting for this. Regularly review and analyze day parting performance and adjust your bid modifiers if you are using them. Campaign Start End Dates Using campaign start and end dates is a great way to manage the turning on and turning off ads for timely promotions such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday and keeps you from being up at all hours of the night (even though you probably will still be up anyways reviewing your accounts!). 3 Getting Your PLA Ads Holiday Ready Product Listing Ads show photos of your products, along with prices and product names, right on the search results page when people search for items like yours on Google. In 2012, Black Friday online sales increased 26% and Product Listing Ads are a crucial piece of online sales for ecommerce accounts during this time, so we want to help make sure your accounts are ready. Google has made several recent updates to Product Listing Ads over the last few months especially with mobile so it s important to make sure your campaigns are up to date and optimized. Whether you are a veteran PLA advertiser or new to the game, below are 6 tips to help prepare your PLA campaigns for the holiday push.

5 Create a New Campaign With all the changes you will be making to your PLA campaign during the holidays, it s probably a good idea to create a new Holiday PLA campaign. This way your non-holiday campaign is left in tact and ready to come January. Update the Feed Review your feed and make sure you are including all the key information that would help the user find exactly what they are looking for. The more data the better (every PPCs account managers favorite saying)! If you are able to show the user you have exactly what they are looking for, it will help build trust and confidence in your product, which can help sway users that have never purchased your product before to buy. Holiday shoppers shop differently than they do the rest of the year because they are giving gifts. People make their lists and the giver wants to get exactly what is on the list so this is one reason it s crucial to make sure you have all the information about the product included in the feed. Google gives an example below. Shipping: Adjust for Free Shipping options The number one phrase that will sway an online holiday shopper during the holiday season is FREE SHIPPING. When free shipping is involved, brand loyalty goes out the window. If you are offering free shipping make sure you update your shipping settings in merchant center to reflect this. Also, make sure that any items that offer free shipping are properly updated in your data feed as well. For a txt based feed, the setting for Free Shipping should look something like this US:::0.00. Here is a link that walks you through how to update your shipping settings. Upload New Promotional Ads ASAP I m sure most online marketers using PLA are already on top of this but just another friendly reminder to make sure your ads are updated and promoting the latest and greatest promotions. It s best to get these updated at least a week before you are ready to launch them so they can go through editorial review which can take anywhere from 1-3 business days. You can just leave them paused and then activate when you need them so there is no delay. To update the promotions in AdWords, go to the Ads Tab > New Ad > Promotion. Mobile PLA: Opt in and Adjust According to Google, 84% of shoppers will be using their smart phones to compare, research and purchase items while shopping in a physical store. There is no denying the impact Mobile has ecommerce. If your campaign is not opted into mobile, it s time to opt in and make sure you adjust your bid modifiers accordingly.

6 Google Shopping recently updated the look of PLA ads on Google.com so users can easily swipe to view more items without having to leave the search results page. One online clothing retailer saw a 537% increase in conversions and 77% increase in ROAS. These updates should help increase PLA performance significantly over the holiday shopping season. PLA Geo Expansions Google shopping recently expanded the availability of Product Listing Ads to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Turkey. If these are countries that you are able to service, be sure that you expand your campaigns to include these new countries and increase you availability in this highly profitable channel. 4 Remarketing Lists For Search Ads: Holiday Strategy What is Remarketing for Search? Remarketing for Search allows you to target people who have already been to your site and visited a specific page, but also searched a specific key term. People who have already been to your site and are familiar with your product are in many cases more likely to convert. Combining that with the fact that they re searching a relevant keyword (which implies that they are actively seeking something relevant) makes this a very useful method of targeting. Many people do their holiday shopping online, so if you haven t implemented remarketing list for search ads (RLSA) in your accounts yet, now might be a good time to start! How It Works: RLSA is simple to set up, especially if you have already created audience lists for display remarketing campaigns. You can either set up a new campaign or add the audience list to an existing search campaign. Next, for each Ad Group you can adjust to setting to be either bid only or target and bid. In the bid only setting, the Max CPC will be increased for people on your audience list, but ads will still show to people who are not on your list. In the target and bid setting, your ads will only appear to those who have been to your site and received a cookie. It s that simple! There are many different ways to set up a remarketing for search campaign. You can change the duration of time that users are on your list, so that you can be sure to serve ads to people when they re most likely to convert. Custom combinations are also available so you can exclude people who have already converted (or target people who have, for example, placed an item in the shopping cart but abandoned it).

