For those who have managed CSE campaigns for any length of time, the routine of the upcoming Holiday Season includes checking sale pricing and promotional text for accuracy, optimizing product titles and implementing bidding strategies on traditionally good performing products. It’s a proven strategy that tends to work very well and produces good ROI. What else can and should be done to maximize Holiday profits? Is there more to effective CSE management, especially this time of year that can be done to take your CSE Programs to the next level?
The answer is yes. There is much more to maximizing CSE profits than simply auditing data feeds for accuracy. Proper campaign management should include a holistic business approach that will take advantage of Q4 ROI increases that are magnified during the Holiday Shopping season. With that in mind, we have compiled some tips to help you get the most out of your Holiday CSE Campaigns.
Tip #1:
Re-evaluate poor-performing products.
If you manage a large product catalog, it’s likely that over the course of the year, poor performing products or even entire categories of products were removed from your data feeds due to underperforming ROI. If your budget can handle it and the margins make sense, give those products another try during this shopping period. Products that don’t do well during the normal purchase cycle, often pick up during the holidays. This time of year is a perfect opportunity to reintroduce parts of your catalog that may have been forgotten. Of course, any seasonal items that would have been removed earlier in the year will be reintroduced and bids adjusted accordingly.
Tip #2:
Monitor the Media Daily.
With the rapid expansion of online deal sites, it is imperative that the shopping media (and even the “mainstream” news media) is monitored on a regular basis. Even the major portals such as AOL and Yahoo should be checked frequently. Every year, more media segments are dedicated to Hot Tech Gadgets, trendy jeans in style or the “Must Have Toy” of the season. Failure to recognize when one of your products is being featured could have catastrophic consequences if your inventory levels aren’t adequate to meet the demand. A featured product that goes out of stock quickly could result in hundreds or thousands of dollars being accumulated through CPCs on Shopping Engines.
Tip #3:
Customer Surveys.
Does your Customer Service stack up? Whatever your online reputation, it will be magnified over the holidays. The major CSE’s provide Customer Satisfaction surveys both at the POS and at the time of fulfillment. The Holiday Shopping period can be the perfect time to repair a tarnished reputation. If you are a less than 5-star merchant and can correct any Customer Service or shipping problems prior to the shopping season peak, you could benefit. It is possible to rapidly improve your reputation thanks to the increase in Holiday traffic. This is a great opportunity to make things right with the buying public. The payoff will be well worth the effort.
Tip #4:
Get Compliant With Google Product Search.
By now you have heard (we hope) of the major changes to the Google Product Search data requirements (especially if you sell apparel items). For an in-depth look at those changes and what they might mean for you, please see our previous paper titled, “Top 5 Things To Address in Google Product Search Before September 22”
The time to get your Google Product Search data feed ready for the Holiday rush is now. Unique images and color variants are now required. Google Product Search is free. It’s a fantastic channel to test market new products and provides the flexibility to test Title and Description copy.
Tip #5:
Coordinate your CSE offerings with your PPC & SEO efforts.
It is imperative that product offerings remain consistent across all channels of your SEM efforts. If your site uses coupon codes for limited time promotions, utilize the coupon code fields some CSEs offer. Shipping promotions and discounts reflected in PPC ad copy should also be reflected within the data feed offerings where possible. Identify any “Hot Products” and make sure their CSE Bids are adequate and are also being promoted within PPC listings. Chances are, if a set of products are performing well in one channel, they will perform well in others.
At Inceptor, we look beyond the simple submission of your product offerings for Comparison Shopping Engines and manage your programs holistically. While the raw feed data is vitally important to effective ROI management, the Holiday Season offers unique opportunities in Brand Management, Product Expansion and SEM Cohesion.
Taking advantage of these opportunities now will not only enhance your Comparison Shopping Engine programs for the Holidays, the improvements will also make a difference in your campaigns throughout the rest of the year.
