Online Marketing Mavens Blog

Originally posted on ClickZ.

Aww, back-to-school already? Yes, it’s that time of year again when retailers’ minds turn to reaching parents and students of all ages purchasing supplies, clothing, and electronics. According to the National Retail Federation, combined K-12 and college spending will reach over $68 billion this year, serving as the second biggest consumer spending event for retailers behind the winter holidays.

The flexibility and real-time nature of paid search and PPC campaigns make them ideal tactics for the back-to-school marketing mix. In recent surveys, more people say they will shop online and will comparison-shop online than last year. With this audience more available online, it will be critical to be visible and offer unique messaging to entice shoppers.

Keyword Expansion

Now is the time to review your current program to determine how back-to-school themes can be incorporated into your account. Major themes include keywords related to textbooks, school gear, supplies, dorms, apparel, software, games, laptops, mobile devices, tablets and more. If your products fall into these categories or subcategories, it’s a good idea to reach out to the back-to-school crowd and capture this seasonal traffic.

You will be working on a short and accelerated timeline, so once your new keywords are implemented, quickly expand high performing keywords and employ negatives real-time as they become available from query reports.

Ad Creative

Whether you are starting from scratch or revisiting the creative from last year, you can attract more clicks by incorporating the appropriate keywords.

• Include enticing offers in your ads that focus on discounts and deals for shoppers by using phrasing like “coupon,” “% off,” and “sale” in the ad copy and title.
• Incorporate “student” and “school” in the ad copy.
• Highlight your relevance to shoppers by incorporating “back”, “school,” and “student,” to your ad copy.
• If you are utilizing SiteLinks in Adwords, don’t forget to edit your SiteLinks to include back- to-school language and promotions.

Paid Program Expansions

Including back-to-school seasonal tactics will not only expand the potential of your current account, it is also a great way to test new approaches for winter holiday season.

• Remarketing/retargeting: Although it’s too late to set up a new retargeting campaign, the current audience can still be leveraged with back-to-school specific messaging, offers, and cross-sells, as appropriate. Prepare ahead next year by tagging appropriate content early to later target with back-to-school messaging.
• Google Display Network: Leveraging the Google display network is an option to get more exposure to the back-to-school audience. This may be a good time to test category targeting. According to Google, the following categories and subcategories, in order of frequency, were the most commonly searched themes for back-to-school queries:
  • Society: Education, legal, social science
  • Entertainment: Music and movies
  • Shopping: Apparel, mass merchants, and department Stores, Flowers Gifts and greetings
  • Local: Regional content, jobs
• Facebook ads: If you’re doing Facebook PPC, this is the perfect time to try targeting a student audience. Students can be targeted by their education status if they are in high school or college, and you can also specify a college name. This audience can also be reached by interest or category such as “Precise Interests” from users profiles like “student council” or “Broad Categories” like “consumer electronics” or “gaming”. Mix and match depending on the products you offer.
• Mobile and tablet only campaigns: In comparison to previous years, students are more connected than ever. According to Google internal data, last year there was a lift of 500 percent in mobile searches for retail and consumer electronics categories over the summer months. This provides a unique opportunity to capture searchers attention on platform not totally saturated with ads. Remember that searches are more general on mobile and tablets than searches conducted through a desktop with a full keyboard. You will need to segment out mobile and tablets in your campaign settings.

Back-to-school seasonality seems to pass in a flash. Search traffic begins in early July, peaks in mid August, and falls off at the end of September. Early planning is recommended, but more essential is understanding the shoppers you are trying to reach, where they purchase, and how to stand out from the crowd this back-to-school season.

Google Offers, in beta, recently launched tests for online coupons to compete with Groupon. In looking through the Google Offers documentation, I didn’t see any direct mention of incorporating into Adwords. Google Offers is intended to be pre-paid, however, this offer just showed up in Adwords and led to a Google hosted landing page with “Google Offers” in the page title. Or is this the old coupon product being transitioned to Offers?

The Landing Page:

More info…

Google Offers beta launching in New York City and the Bay Area

Google To Tie Google Offers, Shopper to Google+

Google Offers Launches Test in Portland

Need to pump up your Adwords skills? DemandQuest’s Ted Kozlowski and I will present at the Google AdWords & Analytics Success Summit, to be held July 13th, 2011 and September 20^th, 2011 at DemandQuest’s vibrant new learning environment in Northeast Minneapolis. This full day of intensive learning is ideal for those who want a more advanced understanding of both Google Adwords and Google Analytics.

The seminar will be presented in two parts:

Part 1- Google AdWords Optimization (9am to 12pm)

So you have an Adwords account, what’s next? This seminar focuses on the critical components of your Google Adwords account including best practices for Keywords, Ad Copy, and Targeting in addition to what levers to pull during optimization to achieve the best results. Powerful new features will also be introduced and discussed. This day is jam-packed full of tips and techniques you can functionally use to improve your accounts overall performance. This hands-on workshop will go beyond the basics with intermediate to advanced tactics.

You’ll Also Learn:

• Advertising Goals/ know what conversion(s) you are measuring
• Account Structure: Best practices including the search funnel approach
• Keywords: Best practices, match type, negatives and trouble-shooting common problems
• Budgets & Bids: best practices, automation and trouble shooting
• Ads: best practices, tips, ad extensions, trouble- shooting performance issues
• Targeting: including campaign settings
• Retargeting: intro, best practices, list ideas and optimization
• Tracking It All: conversion code, analytics, Google’s URL builder

Part 2 – Google Analytics Essential (1pm to 4pm)

This seminar focuses on best practices for creating reports, measuring data & understanding the results. We will cover installation, filters, funnels, setting up executive dashboards so that you can get the most out of Google Analytics.

You’ll Also Learn:

• Intelligence Alerts and Advanced Segments
• How Google Analytics tracking code works
• Measuring Conversions
• Measuring Traffic
• Measuring Content
• Measuring Visitors
• Best Practices: Advertising and Marketing
• Best Practices: Engagement
• Best Practices: Conversion
• Best Practices: Reporting with the Organization
• Improving Your Site: Google Website Optimizer

More information about the event and registration for Google AdWords & Analytics Success Summit can be found at the following link:

http://demandquest.com/courses/google-adwords-analytics-summit/

My latest article on ClickZ discussing how Facebook’s ad management and support to small to medium business advertisers is underwhelming at best.

How can the smaller advertiser get through their Facebook advertising experience a little easier right now?

Does Facebook Care Enough About Small Advertisers?

I recently spoke at Online Marketing Summit (OMS) when they were in the Twin Cities on the subject of PPC retargeting. The reason I have been focusing on this topic so much lately, is the amazing results clients have been seeing. If you haven’t tried it or your results are lackluster, try using some of the tips from my presentation or article posted below.

If you’re interested in exploring more, I recently wrote “Retargeting: Beyond the Basics” for ClickZ. Good luck!

“Learn best practices for reconnecting with your audience wherever they are on the web and drive them back to your website. This session will cover all you need to know from critical set-up considerations to optimization tips for greater performance.”