Holiday Search Marketing Strategies

Getting Your Customers to Shop ‘Til They Drop (a Lot of Money on Your Site)

The holidays can be the make or break season for retailers, whether online, offline or a little of both. For obvious and quite unsentimental reasons, we prefer our advertisers to be on the “make” end of the scale.

And, naturally, we do a lot of research around here based on the huge volumes of data our search business generates. In the interest of helping you “put the make” on the holiday season, we’re offering up some of our findings, as well as a few pointers to help enhance your holiday marketing plans.

Holiday Highlights
If you were to ask the Magic Eight Ball if 2007 is likely to be a good year for online retail, the answer might well be: “All signs point to yes.” According to comScore, online consumer spending grew 26 percent in 2006 to $24.4 billion. More than 80 percent of consumers did at least some shopping online (BizRate and Shop.org Holiday Mood Study 2006), and 50 percent of shoppers bought more stuff online in 2006 than 2005 (NielsenNetRatings research). It’s a pretty telling trend. (For what it’s worth, last year I did all of my holiday shopping online for the first time.)

The Yahoo! Search Marketing team has prepared some tips for advertisers based on the holiday data we gathered:

Engage the bargain hunters—According to the BizRate and Shop.org Holiday Mood Study 2006, nearly half of the consumers polled named “free shipping” as a primary motivator to purchase. Other shoppers named “online only sales” and “repeat buyer discounts.”

Keywords count—According to our internal data, “Christmas” was, not surprisingly, the most holiday-related search term in 2006 with more than three million average monthly searches. Other popular terms included “Christmas decoration,” “Hanukkah,” “holiday gift” and “gift for dad.” Make sure that your keyword selection includes holiday-related keywords and seasonal products and promotions.

Titillate with titles—Titles and descriptions can drive relevance and clicks, so it’s a best practice when creating specific holiday ad groups to place the holiday term prominently in both the title and the description, and include any special seasonal promotions in the copy.

Clear for landing—Make sure that your landing pages are relevant to your keywords, ad copy and any promotions. Nothing’s more frustrating for a consumer to click on an ad that says, “Get 10% off” something and then land on a page where that information is either absent or buried. Prices and promotions should be consistent with ad copy.

Combine search with display and offline advertising—Regular readers of our blog know that search is just one important part of your marketing mix. Make sure you include your keywords and consistent copy in your display and offline marketing material. If you haven’t already read them, check out two recent posts, one on combining search and display advertising and the other on integrating your online and offline campaigns.

We’ll go into some of these in more detail in future posts.

—Michael Mattis, Holiday Shopper

Photo courtesy Steve L., via Flickr.

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1. Vario Creative Blog - Mar&hellip | September 27th, 2007 at 5:56 am

[…] Jennifer Laycock has a recap on how to get the most out of your seasonal search marketing campaign, in anticipation of the upcoming holiday shopping season. She builds on the tips offered by the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog. […]
2. Riserep.Com » Holid&hellip | September 27th, 2007 at 8:27 am

[…] wrote an interesting post today on Holiday Search Marketing StrategiesHere’s a quick […]
3. The Leading Edge » &hellip | September 27th, 2007 at 1:13 pm

[…] your business benefits from holiday shopping her are some search tips from Yahoo that could get you more traffic and sales in the next few […]
4. Making the Most of the Ho&hellip | October 4th, 2007 at 7:33 am

[…] a recent blog post, Yahoo provided some pointers on how search marketers can capitalize on the growth of online […]
5. Brian Scott | October 11th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

Hmm… hope things pickup, because after communicating with numerous competitors and retail businesses, online purchasing has been down. Im hoping there’s just a slouch in the economy across the U.S. right now, and that it picks up in the next month. Being in the Retail Business Supply industry Ive seen a surge in traffic and visits, but not in actual online sales.
6. MyCreditFriend | October 11th, 2007 at 2:41 pm

Now your kids can shop with their own debit card! We’ve just put an article about this on our main page. Interesting indeed.
7. Nancy Powell | October 11th, 2007 at 5:36 pm

Thanks so much for the valuable tips….I especially liked the idea of offering free shipping at the holidays. One could probably write off the shipping as an advertising deduction. Right? I market a green food supplement for dogs that are allergic, and the holidays are NOT a time to have a scratching dog around!
8. Linus Nwankwo | October 12th, 2007 at 10:44 am

I am interested in this message and offcourse any information that will enhance the performance of my website
9. Linus Nwankwo | October 12th, 2007 at 11:40 am

Thanks for this message, I am interested in anything that will enhance the performance of my website
10. Dog Clothing & Dog Costume | October 18th, 2007 at 11:32 am

These are great tips for the upcoming holiday season. Thanks for the post!
11. Gabby | October 19th, 2007 at 6:50 am

Here is another gift idea…
Check this website http://www.GiftMyWay.com
The perfect gift for any occasion
12. Fashionista | November 1st, 2007 at 7:28 am

Easy Holiday Shopping from Artfulwears.com!

I can’t believe it either but the holiday season is right around the corner. Personally, I LOVE buying gifts for people but I don’t go crazy for the holidays. However, since most of you do, I am going to give you some good ideas on how to make holiday shopping less stressful, less expensive, and less time consuming. Of course Artfulwears will be a part of the plan!

First, make a list of all the people you need to buy gifts for. I am not huge at planning in advance, however the sooner you have a list, the easier it will be. After you make the list, give yourself a budget per person. Again, I am not much of a budgeter but this is the logical way to do things. Don’t exceed the budget. That way when you are done shopping for everyone’s gifts you won’t have any surprises and you won’t have to eat Ramen Noodles for the whole month of January! Take the list everywhere you go that way if you see something while you are out and about, you can pick the items up.

Second, I highly recommend shopping online, and not just for self-promotion. It is actually less expensive to buy online than it is to go out and it takes far less time. You spend money on gas and then if you are out shopping long enough, you need to eat. Plus, you are almost always going to buy additional things that you don’t need. After all of the running around, you still might not come home with what you need. You can take a few minutes on the computer and locate exactly what you want and hopefully get free shipping. In most cases, you will also not have to pay sales tax. Additionally, you can easily comparison shop once you find what you are looking for. Last but not least, if the person you are buying for doesn’t live nearby, you can have it shipped right to their door.

Now onto the self-promotion. Artfulwears makes holiday shopping REALLY easy, as we offer FREE shipping AND FREE return shipping. How great is that?! If you buy it and it doesn’t work, you can send it back at no cost. We also offer FREE gift wrapping. That alone saves you 5 minutes a present! Artfulwears has items for women of all ages in a wide array of prices. You might even suggest to your friends/family/husbands/boyfriends that you filled out your Artfulwears wish list. That way they know they are buying you the correct size or color. We are also available to personally assist you in your search. Gift certificates are an option as well. They can be mailed in hard copy or emailed. So if it’s last minute you will be all set.

So take my advice, save your time and go to parties. Save your money and take a little weekend getaway, or better yet, shop for yourself! Visit us at http://www.artfulwears.com!
13. Yahoo! Publisher Network &hellip | November 7th, 2007 at 1:00 pm

[…] hard at it right now developing special holiday ad strategies and promotions, as a recent post on the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog explains. Creating holiday-related content for your site, sprinkled through with holiday keywords, can help […]
14. NuPhedrine | January 28th, 2008 at 12:58 pm

Thanks for these tips, I will keep them in mind for the next Christmas season