The UK and Dublin Retail teams have created two new newsletters for e-retailers. The UK Retail Newsletter provides an overview of some of the latest product updates and industry insights. Meanwhile, the Xmas Newsletter focuses on how you can improve your AdWords account level basics ahead of this year's peak shopping period.

Posted by Dave Byrne, UK Retail Team

Day 11 of the “Twelve Days of e-Christmas” focuses on bid strategy and how crucial it is to get it right over the festive period. Discover the tools that can help you boost market share, while remaining profitable and the best ways for you to test altered CPCs while encountering minimal expense.



Posted by Brendan Patterson, UK Retail Team

It’s part ten of the “The Twelve Days of e-Christmas” and this time we’re dealing with the benefits of seasonal creatives. Ensure that your ad text is as up-to-date and capitalises on the seasonal search terms users will include in their searches this Christmas. We also outline some of the techniques and best practices you can easily employ to produce the most effective ad text possible. View or download the presentation below to find out more!



Posted by Brendan Patterson, UK Retail Team

After you spend the time building Christmas specific campaigns, you want to know about the trends and spikes in Christmas traffic. If you are using Google Analytics, you can set up Intelligence Alerts to closely monitor important holiday shopping events. On November 27th, the Westend of London is being transformed into a traffic free zone for all of the Christmas shoppers to concentrate on shopping! This is a huge opportunity for potential customers to Research online purchase offline. Or they might see something in a store but it’s not available on that day so they return home to buy online.

It is really important to track these interesting traffic trends. Once you’ve set your code and tracking goals, you can set up proactive alerts to monitor spikes in traffic. With Google Analytics Intelligence Alerts you can not only track important shopping holiday events but Christmas specific keywords as well as an increase from new visitors or from a certain source.

If you receive an alert regarding a spike in Christmas keyword traffic, for example, you can really analyse this data even further to identify traffic trends.

Top Tips:

1. Make sure you are running ads for high traffic Christmas keyword terms.
2. Run an advanced segment report to obtain insight about the visitors. You can see if they are new or returning visitors.
3. If you have a number of new visitors it would be interesting to run a special promotion for new site visitors. 10% off your first purchase, for example. Always remember to use any special promotions in the ad text for a unique selling point.
4. To get your AdWords Campaigns ready for Christmas please visit our ‘Jingle All The Way’ Christmas site

Posted by Trish McGinty, Dublin Retail Team

Valentine’s Day is a multi-billion pound holiday in the UK, and as it fast approaches this weekend there's still time to capitalise on the huge increase in traffic.

“Valentine’s Day” searches begin rising earlier each year, indicating that consumers are shopping earlier online for the occasion. However, shopping continues right up to the 14th with search interest peaking on the day itself.

Valentine's Day presents the annual peak for flowers, gifts and greetings cards with search popularity in these core categories growing year on year.



In February 2009 online interest was also some 30% higher than 2008 in the beers, wines and spirits category as people ordered wine and champagne for their Valentine.



The upward trend was also reflected in lingerie with a 10% rise during the month of February driven by Valentine's gift shopping.



Below are some top tips to check that your Valentine's campaigns deliver something special this February:

Ad Text

1) Make sure that you've target shoppers hoping to purchase gifts for their partners with keywords such as “women's Valentine’s Day gifts” and “gifts for him”.
2) Highlight special Valentine’s Day offers or sales.
3) Create Valentine’s Day specific ad texts.
4) Highlight the relevance of your site to each user.
5) Highlight fast delivery times in your ad text with terms such as: “Free Delivery”, “Next Day Delivery”, and “Delivered for Valentine’s Day” or “Guaranteed Delivery Time”.
6) Link to the correct landing page – in order to target seasonal spenders, consider linking to a page containing special Valentine’s discounts or offers mentioned in your ad texts.

Keywords

1) Use negative keywords to filter out irrelevant searches for higher CTR.
2) Use max CPC to yield high positions and traffic.


Posted by Brendan Patterson, UK Retail Team

With only three pay days left till Christmas and the economic recovery still at a fledgling stage, shoppers have already started to think about what to fill their Christmas stockings with. Christmas search queries tend to start early and with bargain hunting also driving interest this year, their frequency has started growing as early as September.

Retailers looking to get ahead of the curve and roll out their Christmas campaigns early shouldn’t overlook the opportunity presented by the Google Content Network (GCN). Using the Content Network can supplement your search campaigns and stimulate extra demand and awareness. Many of the thousands of shopping sites available on the network have CPCs lower than search, which can drive your conversions at a more desirable CPA.

GCN serves more than 6 billion impressions a day globally which provides fantastic volume for advertisers, but the key questions are how does GCN convert and how cost effective is it? Google’s study [1] indicates that the median content/search CPA ratio for advertisers in all sectors was 97.4% and for average advertiser, GCN clicks are 28% cheaper than search. The discount CPC effect is due to Smart Pricing which automatically reduces CPC bids for certain pages depending on how likely they are to convert.

