Your Media and SEM Holiday Win List to Complete Your Customers’ Wish List

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YOUR MEDIA & SEM HOLIDAY WIN LIST to Complete Your Customer’s Wish List

August 24, 2017


• 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


Planning Your Holiday

CalendarBudget Allocation

& Campaign Flighting Strategies


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

http://www2.merkleinc.com/l/47252/2017-08-31/4w762s


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




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




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.




Audience TargetingReaching Your

Target Customer


Utilize RLSAs for Return Holiday ShoppersWatch the full presentation at merkleinc.com



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




Display Audience Preparation & Implementation Strategy

Implement Platform Pixels to Build Audiences

Extend Audience Duration

Leverage CRM Additional Data Sources

1

2

3




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%




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.




Local TargetingIntegrating Digital Into Your In-Store Strategy


Mobile is a Big Deal – Did you hear?Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com



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




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




Target Local Shoppers with Google Local Inventory Ads

• LIAs still give customers the option of navigating to the website and continuing their research online




Creative Strategy

Make the Most of Your Creative &

Messaging Strategy


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




Eliminate Self-Competition with Smart Creative Flighting

Evergreen messaging should be paused during sale periods to place full emphasis on current

promotions.




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.




What Next?


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






Marketing

Your Media and SEM Holiday Win List to Complete Your Customers’ Wish List