It’s that time of year – the dreaded “pre-holiday” season. It’s when anticipation runs high and sales haven’t quite started to rev up yet.

We recommend that our clients use the month of September to get ready for November and December. That gives us (and them) enough time to check and double check everything. While there are countless items to check off the list, a few things move the sales needle the most.

It’s mid-October, so it’s crunch-time and every day really counts.  This isn’t meant as a comprehensive list. This is a “if you’re going to do a few things to get ready, these are the things to make sure you do” list:

1) Make sure you analyze last year’s numbers.

AdWords, Analytics and sales figures. You need to know what worked and what didn’t, specifically during the holiday season. Use that information to create your AdWords campaigns for this year.

It may seem like an obvious step, but some companies review month over month figures. More than any other time, it’s important to review year over year numbers, because the holidays are such an aberration for most ecommerce companies.

2) Get up to speed with your competition.

Read industry trades. Check your competitors’ sites. Have their websites changed? Understanding where they are right now and what the industry buzz is, can help you understand how robust your competition will be in the coming months.
 
3) Get your email-marketing schedule set now.

Even if all year long you’re able to work a day, a week, or a month ahead, the holidays move so quickly. You have to have a preliminary email-marketing schedule laid out, and get started on the graphics and messaging for these campaigns. The coming days will get busy. You should leave as little to the last minute as possible.

4) Create landing pages that complement your holiday AdWords campaigns.

Landing pages can help improve conversion rates, and are a critical part of the SEM process. Once again, if possible, look back to last year. Learn from what worked and what didn’t. Using the data available should help performance every year, regardless of the economy.

Online marketing is a fast moving industry, even in slow times. During the holiday season, every hour counts. Get in front of the process now, so you can have a successful, profitable, holiday season.

Digital Marketing, Search Engine Marketing AdWords, Ecommerce, email-marketing, holiday sales, Landing Pages, Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, sem

You shouldn’t be sending leads to your website, your website should be sending leads to you.

“The thing is our website is where we send leads to get more information. It’s basically like a digital brochure.”

The next time you hear anyone in your marketing or sales department utter those words, let them know if that’s how they view the website, it would probably have been less costly to create some printed collateral to give potential customers then to invest in a website.

The Internet is the best way to let people you don’t know and who don’t know you, but who need what you have, find you.

Create a website so that it’s helpful to users who know nothing about you, and keep in mind that they will be stopping by your competitor’s sites as well. Help them understand what you do or sell and why they should consider doing business with you. For B2B sites (especially those with complex sales cycles), you don’t need to put every tiny detail about your business front and center.

Remember that for B2B sites that don’t have an e-commerce function (like selling white paper downloads, for instance) the goal of a website isn’t to close a potential sale, it’s to create interest. The website should introduce your company to the user in a way that gets you on their short list. You simply want them to say, “I should get more information from these guys.”

That’s why if you’re investing in a website, it should be more than a high-tech, high-priced, brochure. Brochure’s are generally given to people following some sort of interaction. They are given out after a sales person has provided some background on the business. Even a 30 second conversation can put the information that’s in the brochure into context.

That process is backwards. Rather than using a person to provide initial information and sending leads to your site for more information, create a website so it can be easily found and write it so it provides the necessary introductory information.

It will act as your best salesperson, working 24/7 to get your business in front any potential customer looking for what you provide. Done correctly, the website will lead them to you for more information.

Marketing, Website Content, Website Design B2B, business to business, Lead Generation, Leads, Online Content, Online Marketing, Small Business, Website Design, Website Usability

Google now has AdWords reporting features that allow you to see every single keyword phrase that resulted in click-through traffic. This new feature lets you see the words users placed before or after your keywords phrases.

For example, if you sell children’s clothing and outerwear, keywords you might have for an ad for scarves are “scarf” or “scarves.” You may also have keywords with additional adjectives, like “colorful scarves” or “pink scarves.”

Based on these assumptions, Google may display your ads when users query such terms as “lacey scarves,” “sexy scarves,” or even “elegant scarves,” since you have the word “scarves” as a keyword in your campaign. Users who query these terms are not the right potential customer for a site that sells cute children’s scarves. Users on a mission to find a specific item will often click on ads, check out the site, click back and go on to the next site.

Add keywords that drive the “wrong” traffic to your site as negative keywords, so when they are included in the query string, your ad will not appear. “Wrong” traffic means users who are looking for a product or service you do not provide and who, based on their query, would definitely not be interested in what you do provide.

Use Google’s new reporting feature to find these terms. There will likely be words or phrases that are completely unrelated to your business, and these keywords have cost you money unnecessarily. Turn them into negative keywords so you can focus your budget on the terms that are likely to convert.

Search Engine Marketing AdWords, keywords, Negative Keywords, PPC, Search Engine Marketing, sem

Ad Age article today states 73% of women said the recession has fundamentally changed the way they think about saving and spending money vs. 57% of men. Could it be because women are the ones shopping for the family, so they feel the effects of rising grocery bills combined with lower incomes? http://adage.com/u/5R3YZb

Marketers, whether packaged goods companies, clothing manufacturers or luxury retailers all need to adjust their efforts. The article goes on to state the they need to market to women’s “rational” side. We’ve been advising some of our clients about this very thing for months.

Position your items as basics, essentials, and smart buys.

Marketing advertising, Marketing, Online Marketing, Recession Marketing

Was just reading a really interesting article in AdAge ( http://adage.com/article?article_id=138673 ), about WPP, the holding company for such advertising behemoths as JWT, Y&R and Ogilvy. It’s probably not a shock to anyone that their profits are down 47% in 2Q 2009, given the economy and marketers need to cut back ad spending (media, production, and creative costs).

What I found really interesting about the article is the shift in where they made their profits. The article states that “More than 61% of the holding company’s revenue came from nontraditional services such as direct, digital, PR and research.” Back when I was a worker bee at JWT, media (as in broadcast and print) was a huge profit center. Considering the huge cross-section of clients they represent, it’s an important shift.

Digital Marketing, Marketing advertising, Online Marketing