September 24, 2013: As we race into the 2013 Holiday Season, it’s important to remember that while each holiday season is unique, there are similar patterns at work during each successive Q4 which affect user behavior, PPC prices, traffic, conversion and click-through rates, and other crucial metrics. These patterns can be derived by analyzing your log files from last year.
Log files will tell you a lot. For example, they’ll give you a record of search terms/phrases used by visitors who found your listings, clicked on them, entered your site, and performed (or didn’t perform) a conversion action at the precise time each event occurred. Log file data will let you study keyword phrases that suddenly become “hot” during this time, and will become hot again this year. You may also observe changes in day-parting behavior, for example, an increase in search behavior during worktime lunch hours. Such insights can inform your PPC campaign, make it more efficient, and more able to capture profitable clicks.
Obviously, you can’t be a slave to historical data. The competitive landscape changes each year, the economy is different, new products are introduced, and fashions morph with time, along with the device mix used by shoppers. You’ll still have to perform all of your regular Q4 due diligence (coordinating campaigns with catalog drops, differentiating your holiday messaging, etc.).
But understanding seasonal search behavior will give you a powerful advantage against competitors – even deep-pocketed ones — who haven’t performed this kind of analysis because they’re new to the market, have lazy webmasters who don’t save their log files, or don’t have the ability to make historical log file data actionable. If you can manage to leverage the lessons of history, your PPC campaigns can more efficiently harvest the valuable – but often expensive – search traffic to come in the weeks ahead.
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