High-level search marketing: How to keep your momentum from the holiday season going
Businesses tend to have a huge marketing push right before, and often during, the holidays, but often times these marketing campaigns fizzle out after the new year. Its easy to dial back your marketing efforts and budget after a busy season, but if youre smart youll keep that momentum up well into the first months of the new year. Heres how you can keep up your push in marketing efforts in 2018. Start email marketing campaigns earlyandtarget right If you played smart during the holidays, your email leads shouldve increased significantly. The best practice is to act fast. Your new leads may have purchased their holiday gifts already, but that doesnt mean theyre done shopping. Understand that your customers want to hear from you, so its best to act fast. This starts with targeted email campaigns. Instead of doing the hard work yourself, use the help of marketing automation software to determine which content fits each audience. For example, automation software looks at the previous purchases of customers and prompts emails for similar products. Keep in mind that you dont want to overdo it with the emails. This will turn your customers away quicker than they came. Offer valuable content in your emails early on and youll keep your customers coming back. Some ways to add value to your email marketing campaign: Reach out to customers who purchased their products as a gift. Use similar product suggestions for future gift purchasesContact customers who left an abandoned cart. Customers often use their shopping carts as a wish list of sorts. Reach out to those customers to see if they plan to complete their purchaseOffer a discount to entice customers to purchase. Free shipping adds tons of value. Make your discount exclusive to email subscribers to further add value.Continue to use paid ads You already have your paid ad campaign underway from the holidays. Dont let those ads go stagnant as you start the new year.
Leading up to (and during) the holidays, ads from all over are competing. That energy slows down as the holidays end. Take advantage of both lower competition and less expensive ads during the aftermath of the holidays. This is a new year, which means its the right time to switch up your strategy. Youre no longer in holiday mode, but laying out the foundation for the rest of the year. Do you normally bid second position keywords throughout the year? Change your strategy and look for keywords that are first position. The holiday campaign may have busted your budget, but that doesnt mean you should pull back on your paid ads. Youll actually spend more money in the long run, and completely kill your momentum from the holidays. Keep your paid ads running throughout the year, so youre not halting traffic and trying to build it back up after you run your ads again. Take advantage of keywords around new years resolutions New year, new me is the mantra for most people after the holidays are finished. A new year means a fresh start, and regardless of your market, customers focus on improving their health and wellbeing. Use these trends to benefit your business. This means creating impactful content thats valuable to customers and their goals for the new year. Use your content to promote your products and services in a way that appear useful to your customers. How can you portray your products as a tool for achieving customer goals? This tactic is possible to spin no matter what industry youre in. For example, lets say youre a company that specializes in green cleaning products. Cater your content towards improving health and keeping chemicals out of the home. You know keyword choice is imperative when working on your search marketing campaign. Take advantage of new year resolutions by choosing keywords that match. For instance, words like get healthy and get organized are keyword phrases that tend to pop up as the new year approaches. Look at last years organic keywords. Which were the best performing, and which could you stand to ditch? Take a peek at your competitors keywords, too, to see what theyre ranking highly for. Incorporate these keywords into your blog posts and social posts to drive traffic to your companys website. Share this article Related articles Review your data and strategize for the upcoming year No doubt about it, the months of January and February are slow months for everyone, no matter your industry. The best way to push forward is to take a look at what worked and didnt work during the holiday season. Its also a great time to learn more about your new customers. This gives you great leverage to start working on your campaigns throughout the new year. Look at things like your timing and segments. Who responded well to specific emails? Which groups brought you the most ROI? How was the timing of your campaign? When looking at your new customers, figure out which of these groups fit well for your business.
As far as your website goes, A/B testing will tell you which pages of your website responded well with your customers. Test your non-holiday specific landing pages and compare them to your holiday pages. Notice the shift between the two and apply those shifts to your new year campaign. Take this information and tweak the things that didnt work and apply those changes to your upcoming campaigns. The takeaway After the surge of the holidays, most SEOs and marketers feel theyve exhausted their resources and budget. This doesnt have to be the case. The success of a holiday campaign should continue well into the new year. Keep these things in mind during your slow months and youll keep the momentum up to prepare you for spring and busier selling seasons. How do you keep your momentum going into the new year? Let us know what has worked for you in the comment section below. Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer forNo Risk SEO,an all-in-one reporting platform for agencies.You can connect with Amanda onTwitterandLinkedIn, or check out her content services atamandadisilvestro.com. Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?Get top insights and news from our search experts.
Related reading The explosion of big data has meant that humans simply have too much data to understand and handle daily. For search, content and digital marketers to make the most out the valuable insights that data can provide, it is essential to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) applications, machine learning algorithms and deep learning to move the needle of marketing performance in 2018.
As we come to the end of 2017, weve decided to take a look back at some of our most-read articles throughout the year. So far this week, weve rounded up our top five articles on SEO and top five articles on PPC. To wrap up the week, were taking a look at our top five most-read articles about the search industry.
As we come to the end of 2017, weve decided to take a look back at some of our most-read articles throughout the year. Today, well be turning our attention to the other great staple of Search Engine Watch content: PPC.
Your ad campaigns should bring you closer to new prospects and clients. But how well are you tracking their success? We explain how to improve the conversion rate of your AdWords campaigns. https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/01/15/high-level-search-marketing-how-to-keep-your-momentu m-from-the-holiday-season-going/