Is Your Marketing Preparing You for Christmas 2015?

Before we can start planning what we want for Christmas, we need to look at last year’s results. How did you go on your goals last Christmas? It’s important to understand how you performed compared to your expectations, your competition and your budget. For this we look to statistics. Bring up your previous campaign and analytics results so you can benchmark your holiday sales.

If you set your campaign from October to December 2014 and bring up the following information, you will see that:

• Lost Impressions – How many impressions did you miss? This might have been due to insufficient budget, being out bid for positions or trying to advertise for too many keywords.
• Auction Insights – Where did you sit against the competition for similar keywords? Who are you competing against? This question might surprise you, if you find companies that are not in your industry, perhaps it’s time to rethink your keywords.
• Cost-Per-Acquisition Information – How much did you pay for a sale/lead? Was this less than your profit margin?

 Google top tip: Trend Click-Through-Rate and conversion rates throughout last season and recall if competitors ran aggressive promotions that could have affected performance.

 Now that you’re aimed with a benchmark, you have the ability to tap into a great Google tool which originated in Google Labs, called Google Trends. Trends are important because you are able to research terms which are important to you and your business and see how they are ‘trending’ on Google. You can filter the results through selecting certain criteria too. So for example, you can tailor the results so that you only see trending topics in a geographical area.

In the lead-up to Christmas this is an invaluable tool and you can gain some amazing insights into seasonal demands. For example, you can search for ‘Christmas toy sale’ and you will be able to see when a spike, or fall, in the term’s popularity began. You can then forecast your Google AdWords budget around this trend, so that you are able to handle the influx of extra impressions.

Does your business slow down during Christmas? A common idea across the trade service providers is to switch off ads during Christmas. This might be short sighted. Again if you look at towards Google Trends and enter the search term ‘emergency electrician’ you will actually notice that December is the fourth highest month this search term is used. If you look back a couple of years, in 2013 December the search term had two to three times more interest than any time that year. Google said in 2011, that data beats opinion and this information is proof. It is counter intuitive to most people, but think back to your holidays for a moment. Typically people are home, which will allow time for tradies to visit you. I had close friends who went on a road tour of the east coast, and they got their car serviced before they left. So there are plenty of opportunities to get new business.

Back to retail focus, we need to start testing & optimising the store to have an increased sales conversion. Which is the best landing page for the product? How is your checkout process? These questions can be applied to any website. How easy is it for people to call you at a moment’s notice? I always look at the leaders in the market, and in my opinion, the most dialled websites in Australia are the price comparison websites. They are covered in credible trust building icons like payment method logos, easy to understand snippets of information and they will usually have a lot of clear space on the website. The contact forms and phone numbers are the clear features of these websites. Remember your website is not a library, but a sales person. The sale is either a product or a lead, so gear your website to suit.

What happens if you don’t have extra money to spend around Christmas on marketing? By now you should know what products or keywords convert well. I suggest adding these to their own campaign. In Google Shopping you can set this to high priority to allow it to trigger first and you can be more aggressive on these products. In other sectors, you can allocate more of your daily budget to this campaign, so your best sellers never run out of budget. As the impressions increase, you can increase the budget into the best-sellers campaign, until your other keywords are not running at all.

The key take away point from Christmas is searches are seasonal and businesses are the busiest during this time. Money flows more freely from consumers wallets/purses/coin pockets, and it’s up to your marketing to make the most of this. With some good planning and careful campaign foresight you too can have a stress-free and prosperous Christmas, so contact us here at SponsoredLinX today 1300 859 600.