Tag Archives: retail

Catching the eye with seasonal ads

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Seasonal campaigns go beyond the holidays - Cyber Monday, Mother’s Day, and Small Business Saturday are also a huge part of the retail year. They’re less about targeting seasons, and more about finding moments with a common appeal in your client’s industry.

Brands need to be present in these moments, ready to greet panic-driven deal hunters with the perfect solution. So we sat down with Shopify’s CMO Hana Abaza on the Google Partners Podcast to get her top tips for seasonal campaigns that drive sales.


Find your season

Every business has an element of seasonality; times when interest piques and traffic spikes. All you need to do is identify them! Robust Google Analytics reports are a great place to start. Export your data onto a spreadsheet, and with some clever formatting, trends will start to light up like fireworks on New Year's Eve. 

Analytics also helps you uncover biases that may be hiding behind “failed” campaigns. For example, if you pumped a lot of your budget into targeting Valentine’s Day last year without success, it would be easy to write the day off as a ‘bad fit’ for your brand. Take a fresh look at the data, carry out an honest review, and you may find that small tweaks are all that’s needed to turn things around next year. 


Spot your opportunity

You’ve identified the seasons that matter to your business, now make sure your marketing budget is ready to handle the increased workload. Use Google Trends to spot search trends across each region you’re targeting, then compare that to search volume data in Google Ads to find keywords that fit your offering. 

In the build-up of individual events, Consumer Barometer can help you better understand how to reach your audience at the right time, with the right message. Different events bring up different emotions, so keeping track of consumer trends is a great way to make sure your ads strike an emotional chord with your audience. 


Create separate campaigns

It’s important that you measure success without the noise of other, non-seasonal campaigns. This helps you identify nuances in each season, and optimize next year’s campaigns with those insights in mind. 

Don’t be afraid to experiment with copy. Products like Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) can help you test different messages with very little effort. All you need to do is enter multiple headlines and descriptions about your products, and Google Ads will test different combinations to identify the best fit for your audience. 


Don’t miss last-minute shoppers

There’s been a 120% increase in “same-day delivery” searches since 20151. For urgent searches, 74% of shoppers say that when they’re searching on mobile, they look for the most relevant information, regardless of the company or brand2. As a result, the retailer that provides the most seamless experience wins. 

Season-specific promotion extensions help your ads stand out on Google’s results pages, and spotlight special promotions you may be running for the event. Highlighting services like same-day delivery, last-minute sales, or gift-wrapping may be all it takes to tip customers in your direction. 

Great seasonal campaigns are all about planning. Arm yourself with industry trends, plan your marketing budget with those trends in mind, and remember to tap into your consumer’s emotions with ads that resonate. With the right tools, a detailed content plan, and thorough research, you’ll be setting yourself up for seasonal success. 

Watch the video below and tune in to the Google Partners Podcast for more actionable tips and insights for seasonal success. 


1 How to reach today’s impatient shoppers - whether they’re shopping online, by voice, or in store, Think With Google, May 2018 
2 How to reach today’s impatient shoppers - whether they’re shopping online, by voice, or in store, Think With Google, May 2018

Three holiday shopping trends to watch in 2015

If the idea of browsing gift ideas on your phone while waiting for your morning coffee sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This holiday season, shopping moments will replace shopping marathons. Rather than rely on day-long mall marathons, Canadian shoppers are now turning to their mobile phones at moments throughout the day, all season long.* In fact, in the past two days, 1 in 3 Canadian holiday shoppers used their smartphone to search for products and services.

But with holidays less than 2 weeks away, Canadians have completed less than half of their holiday shopping! We worked with Ipsos to survey Canadians on how they’ve used technology to shop so far this holiday season. And today we’re sharing the three trends that are impacting this year’s biggest shopping season.

Shopping marathons have become shopping moments.
Shopping marathons have been replaced by small shopping moments that can happen any time of the day, as shoppers turn to the nearest device when trying to decide, find, or buy something. Thanks to growing digital shopping options, every day can be a shopping day. This year, sixty-seven percent of Canadian holiday shoppers have conducted an online search for a holiday product or service, and 72 per cent have made a website visit as part of their  holiday shopping.  
And this year, online shopping never sleeps! While in-store shopping peaks between 2pm and 5pm, desktop and smartphone searches peak later in the evening between 7 – 9pm. In fact, 36 percent of visits to retailer websites happen between 7pm and 6am.

Mobile search is influencing purchases more than ever.
Smartphones have become the go-to for all steps in the path to purchase, from inspiration to research to purchasing. Globally, we’ve seen shopping-related searches on mobile have grown more than 120 per cent year over year.