Conversions and volumes in retail subcategories differ. These metrics, however, are often augmented as shoppers start to browse for gifts and visit sites devoted to key Christmas product areas such as toys, games, music and jewellery.
With GCN’s targeting modus operandi being fundamentally different to search, and with GCN awareness being lower than that of search, here are our top tips for advertising on the Google Content Network - an opportunity to expose your brand to 29 million unique UK users:

1. Build a common theme in each ad group. With contextual targeting, we analyse all of your keywords and ad text in an ad group, then match the ad to sites in our network. Having very specific keyword lists in your ad groups avoids targeting ambiguity. You should also ensure that your ad text closely matches the theme that you have outlined in your keyword list.

2. Create direct and complementary ad groups. If you are selling glasses your direct ad group could contain keywords such as glasses or frames while your complementary ad groups could target related sites about glasses cases or other accessories. Many ad groups ensure that you target larger pools of potential buyers.

When brainstorming for complementary ad groups the new Wonder Wheel tool can help you discover other related themes. This tool is available in the left sidebar on Google Search.

3. Include negative keywords at set up to ensure that your ads are not showing on irrelevant sites. This will ensure high quality of traffic and good CTR, which is critical for achieving good performance history and building your GCN Quality score.

4. Exclude sites and categories that you do not want your ads to appear on.
Categories would be groups of websites with a common theme such as ‘Crime & Emergency’.

5. Bidding is a crucial factor in GCN. In order to enable our system to work out which sites are the most suitable for your ads, set bids relatively high to begin with and then lower them after history has been accrued. Most content sites and products display only two or three contextual ads per page, so monitor your CPC and average position as it has an impact on CTR. If you set bids too low on the Content Network, it will take a long time for your ads to reach the right sites.

6. As a rule of thumb allow at least 2 weeks before checking results as the system needs time to accrue performance data. The first few days of data may not reflect the campaign’s full potential and may provide you with misleading data.

7. After the initial few weeks of your campaign, pull a Placement Performance Report which will give you data on the sites where your ads are appearing. This report can help you to identify sites which are performing well and those which perform poorly or are irrelevant. Exclude sites where you do not want your ads to show with the Site Exclusion tool.

Once you find your high-performing sites, you can control and adjust your bids on them directly. Test if by increasing volume on these sites (i.e. increasing bids), the corresponding increase in conversions justifies a proportionately higher CPC.

8. If you do not use a bid management solution to manage your bids, consider testing Conversion Optimiser, a CPA bid management solution enabling advertisers to maximise their ROI. Although its entry threshold is 15 conversions in 30 days, launch it on a campaign which has accrued a high volume of conversions. Higher volume gives the system more substance and room to manoeuvre.

Whichever retail category is your focus, a GCN campaign can be a cost effective way to drive incremental conversions. GCN targeting is also fundamentally different from that of search. As an auction model, the system requires time to accrue the relevant data needed to optimise your campaign. Implementing these suggestions is the first step to making your GCN campaign a success. Not unlike other digital media outlets, GCN campaigns require testing. We recommend starting your GCN campaign early, so that you can begin testing and have a well-optimised campaign prepared for the peak Christmas season. Starting soon will ensure your brand’s exposure as people are likely to browse and spread their shopping between now and Christmas.

We hope that you found these tips useful. Please email us if you have any questions or feedback.

[1]Google Whitepaper November 2008


Posted by Anna Prolejko, UK Retail Team

With the summer now over and Autumn here to stay, the next upcoming event in the social calendar is Halloween. As outlined by Google’s Insights For Search queries for Halloween related terms are already on the rise as people begin searching for products and costumes. In the last business week alone, the number of search queries for the term ‘Halloween costumes’ rose by 60% alone. Retailers in the Apparel and Gifts and Greetings industries will likely see an increase in traffic during this time of year as users begin their search for costumes, decorations and greetings cards.



With this in mind, we’d like to provide you with some quick tips on how to get the most from this rise in traffic.

1) Create separate campaigns for all your Halloween product ranges with relevant themed keywords and ad texts. Google’s Search Based Keyword Tool will help you identify more long tail keyword opportunities based on your site’s content.

2) Be sure to use language in your ad texts specifically referring to Halloween as well as using any USPs to highlight any promotions or competitive advantages you might have. If you are selling a range of different costumes then trial an ad text using the Keyword Insertion formula thus ensuring your ads as relevant as possible to a user’s search query.

3) Deep link to all your product pages. If you have a particularly large inventory for Halloween then try running Keyword Destination URLs. Searches that bring the user to most relevant landing page are more likely to convert to sales.

4) Be prepared to increase your bids, particularly on popular products at this time of increased auction intensity. Raising bids on your well performing keywords will result in higher positions ensuring you don’t miss out on potential traffic.

