By Brandon Bauer
For digital marketers, the Christmas ecommerce season is never far away. But now that the calendar has changed from summer to fall, it’s time to switch completely to planning mode. After all, the biggest shopping season of the year only lasts six weeks, so we should make the most of it.
When setting your vacation strategy, keep the following three points in mind:
1. Note previous dates
If you’ve run holiday campaigns in the past, you already have a wealth of information on hand. Before you start planning, consult your ecommerce data for the past two years, looking at the big takeaways. Determine what worked and what didn’t. Are there any trends that you can take advantage of? Is there anything you would like to have done differently? Look for sales spikes that you may be able to anticipate and take advantage of again this year.
Then examine the same data from late summer and early fall of that year. Has anything changed? Are there new competitors that haven’t existed before? You will be surprised what insights your sales story contains. So don’t overlook them.
2. Consider moving a budget to early November
Many marketers reserve most of their advertising budget for the few weeks between Black Friday and Christmas. However, digital marketers are seeing more purchases in early November, and advertising dollars are following as a result. This depends on buying behavior as consumers expect early promotions and offers.
I’m a huge advocate of getting customers while you can. So, consider targeting these early buyers with part of your vacation budget. There’s no reason to purposely miss out on the early November earnings because you’re campaigning for something that could be better in December. And with a tariff round on Chinese goods coming up in mid-December, there is reason to believe that consumers may start the holiday shopping season earlier this year – possibly before Black Friday – to take advantage of current must-have item prices.
As an added bonus, you may be able to hit your vacation return goals earlier in the month with a lower cost-per-click (CPC) than if you had waited until later in November. The CPC costs keep rising on Black Friday due to increasing competition.
3. Take a dashboard snapshot
One of the biggest challenges of the ecommerce Christmas season is getting back to normal after the promotions are over. If you’ve switched to a more aggressive bidding strategy to compete for all those new eyeballs and don’t step back fast enough, you risk blowing your monthly budget out of the water. At the same time, it can take time to regain the pre-vacation balance that you spent months perfecting.
We have developed a simple solution to this problem, which depends on the size of your campaigns. For smaller accounts, I recommend taking screenshots of all of your current keyword and product group bids. For example, for larger accounts, you might want to export a backup copy of all your campaigns using Google Ads Editor. Whichever method you use, once the holidays are up, you’ll have a handy guide to help you get your campaigns back to normal.
It’s never too early for next year
Digital marketers build on success and learn from their mistakes. This year’s e-commerce campaign lays the groundwork for what happens next year. With that in mind, here are three tips that you can use during this year’s campaign to get even better results in the year ahead.
1. Document your work. This simple, but often overlooked, step can make a huge difference over the next year. As you plan, execute, and act on events in November and December, you should document them in real time. That way, at the start of the New Year, you’ll get play-by-play instructions that will refresh your memory and remind you of important lessons that you could easily forget. If done correctly, this can serve as a guide for the next year’s campaign.
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2. Increase your insight. Anything you can do to improve the granularity of your insights this year will benefit you next year. I recommend setting up pay-per-click campaigns at the product line, category, or brand level with ad groups made up of individual article IDs. While this approach may not change your results this year, the lessons learned will be invaluable for the next year.
By delving deeper into the product level, you can see what is being clicked and what is being bought and adjust accordingly. If you also review your search query reports, the search terms will help you determine which products are being displayed. All of this data serves as direct feedback from the customer in the form of what they’re looking for, how they’re looking for it, and whether they’re ready to make a purchase.
With this new information, you can create better campaigns that deliver exactly what customers are looking for based on the search terms they actually use. You can also transfer this information to other areas of your company. For example, you may need to restructure your website to make it easier for customers to find what they are looking for. Collecting more detailed data today is key to getting better results tomorrow.
3. Create a custom audience. When the Christmas sales start, you can target those buyers again the following year by creating a custom remarketing audience. This approach is especially useful if you are offering a vacation-specific item. So save the audience, apply your data, and use it next year to reach a really engaged audience.
Plan early, often be successful
Even if you’re not in a holiday state, it’s never too early to start thinking about the upcoming Christmas sales season. By making a few simple changes to your approach and keeping an eye on future campaigns, you can make this and next year your best vacation times yet.
CONNECTED: Do Customers Secretly Hate Your Ecommerce Website?
About the author
Contribution by: Brandon Bauer
Brandon Bauer is the corporate strategy manager at Logical Position. A 10 year veteran in the search marketing industry, Brandon has made significant contributions to the Logical Position corporate team. In particular, he used his personal passion for videos to drive Logical Position’s YouTube advertising service. He has also built some of Logical Position’s largest clients and helped other team members implement strategies for their clients.
Company: Logical position
Website: www.logicalposition.com
Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
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