Canadians aren’t just using smartphones to make purchases, they’re also using them as a personal shopper to locate products in nearby stores, look at reviews while in-store, and more. Sixty percent of shoppers who used their smartphone to search for products and services followed through on a purchase. Apps have become an additional toolkit for shoppers with 44 per cent of Canadians using mobile apps as part of their holiday shopping experience.

Anticipation for Boxing Day is higher than ever before
Even with our holiday shopping lists less than halfway complete, we already have a strong appetite for Boxing Day. Despite the success of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Boxing Day remains a significant shopping day in Canada and interest has increased steadily over the last 10 years. We also expect to see more and more searches for Boxing Day happening from mobile devices, as Canadians search for the deals closest to them. Last year, forty per cent of Boxing Week searches in Canada happened on smartphones.**
No matter how you’re shopping, have a happy holiday!

Posted by Sarah Bradley and Naumi Haque, Research and Market Insights Managers, Google Canada.

*Google/Ipsos Shopping Moments: 2015 Holiday Edition, Nov 17-Dec 10, n=1,554 Canadian shoppers
**Google Canada Data, 2014

The real-time gap and what it means for retail search marketers

Understanding retailers and their relationship to real-time 
In a recent post, we announced a study we ran with Forrester to understand how retailers were leveraging real-time data in their online advertising efforts. What we learned was that they believe real-time data presents both opportunities and challenges. Retailers see the potential for including this type of data in their campaigns, but they also think it can be too much work to respond to changes that can come and go in an instant.

DoubleClick Search makes real-time easy 
At DoubleClick Search, we want to make it easy to integrate real-time data into your campaigns. We’ve worked hard to build tools that give you the data you need to make quick decisions for your business. We also want to make your campaign optimization easy and automated, so you don’t need hours of planning to respond to sudden changes in demand.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll share stories of how advertisers are using real-time data to reach customers in their time of need, faster. This first post in our series is on the real-time gap and how DoubleClick Search helps you to bridge it. The “real-time gap” is the difference between retailers’ current SEM practices and their best possible performance.

Fact: Real-time data is important 
Any number of factors can affect consumer demand for your products and services—many of which are unpredictable. Heat waves and cold snaps appear unannounced, fashion trends crop up, and wild card sports teams make it into the playoffs. From weather concerns to new shoes to baseball playoffs, search queries give marketers insight into what matters most to people in a specific moment. And with today’s proliferation of smartphones and tablets, consumers search all day, every day, providing real-time data on what’s happening right now.

Barriers to adoption for real-time data 
If real-time data is so important, you would think that all retailers would integrate it into their campaigns, but it turns out there are a few common barriers to adoption.

First, many retailers believe it takes too much time and energy to respond to unplanned events. One respondent in our Forrester study explained: “I’m sure there are quick wins to be had. But we don’t have the experience or manpower needed to chase everything.” Another said, “I have so many demands on my time, managing for something unexpected isn’t convenient for me.”

Retailers also need to re-think what’s “good enough” when it comes to speed and real time feedback. Our Forrester research shows that only 20% of retailers have access to real-time click and conversion data, and that over half do not see data updated for a week. Despite this reality, 84% of these retailers who consider driving sales as a goal feel their marketing programs are either “effective” or “very effective” at achieving their goals. But, data received once a day (or even less frequently) means there are unlimited missed opportunities to capture revenue, brand awareness, or reduce cost. 



DoubleClick Search makes real-time easy
We want to make it easy to collect and act on real-time data. Our smart bid optimization understands your goals, gets conversion information in real-time, and adjusts bids multiple times per day to meet those goals. And with conversion data from all channels, delivered in real-time, DoubleClick Search can react quickly to changing market conditions by optimizing based on real-time attributed conversion data.

Real-time data in action
Here’s just one example of how real-time data can positively affect sales. This is an excerpt from a recent iProspect report.

The chart below shows how one of iProspect’s clients, a top luxury apparel brand (let’s call it Brand X), looked to real-time data and execution to maximize its marketing during a busy shopping season. Brand X holds a highly anticipated three-day sale twice per year. In 2012, it used an SEM platform that did not offer real-time conversion insights or intra-day bidding. A year later, when it switched to DoubleClick Search, a tool that reacted more quickly, the difference was immense. The overall result: the company more than tripled revenue on the first day of the promotion year over year while decreasing cost per clicks (CPCs) by over 60%. 

Three-day Promotion: Better Results With Real Time 

Source: iProspect proprietary data 

Your partner for real-time data
At DoubleClick search, we want to be your partner in delivering real-time data to improve your advertising performance. In our next post in the series, we’ll talk about how retailers are taking advantage of real-time data to optimize text ads and Shopping Campaigns for their products.