optimizing your path to seasonal sem success - kenshoo webinar

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Optimizing Your Path to Seasonal SEM Success

September 18, 2013


Webinar Instructions

• Audio instructions – Listen via computer speakers or use phone numbers listed in email from [email protected]

• Still can’t hear the webinar? Tell us please!

• Ask questions using the Questions box


Today’s Speakers

Emily Helander

Product Marketing Manager

Josh Dreller

Director, Marketing Research

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2013 is the Shortest Shopping Season on Record

• President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of every November

• President Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the third Thursday of November, hoping to raise revenue by adding a week to the holiday shopping season.

• Congress has since reverted Thanksgiving to its original date.

The 2013 holiday shopping season is set to be the shortest on record. With just 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, six fewer than last year’s 32.


Retail Paid Search Metrics Up Year-Over-Year


US Retail Ecommerce Holiday Sales Will Reach $61.8 Billion in 2013


Key Dates Will Affect Your Paid Search Strategy


How Do You Maximize Your Opportunity?


Like a String of Tree Lights…


Optimizing Your Path to Seasonal SEM Success

Keywords

Ads

Bid Management

Website

Follow-up

Optimization

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Cast a wide net with the right keywords


How Does the Holiday Shopping Season Affect Your Keyword Strategy?

• Q4 sees the highest volume of searches on retail terms

• More emphasis on research and browsing terms as consumers look for deals

• Holiday terms such as Christmas, Gifts, etc.

• New products become hot overnight (there will be new keywords to add throughout the season)

• Competitors gearing up may catch you off guard for keywords you thought had little to no competition during the year


Tips for Success

Mine keywords from last year’s holiday shopping season, not just from recent months

Use the SKUs and product terms from your entire catalog to cash in on long tail searches

Combine your keywords with holiday shopping terms such as Christmas, Holiday, Gift, etc.

Link your keyword lists to your product feeds to automatically pause keywords on out of stock items

Use Product Listing Ads as well as keywords for triggering ads

Use negatives to not be triggered for the wrong types of searches


Deck Your Campaigns With Seasonal Keywords

• Uncover new terms from SEO

SEO/SEM Report




• Expand coverage with Keyword Suggest Reports

Keyword Suggest Report

Keyword suggestions – channel opportunities





• Concatenate holiday keywords with the Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool





• Concatenate holiday keywords with the Keyword Tool

• Increase coverage on long tail

PLAs


Add Some Keywords To Your Naughty List

• Refine traffic and increase quality score with easy implementation

Keyword Suggestions Report

PLA Negatives Report


Catch the eyes of shoppers with ads that compel them to click


How Does the Holiday Shopping Season Affect Your Ad Strategy?

• Tons of clutter – not just online but offline too

• Competitors are constantly changing/testing creative

• Key dates such as Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc.


Tips for Success

Focus on getting consumers to click – with so much clutter there’s not the luxury of trying to use ads to help sell or brand as well

Keep checking the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to see what creative angles your competitors are taking

Zig when they zag

You might be inspired to try something similar


Tips for Success

Use the tried and true “Free Shipping” message if you can

Have different strategies for different key dates

Use constant testing throughout the season

Make sure your PLA ads have high impact visuals to entice consumers to click


Write Your Copy and Test it Twice

What message works best for the holidays?

• Automate scientific ad copy analysis with AB Testing Report

Take action in Kenshoo Editor

• Understand which promotion line works best for your PLAs


Scheduled Action Elves Automate Your Changes

Automation lets you enjoy the holidays

• Flight promotional ads

• Pause seasonal campaigns

• Reactivate your standard copy


Be diligent and extra smart with your bid management strategy


How Does the Holiday Shopping Season Affect Your Bid Management Strategy?

• You don’t have the luxury of long test and analysis periods

• Very volatile spikes during key dates

• Competitors might get a little wacky and bid way more than they should just to get visitors to their site

• Multiple devices in a 3 Screen World can complicate the issue


Tips for Success

Setup your testing schedule before the season starts

Keep it tight

Stay on schedule

Be prepared for key dates. You may even need to change bids several times throughout those days

Don’t let your budgets cap for your highest margin items

Use automated bid policies wherever possible


Bidding in an Algorithmic Wonderland

• Kenshoo Portfolio OptimizerTM

Intelligent bid automation

Builds hundreds of thousands of statistical models

Considers marginal ROI for a portfolio

Supports mobile bid adjustments

• Budget Center powered by Halogen

Advanced forecasting

Informed planning

Automated execution with KPO

Active Monitoring


All I want for Christmas is ActiveClusters

• Kenshoo ActiveClusterTM technology predicts keyword-level or product-target level performance to achieve goals

• Seasonal campaigns may not qualify for KPO or require a portfolio approach

Keyword model and PLA policies offer a sophisticated solution

• Support mobile bid adjustment recommendations


Steer Your Sleigh with Advanced Search

• Boost your bids on items on the day they go on sale

Create custom rules-based bid policies for granular control

• Pause keywords when items go out of stock

Search for keywords across your entire program

• Use Scheduled Actions to automate changes so you can enjoy your holiday


Make sure your website is optimized for a great shopping experience


How Does the Holiday Shopping Season Affect Your Website Strategy?

