greenlight's magazine: christmas edition

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SEO CHRISTMAS MYTHSSEO CHRISTMAS MYTHSSEO CHRISTMAS MYTHSSEO CHRISTMAS MYTHSSEO CHRISTMAS MYTHSSEO CHRISTMAS MYTHSSEO CHRISTMAS MYTHSSEO CHRISTMAS MYTHSSEO CHRISTMAS MYTHSSEO CHRISTMAS MYTHSTHE METEORIC RISE OF MOBILETHE METEORIC RISE OF MOBILE

Post-Christmasjust as important asPre-Christmas

Post-Christmasjust as important asPre-Christmas

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TIPSTOP TEN TWITTER

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Greenlight's ChristmasconferenceGreenlight's Christmasconference

EDITOR Alicia Levy

MaRkETIng & PRODucTIOn Ashley Burgess & Harriet Micallef

cOvER Diogo Freitas

DEsIgn & LayOuT Julie Vaccalluzzo

FOREwORD Greenlight

cOnTRIbuTORs Anuj Ghaghada

Ben Mckeown Adam Bunn

Patricia McElhinney Dave Tillett

PubLIshED by gREEnLIghT Level 14, The Broadgate Tower

Primrose Street London, EC2A 2EW

t: +44 (0)20 7253 7000

e-mail: [email protected]

www.greenlightdigital.com © Greenlight 2012 – all rights reserved

September 2012

contents

2 FOREwORD Greenlight

3 MakE ThE wEb wORk FOR yOu Google’s Anuj Ghaghada explains

5 hOw TO TakE yOuR busInEss MObILE Three ways to get your site mobile ready in time for Christmas

8 TOP FIvE TIPs FOR a succEsFuL sEO chRIsTMas

9 TOP TEn TwITTER TIPs

12 FIvE EssEnTIaL PaID MEDIa TIPs FOR chRIsTMas 2012

14 gREEnLIghT’s chRIsTMas cOnFEREncE Providing online marketers with everything they need to know about Christmas

Christmas starts as early as July for many brands, and that’s not just a good idea

because Christmas is the peak for many businesses in terms of trading, and it’s not just a good idea because Christmas is the opportunity to tune up and refresh your Digital Marketing strategies. But, it’s a good idea because of the rapid pace of change in the Digital Marketing landscape.

It is exponential, making simple marketing plans more complicated. Search, display,

trying to position and manoeuvre themselves around them, trying to work out where they need to be visible. Do they need to be on Facebook, Google+, Twitter ?

To stay ahead in this growing landscape of change you have to be disruptive, embracing the disruption by innovating within the changing face of Digital.

At Greenlight we take Christmas seriously because our clients do. We are relentlessly working on efficiency and growth for our clients and delivering demonstrable value at the highest

level of the organisation. In this edition of The Magazine, we have brought together tips from our recent Digital Advent Calendar and Christmas Conference, with each of the panellists being disruptive in some way. Marketers too can be disruptive, by making sure their marketing programmes are navigating the sea of change in Digital, in time for Christmas.

We hope you find the content within The Magazine helpful in your endeavours to ensuring your brand is visible this Christmas.n

email and affiliate marketing have matured with the emergence of blogs and Social as sub-lines throughout every channel. Search itself has fragmented into contextual, behavioural, retargeting and pre-targeting.

Online user behaviour is changing. The Internet used to be the place where brands set up online stores and consumers drifted around, interacting with us based on the marketing collateral we pushed out to them. Now the consumer is the core and fabric of the Internet and brands are

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when searching for deals online. With over a third of mobile searches having a local

intent, dedicated mobile campaigns engaging with smartphone users is a must.

Despite this growing trend, 73% of advertisers still do not have a mobile-optimised site, which leads to a frustrating and fruitless experience for consumers if they have to constantly pinch-to-zoom and scroll to navigate whilst on your site. There is a wide range of free tools that can help you evaluate how your site renders on a mobile device, what you need to work on and even provide some partners that can help you develop a mobile site. (For more information go to www.getmo.com). For advertisers that have neither the resources nor time to develop a dedicated mobile site, the incredible rise of tablets presents another opportunity. Tablet users tend to be affluent and use their device simultaneously whilst watching television or using their phone. They spend on average, one and a half hours a day on their device and around 10-20% more on their orders than the average Internet user. As Fig. 2 shows, while the day is dominated by desktop activity the mornings and evenings have greater mobile and tablet usage.

Last Christmas, mobile searches peaked on Christmas day, making up 26% of all Christmas-related queries and this year’s Christmas period is likely to see even greater activity on mobile devices.

