Get Your Online Store Ready for the Holiday Shopping

Season

October 23d, 2014 – online marketing session for online retailers

About Promodo

About Wiser

Price for Profit.Retail price intelligence, automation and analytics to help drive profitable pricing strategies.

Speaker

Luke LinWiser

As Wiser's Head of Pricing and Analytics, Luke pioneers new innovations in the realm of e-commerce pricing intelligence and automation. He is a former pricing leader at GE Intelligent Platforms with several years of experience in Software automation and intelligence, and a graduate of GE's prestigious Financial Management Program with deep experience in developing automated solutions for complex organizations. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is an avid college basketball fan.

Speaker

Anna Korolekh Promodo

Marketing manager and, in past, an SEO consultant at Promodo. As an SEO consultant Anna has worked with large sites of the gambling, dating, travel and ecommerce niche. Anna is a certified Google Analytics individual and a regular contributor to Promodo and external blogs, also a regular speaker at the webinars. Currently Anna manages and oversees all marketing activities of Promodo in the English-speaking markets: SEM, SEO, social media, content marketing, email marketing, events.

Predictions for 2014

Sales Forecasts:

●Shop.org estimates that online sales will grow 8-11% in 2014.

●Holiday Sales are expected to make up 19.2% of the retail industry’s annual $3.2 Trillion in sales.

Top Category Projections:

Types of products placed on 2014 consumer wish lists (PwC):

Insights from 2013 and Predictions for 2014

Top Trends:

●Mobile

●SEO

●OmniChannel Retail

●Shipping

●Dynamic Pricing

Mobile

Capitalize on Mobile Traffic

The Facts:

•One of the fastest growing channels of commerce the industry has ever seen.

•In 2014, mobile usage drove 25% of all online retail traffic.

•Convenience reigns supreme in 2014, and mobile shopping is about as convenient as shopping can be.

Search Engine Optimization

Optimize your online store for search engines

THE FACTS:

In 2013, ⅓ of online consumers started their search for products through a search engine such as Google.

96% of all web searches begin with a search engine.

1/396%

OmniChannel Retail

Ensure an effective presence on all your channels of distribution (in-store, online, and mobile)

THE FACTS:

• ⅔ of shoppers use their phone while being in store, a sure sign of the growing popularity of omnichannel retail.

•While shopping on mobile, a whopping 41% of shoppers avoid mobile sites and apps, and instead decide to use the full website on their phone.

Shipping

Consider Free Shipping

THE FACTS:

•According to ComScore, 93% of shoppers take some form of action to qualify for free shipping, with 58% adding items to their cart to qualify.

•When time is not of the essence, 50% choose the slowest standard time so shipping is free.

Dynamic Pricing

Keep up with the Competition

THE FACTS:

•Sears changes prices daily during the 2012 holiday season on 25% of products

•Amazon changes prices as often as every 15 minutes

•Amazon sold 426 items per second during the 2013 holiday season. The ability to reprice in real-time allows them to capitalize immediately on changes in the market 

REMEMBER: It’s not a race to the bottom

Strong monitoring and evaluation of data

is key 

Step 1: Collect competitive pricing and assortment data

Step 2: Identify and prioritize where you aren’t competitive

Step 3: Set your pricing strategy and evaluate results

Taking a Data-Driven Approach to Pricing

Retailers using this approach

have seen a:

7% 22% 18%Increase in Sales Revenue

Increase in Check-Out

Conversion Rate

Increase in Bottom-Line Profit

Taking a Data-Driven Approach to Pricing

Recommended Strategy: Dynamic Pricing

●Know thy competitor

●Look for time-of week and time of day patterns to exploit

●Manage supply and demand

●Model consumer price elasticity & cross-price elasticity

●Use historical data to forecast and optimize

●Automate repricing in real-time

REMEMBER: Price Cutting is a Losing Battle Use data to optimize for profit instead of limiting yourself to

competition-based pricing

Consumer's pre-holiday habits

• About 40% of consumers begin their holiday shopping before Halloween

• Consumers who shop in November spend 14% more than the average shopper in December

• 2-3 weeks before Christmas people start searching for Christmas party goods and ideas and they start shopping for Christmas snacks 1 week before Christmas