7 How To Implement It Into Your Holiday Strategy Remarketing for search is a great strategy to implement around the holiday season. The beauty in RLSA is that you can strategically show ads to someone who has visited your site, but may be comparing prices on other sites, so they have not converted. For example, let s say you sell computers. Someone may come to your site looking to buy a computer as a gift, but is at an early point in the buying cycle and is just looking at prices. Since they visited your page but didn t convert, they now have a cookie and are part of your audience list. Every time they search for anything related to your product like computer cables or computer accessories, your ad will be displayed, thus reminding him of your product. 5 Another great reason to use remarketing for search is that customized ad copy can help you bring those customers who have not yet converted back to your site. This is a great opportunity to advertise special holiday promotions, such as a coupon code or free shipping. This further entices users that have already taken a peek at your products to come back and make a purchase. Remarketing: How are things different when you re remarketing? Remarketing Lists: Remarketing lists are targeted audiences based on the individuals who ve previously visited your site. As users enter your site, browse, and eventually convert or exit, you can then create lists of those visitors to whom your display ads will then target down the road. There are traditional remarketing list strategies that work across seasons and traffic tides. What changes in the holiday season? As you step into the heightened activity that are the holidays, to whom and when you ll want to remarketing shifts. How to figure it out : Who are you targeting? There are many ways to build a remarketing list, the main divisions of visitors are: Those who visited the site but never began the Shopping Cart process Those who visited, began building a shopping cart, but did not complete the purchase process Those who completed a purchase. To best create your remarketing lists, you must understand whom it is you are trying to attract and how you want to appeal to them. If a visitor did not complete a purchase, what was the reason? If they did make a purchase, how can you continue that relationship? The structure behind your remarketing lists must include a targeted user at a particular stage in his or her buying cycle. As you evaluate the users whom you are most interested in targeting, work through the various pages of your site to build a list of interactions.

8 Dynamic Remarketing: Quick of how they work: First things first, you need to paste the dynamic remarketing tag on your site. It is much like the traditional remarketing code with some minor differences. To take advantage of this feature, first the code must be placed. After that, these are much like the rest of our remarketing tactics. A small but distinct exception is that instead of building your own list, Google puts the pieces together for you. Here is the set of choices you have when creating your Dynamic Remarketing campaign. Be sure to note the automatically created column for your ad copy. While you aren t able to show your own creative, in this case it is simply because the algorithm is associated the best product listing ad with your user. You will have the opportunity to build from one of a few choices, which allows you to employ some of the previously discussed best practices for holiday ad copy. Users will be shown products chosen by Google from your existing Merchant Center feed, based on your most relevant products to where the user was when he or she was tagged with the remarketing cookie. What changes in the holiday season? To best prepare for the holidays, you will want to evaluate your list options and adapt your messaging appropriately. As mentioned, the language and detail used for shoppers who added products to a shopping cart vary from one who s already purchased items from your site. Remarketing Ad Copy: The message in your remarketing ads can be customized to the varying audiences you target. As mentioned, you will use different language and tactics depending on the engagement you ve seen from the spectrum of visitors.

9 Where are your shoppers in their buying cycles? Post-purchase Shopping cart abandoners No shopping cart activity but +10 pages viewed Bounced A sample remarketing list for non-converters: This list consists of individuals who made it to the Confirmation Page of our shopping cart. They were just one clicks from finishing their purchase. What happened? The ad copy for this list is focused on the idea that the failure to complete the purchase was due to outside factors (such as a random interruption). It assumes the user is actually interested in completing that purchase and simply forgot to follow up. Because remarketing lists can cover varying lengths, an option during the holidays is to highly target audiences for a short period of time. In this scenario, a 3 day remarketing Ad copy in this scenario may be as simple as: The copy in this example highlights the urgency of the promotion, the exact savings available, and the reminder of an order that has yet to be completed. Another example remarketing list is the visitor who has already purchased something. This would lend itself to a complementary item or simply another purchase. While this remarketing group is certainly able to be targeted all year long, the holiday season is the perfect time to suggest another purchase to go along with previously browsed items. Through text ads denoting common items or complementary items, targeted audiences are reminded of the appeal of a site from whom they ve already been a customer. These ads can continue over a longer period of time than the 3-5 day big push ads of the previous remarketing group. Holiday themed ad copy messages : Urgency (promotions, coupons, deals ending soon, ships by Dec 23rd) Reminder to complete purchase Complementary or similar items ( stocking stuffers, gift cards, socks for those shoes)