As retailers gear up for the busiest and most profitable time of the year,

the world economy continues to struggle as countries attempt to keep their finances in order and protect themselves from the risks posed by the troubles seen in Greece, Italy and Spain. Consumer confidence has remained low as shoppers tighten their belts and defer purchases as household budgets are squeezed. This inevitably has had an effect on the high street where, in the last year alone, many established retailers have gone into administration including Clintons, Jane Norman and Habitat. On the other hand, others such as John Lewis are posting record sales and double-digit weekly growth figures. The fact is, consumers have changed the way that they shop, and those who have adapted their strategies with this in mind have reaped the benefits.

According to the Office of National Statistics, consumers

in the UK spent £42.1bn in December last year with online sales driving much of the growth (up 16.5% year-on-year), contributing around £7.9bn. Looking at online queries over Q4 for the last three years we can see that queries have continued to grow strongly (queries were up 18% year-on-year in 2011) with the peak being Cyber Monday that traditionally falls on the last Monday of November. Interestingly in the last two years, the peak has been less sharp as consumers continue to browse for Christmas gifts over a longer period to get the best deals. Retailers often make the mistake of peaking too early in their online advertising campaigns by running out of budget, or switching them off entirely after Christmas Day. However, this leads them to miss out on the large number of shoppers who are back on their computers searching for Boxing Day deals (fig. 1 ).

So what has changed? The

three key themes I would strongly recommend retailers to take notice of are: The emergence of the ‘nonline’ shopper; The meteoric rise of mobile; Post-Christmas is just as important as pre-ChristmasThe emergence of the ‘nonline’ shopper

What we used to call ‘colour televisions’ have now become ‘televisions’ and ‘cellphones’ are more commonly labelled as ‘phones’. In the same way, consumers are beginning to distinguish less and less between online shopping and offline shopping. This new breed of ‘nonline’ shoppers are comfortable shopping wherever they are whether in-store, on a mobile

device, or desktop. Never has it been more important than now to offer users a seamless experience regardless of the platform they use. One idea that has seen great success is the ‘click and collect’ model where consumers can research and reserve an item online and pick it up locally in a nearby store. Argos has been a pioneer in this retail model and now almost half of it’s £4bn sales come through multi-channel paths. As a result, it has become increasingly more important for retailers to correctly attribute the values of sales to online. Google partnered with Vodafone to show the impact of “Online to store” or O2S. The results showed that for every £1 spent online, £1.75 was spent in-store as a result. For pureplay retailers, correct attribution of online activity is just as important and has to extend beyond the last click model. Using an Analytics package, you can see what paths customers take that convert best for you. It may be that a customer sees your email marketing, considers the purchase and then returns either through search or directly to your site. Considering this more expansive model will help ensure you are present and relevant at the crucial touch points for your target audience. Christmas has an added challenge whereby consumers generally start their journey looking for gift ideas using very generic terms such as ‘christmas gifts for him’ or ‘dresses’ before filtering their searches down to often very long-tailed queries for a specific model. Therefore, it is

important for retailers to consider the searches that potential consumers may make further up the purchase funnel.The meteoric rise of mobile

2012 is the year of mobile. Smartphones and tablets have placed the internet in the hands of millions and for 28% of smartphone owners, it is their primary access point. Retail queries on desktops have increased by 15% year-to-date, while mobile queries are up an astounding 147% with no sign of slowing down. In fact, mobile queries are projected to overtake

desktop queries in 2015, which is no surprise when you see the relative growth rates of queries on these platforms.

Mobiles have fundamentally changed the way that consumers shop, by empowering them with more decision influencing information with which to base their purchasing decisions on. 28% of smartphone users have made a purchase using their mobile and 34% check prices in-store. Smart retailers even use proximity targeting (currently in beta) through Adwords, to target consumers who are in a given radius of a competitor’s store catching consumers attention

MAKE THE WEB WORK FOR YOU Guest contributor Anuj Ghaghada from Google gets into the nitty gritty

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Fig. 1 - Indexed Shopping Queries Q4 2009 -2012

...mobile queries are up an astounding 147% with no signs of slowing down

...consumers are beginning to distinguish less and less between online shopping and offline shopping. This new breed of ‘nonline’ shoppers are comfortable shopping wherever they are whether in-store, on a mobile device, or desktop.

3 www.greenlightdigital.com

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the MAGAZINE - Greenlight 4

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The explosion of smart phones and tablet devices onto the market has

meant that for businesses with an Internet presence, having a mobile strategy has gone from a ‘nice to have’ feature to being an integral part of a businesses online strategy.

