Mother's day is behind us and we are entering into the second largest shopping season of the year – yep, it’s Dads and Grads time. If you weren’t able to capitalize on the Mother’s Day rush this year, it’s not too late to tune up your search marketing campaigns to make a big impact this Dads and Grads season.
Of course, those of you who sell electronics, sporting goods and other traditional “Dad” items are probably well into planning your search strategy for Dads and Grads and have most likely implemented at least part of that plan. For those of you who haven’t thought about Dads and Grads, it’s not too late. There are things you can do to capitalize on what has become the second greatest spending season of the year, right behind the holiday rush.
In order to explore some of the tactics that you can set up, even at this late date, let’s take a sample product, such as, the wonderful New Braunfels Black Diamond Barbecue Smoker This is a great product for any dad who likes to cook – and many grads who might be getting their own place soon.
So assume we’re selling this smoker online, let’s look at what the competition is doing. Go to Google, Yahoo Ask and MSN and type in the keyword “new braunfels smoker”. Go ahead and do it. I’ll wait right here.
Looking at the ads on the page, I notice that none of the advertisers are touting the father’s day worthiness of this wonderful gift. No one seems to be offering any specials to lure my wife and son….I mean, would be shoppers into their site. In fact, many of the advertisers on the page aren’t relevant for the product search. They are obviously showing up based upon expanded match types for words other than “new braunfelss smoker”. And not to pick on anyone, but some of the ads don’t even tell me anything. For instance, I know that Home Depot does not sell the New Braunfels Black Diamond Barbecue Smoker, yet there they are, on the search results page telling me that I can do it and they can help. Huh? I want a smoker, not a tagline.
So, in our imaginary world where we are selling our smoker, we know that there is a huge opportunity to move a lot of our product for Father’s Day. This year, Father’s day falls on Sunday, June 17. Of course, graduations vary throughout the country, and on many college campuses commencements have already begun. So we know that our time to create our promotion is today, if not yesterday. It appears we’ve got some work to do.
First, let’s look at keyword choice. I don’t have any stats to back me up, but anecdotally, I can tell you that generic keywords like “Fathers day gift” or “gifts for dads and grads” don’t ring the register. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use them. The target audience for that set of keywords are the undecided last minute shoppers who don’t have a clue what to get their Dad or their Grad, and have come to a major search engine seeking help. These users are at the top of a somewhat accelerated buying funnel. They are information seekers who many times will make a decision in the same surfing session.
Many of these consumers will also take the information they learn online and head for their nearest brick and mortar outfit to actually do their purchases. If you have the budget to target this group, it can be beneficial to do so. However, beware that the returns may not be easily identifiable unless you can track latency as well as offline conversions.
Your best bets in keyword choice are those words which you most likely are already using in your campaign. The words that relate specifically to your product. For instance, in the case of the wonderful New Braunfels Black Diamond Barbecue Smoker, the keywords would center on the smoker itself. Keywords like “New Braunfels Smoker”, “offset smoker” or the common abbreviation of the smoker, “Nbbd” will perform well. The more specific you can be with your keywords, the better off you will be. I suggest using exact match types if you budget is tight. This will eliminate some of the waste of unqualified clicks and impressions.
Now it’s time to set up the creative. I suggest that in each category in your PPC campaign, you rotate at least one father’s day themed creative and watch it to see how it performs. My results in running this type of creative are mixed – it works well for some products and fails miserably for others. So you have to test it. Check to see if seasonally themed ads work to sell your products. If a Father’s Day themed ad works, most likely when Christmas comes around a seasonal ad will work again. Also, offering specials around these times is a great incentive to get a searcher to click. Definitely offer specials or incentives in your creative around this time of year.
Of course, you need to make sure that your landing pages are set to provide the consumer with an easy place to purchase and learn about your product. The more specific you can be for the consumer, the more likely they are to buy. Don’t send a frantic Father’s Day shopper to your home page in the hopes that they will see something else they want. If you want to do cross selling, do it in the check-out process.
So, your keywords, creative and landing pages are all set. Run the campaign and track it. All of this can be set up and running in less than a day, so I hope to start seeing all of my readers' ads up by Monday. Shoot me a note if you’d like me to look at your ads. And, if my wife is reading this, remember it’s the New Braunfels Black Diamond Barbecue Smoker. I’m really hoping for brisket on Father’s day.
Newsletter signup
Article Archives by Tony Wright
Tips for Being a Great PPC Client - Aug 27, 2007
The Long Tail Is Dead -- Long Live the Long Tail - Aug 20, 2007
Google's Local Search Land Grab - Aug 13, 2007
Microsoft adCenter Could Win the Search Battle - Aug 6, 2007
More article archives
We want to know what you think about
Tony Wright's column, ""
Rant. Rave. Voice your opinion.
Archive
