STRATEGIES

Holiday Search Marketing Strategies

According to BizRate and Shop.org Holiday Mood Study 2006 conducted in the states, search marketing ranked 2^nd in “Effectiveness of Online Marketing Plans”, with email marketing ranked the first. In order to grab the shopping momentum during the holiday time, Yahoo! Search Marketing team has prepared some tips for advertisers based on the holiday data we gathered:

Use of promotion tactics—According to the study, nearly half of the consumers polled named “free shipping” as a primary motivator to purchase. Free gift with purchase incentives or free gift card with minimum purchase, worked well to push potential buyers into that decision.

Keywords count—According to our internal data, “Christmas” was, not surprisingly, the most holiday-related search term in 2006. Other popular keywords such as “christmas card,” “x'mas gift” and “x'mas buffet” had also shown a huge increase in search volume in December. Make sure your keyword selection includes holiday-related keywords and seasonal products and promotions.

Wise use of 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—Many advertisers should 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.

(Source: US Yahoo! Search Marketing blog - Michael Mattis, Holiday Shopper)

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