• Holiday shoppers know it’s a buyers market and will click away if they don’t see deals

• So many other priorities during this time of year that it’s hard to focus on the website

• Visitors coming from so many different devices that you need phone and tablet optimized experiences

1 site for all will not maximize your success


Tips for Success

More focused landing pages that let shoppers know these are “holiday deals”, not just regular deals

Constantly test your pages for your most important products

Stay consumer centric; let holiday shopping visitors know that you understand how much effort goes into this time of year


Have Yourself a Merry Landing Page

• Perform multivariate landing page testing with dimensions

Create dimensions

Create categories

Assign creative for testing

Test and track

Optimize

• Use Advanced Search and dimensions to monitor and optimize


Make Sure Santa Comes to Every Town

• Advertise beyond the search engines

Extend your local reach with CityGrid

• Drive traffic to physical locations

Update Place pages with holiday promotions

Connect online and offline stages


Track and follow-up with your consumers after the initial visit


How Does the Holiday Shopping Season Affect Your Follow-Up Strategy?

• So much competition for deals, shoppers may not convert on their first visit

You must have a follow-up strategy in place or miss out on low-hanging fruit

• Website visitors may even forget where they saw the best deal

• Don’t think of follow-up as non-search related activity. These tactics will bring tremendous value to your search program’s ROI


Tips for Success

Don’t let a holiday visitor leave your site without enticing them to opt-in to communication

Holiday daily deals newsletter

Price drops for key dates

At the very least, connect with them via social network

Retargeting on Facebook Exchange

Bid based on value of the search term

Customize creative based on the search term


‘Tis the Season to Track Holistically

• Get a holistic view of your marketing activities – especially when there will be more volume to learn from

• Gain valuable insights and optimize intelligently with cross-channel tracking, reporting and attribution

Over 100 completed third-party integrations


Retarget to All, and to All a Good Return

• Re-engage customers that have visited your site through display ads and the Facebook Exchange (FBX)

Prompt conversions with shipping deadlines or promotional offers

Leverage search keywords to create retargeting audiences

Use top performing product targets from PLAs to create Facebook ads


“You’ll shoot your ROI up, kid”

• Better data + smarter bids = instant lift

• Market demand changes with holiday

Activate more informed bidding at the time it matters most

• Reach your holiday goals

Improve campaign performance

SMARTER BIDS SMARTER BIDS


Take what you’ve learned & continually optimize


Optimization is the Key

• Mantra = “Test. Optimize. Test. Optimize. REPEAT!”

• For the holidays, step it up.

If you optimize monthly, try weekly

If you optimize weekly, try daily

• Remember – your competitors are going to step it up to. If you don’t have a good plan, by the time you realize that you’re losing, it will be too late.


Tips for Optimization

Keywords – bring in the right customers, not just every customer

Ads – keep rotating and testing to find the best performing ads

Bid Management – you have to act quickly or lose out

Website – don’t let all of the great work you’ve put in with keywords, ads, and bid management go to waste with a poor website experience

Follow-up – use everything you can to get those search visitors back to your site


Do You See What I See?

• Analyze and understand results before next optimization

Comparison and trending widgets

View pre and post data in the grid

Analyze historical Quality Score


“Buddy the Elf. What’s your favorite device?”

• Understand device performance throughout the season

Fusion: Keyword by Device Report

• Optimize to reach consumers on all devices

All KPO and keyword model policies support ad group-level MBAs

Advanced Search & Kenshoo Editor support MBAs and mobile preferred ads


Your Optimizations will go down in history!

• Quickly make cross-channel changes with Kenshoo Editor

Work off-line while on the plane to grandma’s

• Advanced Search

Say goodbye to bulksheets

Take action on subsets of data you define easily and efficiently


The 6 Steps to Season SEM Success

• Cast a wide net with the right keywords

• Catch the eyes of shoppers with ads that compel them to click

• Be diligent and extra smart with your bid management strategy

• Make sure your website is optimized for a great shopping experience

• Track and follow-up with your consumers after the initial visit

• Take what you’ve learned & continually optimize


Download your copy of The Kenshoo Guide for more tips

Kenshoo.com/SeasonalSEM


Questions & Answers


Merry SEM Season to all!

Recording will be posted at: Kenshoo.com/Retail-SEM-Webinar

optimizing your path to seasonal sem success - kenshoo webinar

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