• 75% of shoppers use Facebook to search for seasonal discounts

• 60% of women use Pinterest to search for gift-buying and home decoration ideas

Habits

• Plan your offers beforehand, create detailed holiday season calendars

• Allocate most of your marketing efforts to more expensive products in November and shift to cheaper ones for last-minute shoppers• Create content that will cater to these needs and highlight products on your website that can help consumers with party preparation

• Do not forget to trim your Facebook page

• Use Pinterest as a showroom for your store, engage with your followers

Your Actions

Other holiday marketing tricks

• This season is SUPER emotional, forget formality, go for warm, sentimental and friendly

• Creating rush and urgency is as effective as ever

• Small discounts measured in $ instead of % are very effective on mid-priced goods motivating people to buy things they do not actually need

• More Free shipping and gift-wrapping!

• You will get loads of new, first-time visitors – will they find their way through your site to the Order Successful page?

Holiday season marketing calendar:

September – Technical month: make sure your site will endure the load; revise holiday return and shipping policies and capabilities

average cost of a downtime for top 10 US retailers is $165,000 per hour

October – Revise your marketing plan for holiday activities; create holiday content, take care of SEO part of things

November – Launch your marketing activities full-scale – focus on CPC methods and social

December – Focus on customer experience and support

January! – Analyze the data received, collect feedback from your customers

Make your holiday story consistent

• Define the focus group of target audience you would like to engage

• Think of a voice to your story that would be most appealing to your focus group

• Trim all your online (and offline) properties with this new hero of yours

• Play around with it – create contests, give aways, run some charity events

• Make sure you are telling this story via every channel available – your site, Facebook page, Pinterest page, ads and banners, blog, email blasts

CPC strategies

Analysis First!

CPC strategiesAnalysis First!

Google Trends

CPC strategiesAnalysis First!

Google Analytics

CPC strategies

• Products Ads (Google Shopping campaigns) outperform traditional non-branded AdWords search campaigns by 3 times in terms of clicks and by 5 times in terms of revenue!

• Use custom labels for your seasonal Shopping campaigns

• Prioritize and bid manage those groups of ads more aggressively

CPC strategies

• Enhance your Product Listing Ads with special offers through Google Merchant promotions

CPC strategies

• Shift your strategies towards new buyers, add more generic keywords like “woolen sweaters” instead of allocating your budget to branded queries

• Do not forget to consistently remarket your drop off customers

• Use last year’s data and stats to set bids for product categories this year

• Add holiday-themed ad extensions to your ads

• Watch for most active time of your shoppers and prioritize the ads and budgets according to this schedule

Facebook Ads are a MUST!

• Put your offers and promotions on Facebook!

• Upload your existing customers emails to create a Custom Audience on Facebook and make sure you reach them with your ads

• Do not just focus on direct sales, engage

• Start from the loyal fans that you already have and motivate them to share your message with their friends

Let’s summarize:

• Take care of boring, technical side of things first

• Plan and write down everything you do

• Do not shout out promo messages, create a story and communicate it through all the channels you got

• Engage your audience with helpful info on holiday shopping and preparation on your blog

• Exploit social channels to share your holiday offers

• Give Shopping ads priority over traditional ads

Free online marketing auditWe would like to invite all you to take a free 10-15 minutes personalised webinar for a quick audit of your website and marketing campaigns by Google certified experts.

- Quick usability audit of the existing site;- Quick SEO audit and review of existing analytics;- Audit of PPC campaigns;- Technical audit;- Best practices of conversion rate optimization;- General online marketing strategy insights.

Free online marketing audit

Learn More About Wiser

Try Wiser for FREE

14-day trial, no credit card required.

Wiser provides a complete suite of solutions to give retailers, brands, and manufacturers the edge to stay both competitive and most importantly, profitable.

● Get to know Wiser using a Demo Store

● Sync to your own store right away

● Reprice your products and increase your sales today!

1.855.GOWISER ● WWW.WISER.COM ●

INFO@ WISER.COM

Thank you for your attention!

Anna KorolekhMarketing manager at Promodo

e-mail: a.moseva@promodo.comSkype: ann.moseva

Luke LinHead of Pricing and Analyticsat Wiser

e-mail: luke.lin@wiser.com

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