Retailers: Are you Ready for the Holiday Season?

Now that summer’s officially over, it’s time for retailers to finish preparing for the upcoming holiday season. Retailers should be excited this year in particular, as according to eMarketer, holiday spending is expected to increase by 16.6% in 2014 from 2013. To help retailers gear up for a successful holiday season, here are three tips on how to make sure you stay ahead of the competition and get the most out of your holiday spend.

1) Keep Your Product Feeds Up to Date

During the holiday season, retailers tend to see a surge in seasonal inventory, as well as Managing these products on top of their already large everyday product catalog can be cumbersome and time consuming. Also, many retailers run different promotions throughout the holiday season meaning that prices tend to constantly shift and ensuring that all ads for the same product are displaying the correct price can be difficult. Advertisers should leverage the availability of platform tools such as Marin’s Dynamic Campaigns powered by ProductsUp that allows them to not only maintain a clean and accurate product feed, but also ensure that all creative are synced with the most updated information from feeds. These features help advertisers save time during the holiday rush with automated campaign creation and inventory based advertising, along with helping to improve accuracy across search campaigns.

2) Think Cross-Channel

While eMarketer reports that in 2014, Google has 31.4% of the digital advertising market, it is interesting to note that second place goes to Facebook at 7.79%. As user behaviors are shifting towards more and more time spent on social, advertisers are taking note. With many consumers taking time off during the holidays, time on social will only increase and retailers should consider this in their holiday advertising strategy. For more information on how to optimize Facebook ads for the holidays, be sure to read this white paper: The Retailer's Last Minute Guide to Holiday Advertising on Facebook. Advertisers should also remember to not just think of Facebook as a standalone channel and utilize different cross-channel features, such as audience retargeting, to allow them to consistently reach their desired demographic across search, social and display. When using audience retargeting to target the same audience through different channels, advertisers should keep in mind the different stage of the purchasing funnel that their targeted customers are at across these channels, and ensure that their creatives have tailored messaging that is targeted at the right buying phase.

3) Think Multiple Devices

As consumers are busy running around and traveling during the holidays, mobile devices will be the primary screen for many consumers and advertisers need to tailor ads for the mobile experience. It’s important that retailers keep in mind that consumers who are searching on their mobile devices are not necessarily looking for the same information as those searching on the desktop. While many desktop users are doing research on products and places, mobile users tend to be looking for more local information. Knowing this, retailers can make the most of limited screen space on mobile by providing relevant information to consumers (address, telephone number, etc.), thereby helping to increase CTR and conversion rates. To help manage and monitor the performance of mobile and desktop ads all in one place, many retailers find using a platform such as Marin Software to be highly beneficial. To dig deeper on mobile trends, check out Marin’s Mobile Search Advertising Around The Globe: 2014 Annual Report.

Happy Holiday Planning!