In line with SES, Chicago 2010, Retailcommerce.com interviewed SEM strategy consultant and PPC expert Lisa Raehsler. With over 30 successful pay-per-click campaigns under her name, Lisa Raehsler is also a certified Google Advertising Professional (GAP). To better equip ecommerce owners for the holiday season, when consumers shop the most, Lisa Raehsler shares insightful thoughts for both small and medium ecommerce practitioners.
First, small and medium-sized ecommerce owners should know that optimizing quality scores for competitive and profitable keywords is the best means of place higher on the list on the “sponsored results” section. Quality scores are the main factor search engines use to determine which ads will appear up on the list. Ranking higher on the “sponsored results” will, of course, potentially earn more sales. To strengthen campaign relevancy partnered with good quality scores, the same terms in the keyword list should both be in the advertiser’s ad copy and landing pages.
Second, allocating a sufficient budget for increasing traffic is especially critical during the holiday period. Most small and medium sized ecommerce miss opportunities to boost traffic because of misallocation of funds. Because people shop online more during the holidays, it is necessary to raise the budget allocated to increasing traffic to your site. Estimating seasonal increases can be done by researching sales and traffic data from previous years as well as by using tools such as Google Insights for region and timeframe-specific keywords.
Third, starting a holiday campaign early is the best way to promote your online business. Depending on the products and services you provide, it never hurts to have an early bird holiday campaign. For example, Raehsler suggests that ecommerce sites that sell apparel can start promotions as early as September or early October. Electronic products are usually in demand by Black Friday at the start of the holiday season. Integrating PPC into the marketing mix and leveraging results data from previous holiday seasons should be planned as early as possible.
Raehsler also said that product-specific long-tail keywords need not always suffer as many
believe. Internet searchers don’t always settle for the suggested search term, preferring instead to type with specific keywords in mind. With Google Instant, shopping results are displayed both in paid and organic results. Thus, optimizing product feeds is a crucial strategy for ecommerce retailers.
Finally, the PPC expert proposes a media plan consisting of PPC, Google “remarking” and efficient landing pages. Not only is PPC the cheapest, most cost effective, and measurable media for ecommerce owners, but with the surge in A/B testing of landing page elements, advertisers and ecommerce retailers are bound to get the increase in sales they deserve this holiday season.