Christmas Online Shopping Starts Now!

 

With official figures stamping an end to the UK recession we head full throttle towards Christmas, businesses are cautiously preparing for a strong Q4. Teamed with growing year on year trends in Christmas online shopping, it has never been more important for online retailers to be top of their game throughout the festive season. It’s time to plan your 6 week online advertising Christmas countdown!

If you haven’t reviewed your online advertising strategy in a while, there is no better time than the present to tidy up your act and get stuck into the latest revenue boosting opportunities. To get you started we have compiled a top 5 Christmas Campaign Checklist:

1. Get Re-marketing

As more and more people adopt a multi-device, browse then buy attitude to online shopping, we are also seeing more shoppers admit to filling a basket without completing the transaction. By setting up a re-marketing campaign, you can now target these shoppers who need extra encouragement; try offering free delivery, a free gift or a simple discount and see if you can boost your conversions.

2. Go granular

With seasonal peaks in online shopping at this time of year, it can be worthwhile to split out ad campaigns to target the increase in searches for long-tail phrases which are specific to a product. For instance, take your best-seller categories and split them down to the next level, even if it is product level. This will allow you to have precise ad text, link ads to the most relevant pages and target more specific keywords.

3. Incentivise

Try to stand out from the crowd by offering tempting incentives to increase both Click Through Rates and Conversion rates! Offers from free delivery to 10% discount codes are fantastic options to help win those all-important sales. You’ll be surprised with the impact free delivery can have, research shows 96% of people are more likely to shop from a site with free delivery and 79% of people would rather have free delivery than a discount. (http://mashable.com/2012/08/25/online-shopping-trends/)

4. Geo-target

Another method to drill down the focus on your campaign and achieve optimum ROI, is to experiment with Geo-targeting. If 90% of your orders are to London addresses, try only targeting London with its own ad group to focus a specific budget on a smaller area. If your products are very high end and luxury, try targeting the wealthiest areas in the country. This will allow you to target more generic keywords with a better chance of reaching your target audience.

5. Set up Product Listing Ads

Google shopping is expected to have its biggest year yet as users buying habits evolve and use the tools most readily available. Ensure your Google Merchant Centre feed is set up correctly, allowing up-to-date fields to be visible in Google shopping as well as normal web searches. With this in place you can then set up a Product Listing Ad campaign to maximise product visibility within search results.

Most online retailers will be looking to achieve record Q4 sales, so put our top tips to the test and make your online advertising campaigns work even harder!

 

One thought on “Christmas Online Shopping Starts Now!

  1. Great Post Rachel! Very interesting that 79% of people would rather have free delivery than a discount that is a massive amount and stats I have seen a few times. I have also seen this work in practise by running a free P&P weekend rather than a 15% discount, better results..more revenue!

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