Your Media and SEM Holiday Win List to Complete Your Customers’ Wish List
Transcript of Your Media and SEM Holiday Win List to Complete Your Customers’ Wish List
© 2017 Merkle. All Rights Reserved. Confidential1
YOUR MEDIA & SEM HOLIDAY WIN LIST to Complete Your Customer’s Wish List
August 24, 2017
© 2017 Merkle. All Rights Reserved. Confidential2
• Build Your Holiday Calendar Based on Consumer Behavior Budget allocation and campaign flighting strategies
• Leverage Cutting Edge Audience Targeting MethodsReaching your target customer effectively
• Use Digital to Drive In-Store TrafficIntegrating digital into your in-store strategy smartly
• Align Creative with Customer and IntentMake the most of your ad creative
• What Next?
Your Media & SEM Holiday Win List
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Planning Your Holiday
CalendarBudget Allocation
& Campaign Flighting Strategies
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Holiday Strategy Should be Developed Well Before the Season Arrives
Overall Holiday Preparation:
• Determine your primary holiday goals
• Analyze last year’s holiday data to isolate strong and poor performing categories/sub-categories/products/platforms and predict trends
• Align messaging and budget allocation with the promotional calendar
• Consider seasonal factors in developing an effective holiday strategy
• Calendar differences year-over-year (more/fewer shopping days)
• Shipping cut-offs
• Impact of device on key shopping days
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Leverage Past Data and Seasonal Analysis to Build Holiday Strategy
Holiday Keyword Coverage:
• Analyze year-over-year performance data to ensure seasonal terms with strong performance are being properly bid before peak shopping days occur.
• Study current search query trends to ensure we have all relevant new terms built out as new KWs
Holiday Bidding Strategy:
• Map past years’ data to understand when traffic is most valuable
• Audit product feeds to optimize pertinent information and prioritize top holiday sellers
• Proactively layer holiday trends into bidding platform to ensure we are capturing all available traffic as efficiently as possible
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Capitalize on Holiday Opportunity with Co-Op Campaigns
Category
Brand
Historical Digital CoverageHoliday Digital Coverage
Maximize brand and category SOV during the holiday season when demand and return is especially high
Retailer Benefits
• Increased product sales
• Increased impression share
• Increased budget
• Ease of management, budget can roll into existing campaigns
• High level of data-visibility and customer insight with digital
• Digital is relatively quick to implement
Supplier Benefits
• Increased product sales
• Increased impression share
• Ease of management, retailers will handle campaign execution
• Retailer can leverage brand-agnostic category insights to the supplier’s benefit
• High level of data-visibility and customer insight with digital
• Potential to use digital in driving in-store traffic for a supplier without a brick-and-mortar presence
• Digital is relatively quick to implement(would also be a good channel for any additional last-minute unspent funds after the holidays)
Maximize brand and category SOV during the holiday season when demand and return is especially high
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Engage Them Early, Target Them Later to Drive Sales
Create Pinterest audiences to retarget Pin clicks, comments, saves, and close-ups across your account or specific Holiday-related pins.
Re-engage past Snapchat users who utilize Sponsored Geo-Filters, Lens, or Snap Ads to geo-target users on major sales days like Black Friday.
Capture interest with a compelling brand story using Facebook Canvas Ads.
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Audience TargetingReaching Your
Target Customer
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Utilize RLSAs for Return Holiday ShoppersWatch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Leverage Customer Match Lists for Return Holiday Shoppers
Advertiser privacy policy must disclose that customer information is shared with third parties
Customer Match audiences must be made up of at least 1,000 identifiable emails
Customer Match audiences must only contain emails obtained 1st hand by the advertiser
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Display Audience Preparation & Implementation Strategy
Implement Platform Pixels to Build Audiences
Extend Audience Duration
Leverage CRM Additional Data Sources
1
2
3
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Cumulative Cyber Weekend Adjusted Sales
Based on Date of First Customer Touch
Extend Audiences Longer Because Shoppers Browse Early
• In Q4, customers often start browsing earlier and wait until key sales days to purchase.
• Look at past holiday sales data with a first touch model to understand the path to purchase length during this period.
• Extend audience lifetimes accordingly to capture these early browsers during major sales days.
Thanksgiving
Cyber
Monday
45%
55%
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Your First Party Data is Your Holiday Advantage
• CRM data can be used to directly target:Past holiday purchasers
Past major promotion purchasers
Lapsed customers
• CRM data can inform prospecting (look-a-like) audiences for targeting and provide audience insights in different platforms.
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Local TargetingIntegrating Digital Into Your In-Store Strategy
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Mobile is a Big Deal – Did you hear?Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Optimize Your Paid Search Campaigns for Local
• Equip national campaigns to handle local traffic, or create region-specific campaigns
• Ensure account coverage for all keyword types (generic to regional)
• Leverage online-to-offline tracking solutions
Geographic Bidding (ex. region, distance from store)
Audience Bidding
Device Bidding,Separate Mobile Targets
Targeted, Dynamic Ad Copy
Negatives, to Funnel Queries
Intent-based Keyword Targeting
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Differentiate Bids and Message Based On Level of Local Intent
General terms
Branded terms
Product + descriptor terms
Local
Local Queries
General queries
Product queries
Text Ad Campaigns Shopping Campaigns
Local Campaign
Product Campaign
Generic Campaign
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Target Local Shoppers with Google Local Inventory Ads
• LIAs still give customers the option of navigating to the website and continuing their research online
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Creative Strategy
Make the Most of Your Creative &
Messaging Strategy
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Include all relevant information:
• Promotions
• Sitelinks
• Structured snippets
• Callout extensions
• Local extensions
• Price extensions
Create Robust Search Ads that Highlight All Relevant Information
Adjust key takeaways by:
• Shipping cutoffs - include countdowns
• Shipping cutoffs – drive to stores
• Market – regional deals and store hours
• Category – deals and good cross-sell products
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Eliminate Self-Competition with Smart Creative Flighting
Evergreen messaging should be paused during sale periods to place full emphasis on current
promotions.
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Update Ad Formats to Highlight Holiday Deals & Create Urgency
Strikethrough pricing highlights attractive deals.
Calling out both the promotion and end date drive a sense of urgency.
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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What Next?
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Your Holiday Timeline – Get Started!
• Tags and floodlights in place
• Early prospecting efforts & audience building
• Finalize tracking efforts
• Research co-op opportunities
• Finalize promotional calendar
• Craft ad copy and creative
• Analyze past performance for budget and bid planning
• Schedule ad copy and bid changes ahead of Cyber Weekend
• Monitor early performance closely
• Stay tuned to the Merkle blog
• Continue active campaign management
• Adjust messaging throughout to account for shipping cut offs and promotional changes
• Ramp down quickly, but make sure not to miss out on post-holiday demand
September
October
November
December
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com
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Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com