Don't Get 'Spooked' - Get Ready for Halloween!

With the summer now over and Autumn here to stay, the next upcoming event in the social calendar is Halloween. As outlined by Google’s Insights For Search queries for Halloween related terms are already on the rise as people begin searching for products and costumes. In the last business week alone, the number of search queries for the term ‘Halloween costumes’ rose by 60% alone. Retailers in the Apparel and Gifts and Greetings industries will likely see an increase in traffic during this time of year as users begin their search for costumes, decorations and greetings cards.



With this in mind, we’d like to provide you with some quick tips on how to get the most from this rise in traffic.

1) Create separate campaigns for all your Halloween product ranges with relevant themed keywords and ad texts. Google’s Search Based Keyword Tool will help you identify more long tail keyword opportunities based on your site’s content.

2) Be sure to use language in your ad texts specifically referring to Halloween as well as using any USPs to highlight any promotions or competitive advantages you might have. If you are selling a range of different costumes then trial an ad text using the Keyword Insertion formula thus ensuring your ads as relevant as possible to a user’s search query.

3) Deep link to all your product pages. If you have a particularly large inventory for Halloween then try running Keyword Destination URLs. Searches that bring the user to most relevant landing page are more likely to convert to sales.

4) Be prepared to increase your bids, particularly on popular products at this time of increased auction intensity. Raising bids on your well performing keywords will result in higher positions ensuring you don’t miss out on potential traffic.

5) If you’re bidding on more general keyword terms then be sure to update your negative keywords to protect your Click Through Rate. You can use the Keyword Tool to identify any terms that aren’t relevant to your site, or if you ran campaigns before then now is the time to review a Search Query report for last year and filter out any unwanted traffic.

We hope you found these tips useful! Please email us if you have any feedback.

Posted by Ewan Aparicio, Dublin Retail Team

Google UK Retail Summit Videos

Videos of our successful 2009 Retail Summit are now available on the Survival of the Fastest You Tube channel. Check them out below:

Philipp Schindler - Vice President, Northern and Central Europe - Google - Opening Remarks



Richard Last - Director, Planning and Business Development - JCPenney - Keynote



Panel Discussion - "eCommerce Excellence: Winning this Christmas"



Panel Discussion - "eCommerce KPIs: Delivering the Right Results"



Alex Gawley - Business Product Manager - Google - "Behind the Curtain: latest product developments at Google"



Peter Fitzgerald - Industry Leader - Google - Closing Remarks



Posted by Brendan Patterson, UK Retail Team

Top 10 Tips for getting accounts ready for Christmas

We all know it’s good practice to get one’s account in shape before the Christmas madness begins, but where do you start? Here are 10 practical steps you can take to ensure you make the most of the festive peak:

A practical guide for Retail Advertisers

1) Create a separate campaign for Christmas. Having a separate Christmas campaign allows you to control spend easily. Create Christmas themed keywords by combining popular products with Christmas modifiers. Eg a fashion retailer might run the keywords christmas socks, xmas socks, socks for christmas etc.

Test generic Christmas keywords eg christmas gifts, xmas presents etc but monitor performance carefully as these terms can be expensive. Run these keywords in a separate ad group so you can pause them easily if necessary.

2) Create Christmas ads to run in regular campaigns alongside existing ads. Eg a fashion retailer might add the following ad to their ‘Novelty Socks’ ad group:

Novelty Socks for Xmas
Browse our range of Novelty Socks.
Ideal gifts for stocking fillers!
fashionistaaz.co.uk/socks

3) Deep link to relevant landing pages. Try running Christmas-specific landing pages for your Christmas themed keywords. Highlight top gifts and products not previously offered and tie these in with seasonal ad text. Elsewhere, in your regular campaigns, make sure you're deep linking to product-specific landing pages. Avoid sending users to the homepage unless the traffic has come from a brand ad group.

Eg a sports retailer known as 'Sports Clobber' should direct users searching on terms such assports clobber, clobber sports etc to the homepage. However, users searching for a specific product (eg golf shoes) should be directed to a webpage featuring that product range. Users are far more likely to convert if they can find what they are looking for easily.

4) Include USPs in ad text. What makes your brand special? Use this opportunity to differentiate your offering from your competitors. Highlight any promotions which you have running eg free gift with purchase, free in store pick-up, last minute deals, special offers.