5) If you’re bidding on more general keyword terms then be sure to update your negative keywords to protect your Click Through Rate. You can use the Keyword Tool to identify any terms that aren’t relevant to your site, or if you ran campaigns before then now is the time to review a Search Query report for last year and filter out any unwanted traffic.

We hope you found these tips useful! Please email us if you have any feedback.

Posted by Ewan Aparicio, Dublin Retail Team

We all know it’s good practice to get one’s account in shape before the Christmas madness begins, but where do you start? Here are 10 practical steps you can take to ensure you make the most of the festive peak:

A practical guide for Retail Advertisers

1) Create a separate campaign for Christmas. Having a separate Christmas campaign allows you to control spend easily. Create Christmas themed keywords by combining popular products with Christmas modifiers. Eg a fashion retailer might run the keywords christmas socks, xmas socks, socks for christmas etc.

Test generic Christmas keywords eg christmas gifts, xmas presents etc but monitor performance carefully as these terms can be expensive. Run these keywords in a separate ad group so you can pause them easily if necessary.

2) Create Christmas ads to run in regular campaigns alongside existing ads. Eg a fashion retailer might add the following ad to their ‘Novelty Socks’ ad group:

Novelty Socks for Xmas
Browse our range of Novelty Socks.
Ideal gifts for stocking fillers!
fashionistaaz.co.uk/socks

3) Deep link to relevant landing pages. Try running Christmas-specific landing pages for your Christmas themed keywords. Highlight top gifts and products not previously offered and tie these in with seasonal ad text. Elsewhere, in your regular campaigns, make sure you're deep linking to product-specific landing pages. Avoid sending users to the homepage unless the traffic has come from a brand ad group.

Eg a sports retailer known as 'Sports Clobber' should direct users searching on terms such assports clobber, clobber sports etc to the homepage. However, users searching for a specific product (eg golf shoes) should be directed to a webpage featuring that product range. Users are far more likely to convert if they can find what they are looking for easily.

4) Include USPs in ad text. What makes your brand special? Use this opportunity to differentiate your offering from your competitors. Highlight any promotions which you have running eg free gift with purchase, free in store pick-up, last minute deals, special offers.

Price and delivery details work well but only feature them if you're offering competitive rates! Use calls-to-action eg 'Order online', 'Browse full range online' - commanding language makes for compelling ads. Promote final delivery deadlines. 'Order by **' tends to work better than 'Order now'.

5) Uncap budgets on popular categories. Try uncapping budgets on any well structured campaigns with a good ROI. As long as your campaign is well structured with targeted ad text, well themed ad groups, sensible keywords and a comprehensive list of well chosen negatives, your traffic will be relevant so uncapped budgets should result in higher overall ROI.

6) Increase bids (max CPCs) on existing keywords, especially on popular product ranges.Research has shown that the Christmas surge in traffic starts as early as September. Make sure you're ready for the onslaught. Raising bids on your well performing keywords will result in higher positions. Look at the quality score of your keywords – try raising the bids on any that have a high quality score and fall below positions 1-3.

7) Ensure keywords cover your entire product range. Consider expanding longtail terms. Serious shoppers know model names and numbers. You will benefit from having longtail keywords covered as more obscure keywords will have lower CPCs. If you're running highly targeted longtail keywords it's a good idea to set these to Broad match as users may type in a multitude of variations. Keywords comprising numbers/codes should be set to Phrase and/or Exact match.

Eg an electrical retailer (selling white goods) stocks a fridge known as 'snazzy tall fridge 123Z'. Users looking for this product could type in a variety of queries eg 'Z123 fridge snazzy', 'tall fridge 123Z' etc so it would be a good idea to have the keyword 'snazzy tall fridge 123Z' on Broad match. The advertiser should also add the code '123Z' as a keyword on Phrase and/or Exact match.

8) Check inventory to keywords. It sounds obvious but ensure your keywords match your current inventory. Pause/delete any keywords pertaining to products which are currently/permanently out of stock. Users quickly become frustrated if they are misled.

9) Expand negatives. Make sure your negative keywords are well built out on any campaigns running Phrase and/or Broad match keywords. If you have set up a separate Christmas campaign add in negatives re Christmas eg carols, recipes, decorations, wrapping paper etc.

10) Build out Content campaigns. Make sure your Content campaigns are well structured with tightly themed ad groups so that you can capitalise on AFC (Adsense for Content) during the festive season. Eg a lingerie retailer might want to appear on blogs discussing 'sexy festive gifts for your partner'.

Consider adding Christmas-specific ad groups. Eg a fashion retailer selling men's apparel might add an ad group based around 'Gifts for Him this Christmas'.

We hope you found these tips useful! Please email us if you have any feedback.

Posted by Zoe McFarlane, UK Retail Team