10 6 Holidays: How should your ads be different during the holidays? Promotions/Coupon Codes: Google suggests the following: Are you covering your various bases with coupon, deal, promo language? Which works best for you? Because users respond to promotional items in various ways (see Table), it is critical that your ad copy not only reflect these deals, but also test them. Test copy with numerical values such as Save 20% versus 20% Off. 2 for 1 Deal versus Buy 1 Get 1. Or $29.99 & Up versus Starting at $ While your actual deals, sales, or coupons might be fairly specific, it is necessary that you identify the best performer for your demographic. Mobile ads Because mobile devices offer a very different viewing experience, any top performers should receive some mobile bid attention. Obviously any branded traffic should be front and center, but any heavy lifters of the account as well. Mobile users are possible purchasers, but they may also be looking up something on the fly (such as hearing about some new shoe they might purchase). These shoppers, who are mid-cycle and not ready to purchase, may perform best from a landing page that allows for easy navigation through your mobile inventory. For these users, test category pages that offer such broad groups as Men s Selection or New Arrivals or Sale Items.

11 Ad Extensions: How might these change over the holiday season? Ad extensions now play a part in your ad rank which makes them that much more imperative! Not only should you be utilizing ad extensions, such as location and sitelinks, during the year, you should be prepared to optimize as we approach the holiday season. Existing sitelinks While your existing links certainly apply into the holidays, you are now appealing to a completely different mindset. Your shoppers might have questions that are much more specific or urgent than in the preceding months. Because of this, implementing sitelinks that take users to the pages where the answers already exist is your best bet. Examples of these pages might be Latest Trends (your new arrival page) or Find The Store Closest To You. New sitelink opportunities As mentioned, your shoppers also may be seeking more specific answers about their purchases. They want to know exactly when and if they can get their purchase with free shipping. For this reason, it may be advantageous to create pages that focus strictly on Free Shipping Deals. Perhaps someone is interested in what item would be a good gift for a man in his or her life. The sitelink Men s Favorites serves as a direct link to these options. Timing: Make A Plan (Including which are impulse buys and which are preplanned) Prep! (know your Q4 performance history) As is highlighted throughout this piece, reviewing past performance will give you the best idea of where to set your major expectations this season. While opportunities have grown and accounts may change, the pre-holiday retrospective gives you a starting point for setting your budgets and top performers. If you implemented any promotional ad copy in past years, be sure to review those results before beginning this year s round of ads. Know your timing (when do you have promos & when do you have lapses) Make a calendar to clearly note when promotional items are occurring and expiring. Identify the overlaps you experience or the lapses in promotions. In timing your holiday ad copy, ensure a window for ad approval. There s nothing more face-palm inducing than uploading a set of beautifully constructed holiday ads and watch them sit, Under Review, as you await approval. Uploading any time-sensitive material at least 3 days in advance is strongly recommended.

12 For image ads, this goes double. Because of the high influx of ads to be approved each season, and the hands-on nature with which image ads are reviewed, image ads should be a top priority. Allow yourself a week to get any image ads approved so that they ll be primed for the release on the day of your sale. Working ahead of the holiday schedule allows you to make any necessary changes that may be required and still submit your ads for re-approval before your release date. Content Caveats In preparing for a promotional deal, it may be successful strategy to release your ads 2-3 days before the sale begins. Give them something to salivate over while they wait for the promotion to officially start. A quick warning to those ready to set live the scores of preview ads for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Free Shipping Day: if your website is not prepared with this content, you need to wait. The policy that a promotion must be within 3 clicks of a landing page applies at all times, including the holiday season. If it s not on the site, linking to the site will not get your anywhere. Uploading your ads before your release date is an expected best practice, however. If you have the URL for the appropriate landing page, such as the page that will go live on Cyber Weekend, you can certainly take advantage of this proactive strategy. Once the page is live, unpause those babies and let them rake in the traffic. Tip: Keep your account healthy by including a long-standing ad running. PPC platforms like Google and Bing like their consistency. As you shuffle through varying promotions, also keep a standard ad running to keep a constant thread running through the campaigns. Either use your top-performing ad for each ad group or create an ad that generally covers the topic of holiday shopping, but doesn t include specific details. Set your ads to rotate evening and allow the generic ad to run across the holiday season. The paid search market is intricate and competitive. Our goal is to provide services that are worth ten times their value through locating unnecessary spending, increasing profits, saving valuable time and providing clear direction for growth. As a business in today s economy, hiring a PPC management agency is more economical than attempting it in-house or avoiding it altogether. So, how much is your time worth? If you re interested in an account audit or in working with a professional PPC agency, please visit hanapinmarketing.com or call Hanapin Marketing is a paid search agency based in Bloomington, Indiana. Founded in 2004, the company manges & optimizes clients paid search programs increasing sales while simultaneously decreasing budgets. From ad copy composition to keyword research to landing page optimization, Hanapin s core objective is to maximize our clients return on investment.