Price and delivery details work well but only feature them if you're offering competitive rates! Use calls-to-action eg 'Order online', 'Browse full range online' - commanding language makes for compelling ads. Promote final delivery deadlines. 'Order by **' tends to work better than 'Order now'.

5) Uncap budgets on popular categories. Try uncapping budgets on any well structured campaigns with a good ROI. As long as your campaign is well structured with targeted ad text, well themed ad groups, sensible keywords and a comprehensive list of well chosen negatives, your traffic will be relevant so uncapped budgets should result in higher overall ROI.

6) Increase bids (max CPCs) on existing keywords, especially on popular product ranges.Research has shown that the Christmas surge in traffic starts as early as September. Make sure you're ready for the onslaught. Raising bids on your well performing keywords will result in higher positions. Look at the quality score of your keywords – try raising the bids on any that have a high quality score and fall below positions 1-3.

7) Ensure keywords cover your entire product range. Consider expanding longtail terms. Serious shoppers know model names and numbers. You will benefit from having longtail keywords covered as more obscure keywords will have lower CPCs. If you're running highly targeted longtail keywords it's a good idea to set these to Broad match as users may type in a multitude of variations. Keywords comprising numbers/codes should be set to Phrase and/or Exact match.

Eg an electrical retailer (selling white goods) stocks a fridge known as 'snazzy tall fridge 123Z'. Users looking for this product could type in a variety of queries eg 'Z123 fridge snazzy', 'tall fridge 123Z' etc so it would be a good idea to have the keyword 'snazzy tall fridge 123Z' on Broad match. The advertiser should also add the code '123Z' as a keyword on Phrase and/or Exact match.

8) Check inventory to keywords. It sounds obvious but ensure your keywords match your current inventory. Pause/delete any keywords pertaining to products which are currently/permanently out of stock. Users quickly become frustrated if they are misled.

9) Expand negatives. Make sure your negative keywords are well built out on any campaigns running Phrase and/or Broad match keywords. If you have set up a separate Christmas campaign add in negatives re Christmas eg carols, recipes, decorations, wrapping paper etc.

10) Build out Content campaigns. Make sure your Content campaigns are well structured with tightly themed ad groups so that you can capitalise on AFC (Adsense for Content) during the festive season. Eg a lingerie retailer might want to appear on blogs discussing 'sexy festive gifts for your partner'.

Consider adding Christmas-specific ad groups. Eg a fashion retailer selling men's apparel might add an ad group based around 'Gifts for Him this Christmas'.

We hope you found these tips useful! Please email us if you have any feedback.

Posted by Zoe McFarlane, UK Retail Team

Using Social Media to Improve Your Bottom Line

©Andrey Kiselev

In 2009 online retailers figured out that the social revolution was not a passing fad and social media finally entered the mainstream. Tapping into social media to build engagement and a sense of community among customers was not seen as airy fairy marketing or something that is just nice to have--it could actually contribute to the all important bottom line.

Still have your doubts? Consider that Dell in June 2009 had earned $3m through Twitter since it started posting coupons and word of new products on the microblogging site in 2007, $1m of which was spent in the last 6 months alone. Dell Outlet has done particularly well on Twitter due to the inventory fluctuation of returned and refurbished products, and they have gleaned valuable feedback on products from consumers [1].

Twitter may be a relatively new phenomenon, but how about something as simple as allowing reviews on your website? Research conducted for Feefo suggests a third of the consumers polled would not buy from a website that does not support customer reviews and feedback as they believe this provided validation and control against the risk of buying from a ‘bogus’ store. This means you could be missing out on an extra 30% of customers simply by not having a customer feedback feature [2].

Other methods of engagement which online retailers are using include YouTube, Blogs and Microsites. Asda recently launched Yourasda, a community site that includes videos, a store finder, explanatory articles and many calls to interact with questions like "What local produce would you like to see?”. Earlier this year Asda launched a YouTube Channel "Saving You Money TV" that includes customer generated tips plus short films produced by Asda to help people save money. It also acts as a medium for the supermarket to demonstrate how it achieves its cost savings to deliver low prices in its stores. Asda's second quarter earnings were strong with 7.2% like for like sales growth and strong growth coming from Asda.com [3].

