It’s hard to believe that it’s already October 2nd, which means there are only 83 days until Christmas. For retailers, the peak shopping season is swiftly approaching. To help marketers prepare for the influx of volume their campaigns will see, Skai joined Bing Ads for a webinar hosted by Retailwire to provide key search and social holiday insights. In case you missed the live webinar, the slides and a recording are now available on demand.
During the webinar, we polled attendees to understand if their search and social strategies are ready for the upcoming holiday season and found that 54% of the respondents are just getting started with their holiday prep. The upcoming holiday season will have only 26 days between Black Friday and Christmas, just one more than last year and five fewer than 2012. With a compressed shopping timeline, marketers must be ready to act quickly to capitalize on the cross-channel opportunities during the season (and do so even earlier).
Brittney Thomas of Bing Ads highlighted the fact that half of the top shopping days in 2013 fell in the same week with Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Thanksgiving posting the top number of transactions. Furthermore, Bing data revealed that the search traffic of those days was up 21%, 19%, and 21% respectively from 2012. Our global recap of the last year’s peak shopping season uncovered similar trends as the 2013 holiday proved to be another record year for paid search, and we anticipate that 2014 will be even bigger.
To thrive this season, Brittney recommended these three tips:
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When it comes to campaigns, don’t “set it and forget it.”
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Ensure budgets are large enough to cover key dates.
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Check in on top days to monitor position and bids.
Many of these tips can also translate to social strategies too. Doug Chavez shared some Skai data from last season which showed Facebook performance spiking on the key dates of Black Friday and Cyber Monday as Facebook has become more of an integral part of the shopper journey. Marketers seem to be keenly aware of this; when we polled attendees about which social platform the majority of their efforts where focused, 63% identified Facebook.
Key Insights for Your 2014 Holiday Search and Social Plan Webinar, September 24, 2014
Doug emphasized that this holiday season, marketers can spend their marketing budget more efficiently by leveraging cross-channel insights to reach consumers most likely to convert. In the panel discussion that followed, Brian Toba of BevyUp joined the conversation and all three panelists agreed that cross-channel coordination is key this season.
As you begin to ramp your seasonal strategies, be sure to keep these insights and tips in mind to ensure that you’ll have a happy holiday!
Follow the links to view the slides and recording of the webinar, Key Insights for Your 2014 Holiday Search and Social Plan.