Software Development Management
The holidays are an obvious time for marketing — spending is up, budgets need to be used, and there is a clear mindset of giving. Shopping online is big — as is using smartphones and tablets. Social networks are driving traffic to shopping sites. Understanding the marketing landscape can help you create the right marketing strategy to reach your customers. HubSpot has put together this presentation of statistics related to holiday marketing to help.
While Ad Testing is a vital part of optimizing any PPC campaign, it can be tiring to track all the changes to determine what caused improvements or problems. Many agencies track everything manually in a spreadsheet, or use a bid management platform that’s geared towards bidding, not tracking. By being methodical with labels in AdWords, and using the Segment by Label option, you can have a visual key to what ad testing is happening on each ad.
Web Analytics World has a great article showing how to set this up:
The great thing about this process is that each label has an inherent ad testing goal. For example, Ad Title, Ad Content, and Ad Display URL are most typically tied to improving CTR. Ad Landing Page is related to conversion rate (CVR). Ad Offer is a combination of CTR & CVR and is probably best measured by cost per acquisition (CPA). However, although each ad category has a “natural” tie to ad performance, your goal may be different. For example, if you are trying to improve lead quality through ad content, CTR is not a good metric for ad performance. — Tracking Ad Testing in Google AdWords by Mike Nierengarten
While in-store sales on Black Friday may have been disappointing, according to IBM’s 2013 Holiday Benchmark Reports, online sales set a new record for Thanksgiving Day with sales increasing 19.7% over 2012. Black Friday online sales increased 19% over last year. Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping day in history with a 20.6% increase over 2012. Mobile sales were particularly strong — 17% of total online sales, increasing 55.4% over last year. And Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday became the biggest five-day online sales period on record, increasing 16.5% over the 2012.
According to the IBM reports, Facebook and Pinterest drove the most traffic this year. Traffic from Pinterest spent more on Black Friday, and traffic from Facebook spent more on Cyber Monday. Considering the demographics and the connectedness of both social networks, it’s not difficult to see how a post on either can fan out and spread among one’s friends.
Practical eCommerce has more analysis of the results:
One interesting finding is that shoppers like to browse merchandise on smartphones but when it’s time to check out they reach for tablets. According to IBM, sales generated on tablets contributed more than 14 percent of online sales on Black Friday, roughly twice the amount contributed by smartphones. Those who purchase via tablets are also bigger spenders — with average orders of $133, while the average order for smartphone purchasers was about $115. — Ecommerce Strong on Black Friday, Cyber Monday by Marcia Kaplan