Want more proof of the power of social media? A study by Wetpaint and Altimeter Group showed a strong correlation between engaging in different social media and earning higher revenues. The report surveyed the top 100 most valuable brands depth and breadth of social engagement and correlated this to revenue growth and found that on average the companies with the highest social media engagement grew 18% in revenue over the last 12 months, compared to the least engaged companies who on average saw a decline of 6% in revenue during the same period [4].

[1]"Dell Says It Has Earned $3 Million From Twitter", The New York Times, June 12, 2009

[2]"Shoppers now using reviews to confirm a website is genuine before placing an order", Internet Retailing, August 14, 2009

[3]"Asda wins market share as customer numbers reach record high", your.asda.com, August 13, 2009

Posted by Emma Doody, Dublin Retail Team

Back To School Marketing – Be Top of the Class!

©vashistha pathak

With September around the corner millions of parents are welcoming the start of a new school year for their kids by shopping for new clothes, shoes, and backpacks filled with shiny new school supplies. Retailers keen to capture this surge in traffic are launching back-to-school campaigns left and right. However with a season that has multiple different targets from the influencers such as kids and teens, to the decision makers such as Mums & college students, it is important for retailers to ask themselves: what is the right media mix for me?

With the back-to-school shopping season spanning almost 3 full months from July to September and with no specific dates and deadlines for shipping cutoffs, back-to-school is a period of time with no explicit end date and huge opportunity for retailers. Research has shown that 54% of back-to-school shoppers will research online before purchasing in-store [1] with 42% or more purchasing these back-to-school items online, [2] it is no surprise that 72% will spend the same amount or more online as in stores for back-to-school purchases. [3] It is therefore a very good idea to ensure that your online marketing efforts are backed up with offline campaigns such as audio, print and TV in order to ensure that you are reaching the right audiences in all of the most relevant locations that you can.

Mothers are the primary back-to-school purchasers and will interact with a lot of different media touch points throughout the day from reading the morning paper, to listening to the radio as they drop the kids off at school to browsing their favorite online websites. Google online properties reach about 81% of women ages 25 to 44, making the Google Content Network an evaluable part of your marketing mix. With the current economic climate good deals are now even more important. Using your content campaigns to influence Mums by including special back-to-school offers & discounts in your ad text will cater your advertising to the more cost-conscious parents. Similarly using call to action phrases such as ‘buy online’, or ‘buy now’ and highlighting your extensive range and fast delivery times will further endear your campaigns to these back-to-school shoppers.

It is worth noting however that while mothers and parents may be the primary back-to-school purchasers, it is kids and tweens who will influence at least half of all back-to-school purchases. From backpacks to footwear parents will often let their children choose which specific items to purchase making the highly influential tween market a big priority for online retailers. The Google Content Network allows marketers to capture this audience while they are online playing games, researching projects or interacting with social networking websites. It also captures this valuable market through one of the most highly effective mediums for this demographic, their mobile phones. With mobile phones being the preferred medium of communication among school age children, teens and tweens they are highly relevant to back-to-school campaigns. Mobile campaigns are an evaluable way for marketers to capture kids and tweens while they are on the go, in school, looking for information or simply communicating with parents via text, this makes mobile a highly important part of any multichannel back-to-school marketing campaign.

Not to be forgotten back-to-college students are savvy online shoppers who make their own purchasing decisions with 80% going online prior to making any purchase [4] and 51% being coupon clippers who are very likely to use online coupons accessed online [5]. Content campaigns will capture these students as they browse online placing your ads on social networking sites, online music and book stores and many more, building strong awareness of your search campaign among this target audience. Offline efforts such as TV, radio and discount coupons in college newspapers, can prove equally effective in targeting this cost conscious demographic.

It is clear overall however that when times are tight, online marketing becomes even more useful and careful targeting of high potential audiences with a smart media mix can reap ample rewards for back-to-school retailers. With the back-to-school season now in full swing, it is time for retailers to step up to the mark and strike while the iron is hot.

[1] October 2008 OTX/Google Holiday Shopping Intentions Study
[2] PriceGrabber.com Back-to-School Survey July 24 2008-August 7, 2008
[3] Source: PriceGrabber.com Back-to-School Survey July 24 2008-August 7, 2008
[4] October 2008 OTX/Google Holiday Shopping Intentions Study
[5] Platform-A and IRI study cited in ‘Young Cupon Clippers Looking Online’, Research Brief, 10/04/09

Posted by Arlene Herbert, Dublin Retail Team