ComScore is reporting that during this holiday season:
The use of work computers has gone up (2.3%), home computer use has gone down (.9%) ….. but more people are actually making their purchases at night (presumably on the home computer).

What’s this mean?
That people are picking out what they want to buy while at work, during the day.
Then they’re going home and buying.

Why’s this important?
Because that will greatly affect direct conversions reported because they’re finding what they want through one computer, and making the purchase on another. So, no cookie.

We’ve been banging the direct conversion drum for so long, it’s getting worn out.

Direct Conversions are not a completely accurate portrayal of purchasing behavior.
It’s so important that marketers know that the effect their SEM efforts have on sales has always been under-reported, and  is even more under-reported now.

By SEM I mean both pay-per-click and organic rankings too. People find products under generic searches at work (like say, men’s argyle sweater). Once they’ve found what they  like, at night when they’re home  they go right to the site (or search for the brand that they liked) and purchase.

They make the purchase on a different computer, which means there’s no trail.

Reporting statistics can only be given so much weight. They shouldn’t be considered an exact measurement of what’s going on.

Digital Marketing, Search Engine Marketing AdWords, direct conversions, ecommerce reporting, holiday ecommerce report, holiday sales, organic rankings

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

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

There are exceptions to every rule and it is important to analyze each situation on its own merit. But as a general starting point, a good rule of thumb for creating online ads is to remember the following: successful offline advertising gets consumers to buy products or services; successful online advertising drives consumers to a website, which in turn should sell the consumer.

For example, the ultimate goal for a television ad for dishwashing liquid is to convince the viewer that the next time they buy dishwashing liquid, they should buy that particular brand.

An online ad for dishwashing liquid can’t really get enough information across to convince a user to buy that product. The online ad takes the user to a website that extols its benefits. Even if that site is not an ecommerce site and doesn’t sell the product, the purpose of the site to convince the user that the next time they go out to buy dishwashing liquid, they should buy that particular brand of cleaner.

The online ad program should influence the messaging: PPC versus CPM

Ads running on a PPC basis should first create interest and then qualify the user before they click through to the site, since each click will cost the company money. Qualifying the user first stops wasteful click-thrus and increases ROI.

Ads placed on a site with a weekly or monthly CPM should create interest and drive as much traffic to the site as possible. Since ad expenditure is based on the number of people that have the opportunity to see the ad and not how many people click on the ad and go through to the site, the ad doesn’t need to qualify users as much as a PPC advertisement. But that doesn’t mean you should write an ad that sends everyone to the site. It means an ad on a CPM site doesn’t have to qualify the user as much as a PPC ad.

Remember, there are certainly exceptions to this rule and we’re not talking about branding efforts online.

If you take one thing away from this post it’s this: online ads drive traffic to websites, which then sell the users on the product.

Marketing advertising, AdWords, Banner Ads, PPC