During the holidays, your ads will help you make better sales. Careful crafted ads can easily grab the attention of web surfers and help you grow your business.Marketing Land columnist Thomas Stern has shared four ways to create ads that make an outstanding effect during the holiday season.Stern says, “Getting ahead of the competitive holiday season is a recurring obstacle. To start off on the right foot, you need to centralize your merchant feed, plan on making foundational optimizations, analyze your historical and competitor promotions, but most importantly, diversify your paid media... [...]

Marketing Land columnist Tom Mucklow has shared five ways marketers can prepare themselves for the upcoming holiday season.Mucklow says, “It’s essential they take the time to learn and implement new technologies to help speed up the sales process. With holiday sales reaching a whopping $658.3 billion dollars last year, they can ill afford to be unprepared for the year’s biggest shopping surge.What follows are five key questions retailers must ask themselves now to prepare for the upcoming holiday shopping season:1. Is your website ready?It goes without saying now that a retailer’s... [...]

Giovanni Strocchi says, “From tears of joy to smiles of sadness, the holiday season can be an emotional rollercoaster for consumers, and retailers understand that tapping into these powerful human sentiments can be an effective way to build consumer relationships, increase brand loyalty, and ultimately, drive holiday sales.While it may seem early to start thinking about the 2017 holiday shopping season, it’s never too soon to get your marketing strategy in place — and central to that strategy should be using technology to target audiences in the right emotional context with the right... [...]

Matt Lawson says, “Click share is a key way to gauge the success of your Shopping campaigns. The metric shows you the percentage of total possible clicks you are receiving with your Shopping ads. If you aren’t reviewing this metric on a regular basis, 2017 is officially the time to start the habit.Incorporate click share into your daily optimizationsClick share can be an incredibly useful metric because it delivers the type of insight that you’re used to receiving from average position in your Search campaigns. Shopping ads can take a lot of different forms, which means that we can’t... [...]

Dave Davies says, “We all know that the holidays are fast approaching. In just 10 short months, we’ll all be gathered around home and hearth; in just nine short months, the chaos of filling that home and hearth with a wide assortment of colorful boxes, trees or candles will begin.Regular readers will remember that last November, I published an article on last-minute SEO for the holidays. As a quick refresher, here’s what I advised might impact a site’s rankings with just weeks to make a difference:Making sure your Google My Business is present and accurateOptimizing your titles... [...]

Matt McGee says, “New data from the National Retail Federation (NRF) paints a rosy picture for holiday e-commerce.The organization estimates non-store sales of $122.9 billion in November and December, a 12.6 percent gain over 2015. And it’s significantly higher than the NRF’s predicted growth of 7-10 percent.The NRF’s numbers are in line with what others have reported. Adobe has pegged holiday e-commerce growth at 11 percent for the just-finished holidays. Slice, a retail analytics firm, estimated a 20 percent year-over-year gain in online holiday sales.Another common theme running... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “The final holiday online shopping tally is out. According to Adobe, total e-commerce sales (November 1 to December 31) hit $91.7 billion, representing growth of 11 percent year over year.Out of 61 shopping days in the period, all but five saw at least $1 billion in online revenue. Traffic to retailers was split evenly between the desktop and mobile but sales still heavily favored the PC. Mobile devices accounted for 31 percent of sales and the desktop generated 69 percent according to Adobe’s estimates.Simultaneously comScore released desktop commerce data for the... [...]

Zak Stambor says, “Shoppers clicking from smartphone search ads account for 30% of total online Orders stemming from search ads, according to an Adlucent analysis of 32 retailers’ Google Product Listing Ad and Extended Text Ad spending over the holidays.Retailers’ increased paid search ad spending paid off over the holidays, according to data from 32 of digital marketing agency Adlucent’s retail clients for the period of Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 24) to Christmas Day.Shoppers clicking from paid search ads spent 45% more year over year during that period, thanks in large part to retailers... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Amazon led the way among big retailers in increasing their digital holiday advertising spend, according to ad sales intelligence firm MediaRadar, which analyzed sales data from October and November 2016 and 2015. The e-commerce giant increased digital ad spend during the early holiday push by 224 percent year over year. Linear TV ad spend also rose — by 76 percent — while its print investment dropped 10 percent.“Most retailers are reducing print spend while focusing on other channels, like linear TV and digital,” said Todd Krizelman, CEO and co-founder of MediaRadar... [...]

Andrew Gazdecki says, “Any good marketer knows to keep an eye on the future to stay ahead of the curve on new trends, emerging marketing channels, and other fresh ideas to deliver brand messages. With 2016 in the rear-view mirror and 2017 flying down the pipeline, now is the time to start examining what the New Year is going to mean for marketing.Here are six marketing growth strategies to help your small business succeed in 2017.Marketing Growth Strategies for Small Businesses1. Mobile-Centric is the Name of the GameOver the past couple years, we’ve seen mobile overtake desktop in... [...]