Search and Content Marketing Recommendations for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Search and Content Marketing Recommendations for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

If you’re an ecommerce company or a brick-and-mortar retailer with online distribution, there’s no need to remind you that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up quickly.

With ecommerce sales toppling the $1 trillion dollar mark for the first time in 2012, the numbers are, unsurprisingly, expected to continue to rise this year. With the U.S. taking nearly $385 billion of B2C ecommerce dollars alone, and Asian markets, specifically China growing rapidly–the market this holiday season will be a real test for marketers.
Getting ahead of the competition in the noisy space of email, online advertising and social media starts to feel like being a Las Vegas club promoter on a row of flashing lights.
The differentiator now has to be Findability. When users are on their desktop, tablet or mobile device and want to search for “best gift for dad” or “what computer should I get my teenager” – who appears in the top three in results is going to garner reliable traffic and increased conversions.
As consumers increased their ecommerce spending last Black Friday by 26 percent, their in-store purchases fell by 2 percent, even though spending overall was on the rise.
Instead of competing for an already crowded paid market, consider the benefits of SEO and content marketing.

Good SEO and content continue to drive traffic even when you stop putting in effort. This is unlike paid advertising and search which stop giving you ROI the minute you stop pumping dollars into them. With good search and content practices, you can continue to drive relevant visitors as long as the content is live and people are interested in the subject matter.

Creating relevant content gives you something to share via email, social media and other lead generation mediums. If you write a great blog post, well thought out buyers guide, trends in the industry you’re a part of, etc., you can leverage it across tons of networks at the cost of creating just the one piece. This is also unlike advertising where you may use the same ad on multiple channels, but you have to pay each channel individually.

Content and SEO can help you use your advertising dollars better with loads of organic insights. That’s right, it’s not all doom and gloom for paid advertising and search. Understanding which topics and items people are already searching for on their own, what phrases they’re using, which keywords are most important across each channel–these things can help you create even more relevant paid ads.

Great content and search practices are relevant on ALL devices. Need I say more? If you implement simple, strategic content creation tactics, you will be findable and relevant on all devices without the added hassle of having to optimize for individual devices.

Implementing good SEO practices will give your existing content a lift as well. By refreshing your current site content and taking those recommendations into consideration as you create new content, you will see an overall rise in organic traffic to your campaigns.

Next Steps for Your SEO and Content Marketing Campaigns

We’ve reviewed a few of the ways good search and content practices can give you an edge on the competition, let’s talk about how  you start an SEO and content marketing campaigns for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

  1. Make sure you’ve got the tools in place. The right tools will help you understand your current search and content standings as well as show ROI moving forward. Getting your tools setup for these campaigns now means you’ll have great data to benchmark from and can make smarter decisions based on existing consumer behavior. Take a look at how to set up a campaign.
  2. Monitor your competitors. If you’re learning great stuff from your own site content, trust me you’ll learn tons from what your competitors are doing as well. From what type of market share they have for your targeted keywords/products/brands, to what they are focusing on in terms of social media and new content creation – you can derive valuable insights for your brand.

  3. Make your process as lightweight as possible. Keeping your SEO and content process simple, especially during a busy holiday season, means you can update, create, and repurpose content on the fly while still adhering to best practices.

  4. Get started early. If you haven’t started generating campaign specific content for the holidays yet, it’s not too late, but you’re cutting it close. According to Google Consumer Surveys the week of 7/8/13, 30 percent of consumers will begin their holiday shopping before Halloween!

  5. Your current audience may not be your holiday audience. During the 2012 holiday season, one-fourth of gifters purchased from a retailer they had never shopped with before, according to Google Consumer Surveys. This means you are attracting new visitors–some of whom are on the hunt for the best price, others who may stick around to search for others on their gift list. It’s your job to keep them around once they land on your site and great content about your products, services and pricing is a great way to do just that.

Have questions or want help getting your ecommerce campaigns setup? Let us know in the comments or contact us. We’re happy to help!