Mobile internet browsing is supposed to present convenience to your customers, but for many, it is often a frustrating experience when not implemented properly (or at all). It is therefore essential, to ensure you give your target mobile browsing customers the best experience. You can do this in one of three ways - through a standalone mobile site, an optimised responsive site and/or through a mobile app, depending on how you want to connect with your target audience.Standalone Mobile site:

A separate stand alone mobile site is a good choice for a lot of companies, often it’s a duplicate of your main site, but stripped down to a visual minimum so users on the move have the smallest possible download.Pros:

n A site tailored exactly for a mobile user’s needs can lead to a better user experience.

n Nothing needs to be installed on your device, it will work on any mobile device out of the box.

n Optimised for the smallest

would be to have a Responsive Design website.

Responsive Design has been getting a lot of attention lately as it solves the issue of companies having to have a standalone mobile site alongside a website. The concept of the Responsive Design technique is simple and effective. It adjusts a websites’ pages based on the platform which it is being viewed on, be it a desktop, PC, smartphone or a tablet. Through smart code in the websites’ style sheets, the Responsive Design technique adapts the size and resolution of the website pages so the end user can experience the web page in

the best possible way. This negates the need for

companies having

to run a

HOW TO TAKE YOUR BUSINESS MOBILE?

download possible. Users with data-caps on their devices will thank you.Cons:

n Any changes to the non-mobile site need to be duplicated in the mobile site, since essentially you are running two separate sites, this can drive up costs.

n If not implemented properly, having duplicated content on two sites could affect your site rankings and search engines could be confused about which site to show in SERPs.

n A standalone mobile site is intended to cater for a huge amount of devices with a wide range of screen sizes, finding a way to display information for all of these often means settling on a design for the lowest common denominator, since the site doesn’t adapt to the screen of the device.Responsive Sites

The main issue with a standalone mobile site, is that you essentially have to maintain two

websites, which can prove to be expensive and time

consuming. A solution to

this

Post-Christmas is just as important as pre-Christmas

In 2010, the UK saw some of the worst weather that brought large parts of the country and infrastructure to a grinding halt. Christmas tends to be one of the few times when customers pay premiums to ensure prompt delivery. One interesting trend from last year was that shoppers held off their gift purchases longer than usual in anticipation of shops discounting heavily. In a self-fulfilling prophecy, retailers were forced to discount heavily in order to drive customers through the door. The key mistake that advertisers make is peaking too early with their online advertising campaigns and missing out on a significant number of potential customers who are looking for deals after Christmas Day.

Traditionally, searches drop on Christmas Day until the evening when people are back online after overindulging in their Christmas dinners. Last year however, retailers were much more aggressive with John Lewis and Superdrug who started their clearance sales on Christmas Eve. Given the tough economic conditions faced by all, consumers

will continue to be price conscious and happy to compromise on delivery times to get bigger discounts. A key recommendation would be to ensure an ‘always on’ strategy over the Christmas period to ensure that you don’t miss out on customers who continue to shop after the initial Christmas shopping rush has passed.

Despite the difficult conditions across most of Europe, Christmas is geared to be another season full of retailers posting recording-breaking sales figures and consumers out in force on the high street and eCommerce sites. Make the Web work for you by being present wherever your customer is and delivering the best user experience to keep them coming back again and again. n

Fig. 2 - Percentage of day’s queries by hourTablet Mobile Desktop

midnight 6am midday 6pm midnight

Anuj Ghaghada

Industry Analyst Retail Team Google UK

duplicate mobile-friendly version alongside their actual website.Pros:

n The cheapest option in the long run.

n Your site will be ‘future proof’ to all new mobile devices as they are released.

n When you add new content to your website, it is automatically ready for all mobile devices

n No need to duplicate content from your standard site, like you would have to do if you have a standalone mobile site, as your standard site IS your mobile site.Cons:

n You can’t alter the information architecture of the site so it may not be optimal for mobile.

n It’s a relatively new technique, so training existing staff or seeking out experienced skills is a prerequisite.

n You are essentially downloading the desktop webpage version with removed elements. Hence the size of the page being downloaded isn’t as small as it could be. This can cause problems with both page load speed times and mobile bandwidth usage, which is often capped.Mobile apps

For those who already have an optimised site, mobile apps are the most effective way of connecting with your target audience, although they are generally the most expensive option.

Responsive Design has been getting a lot of attention lately as it solves the issue of companies having to have a standalone mobile site alongside a website.


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it used to be, it’s still senseless to start from scratch every year with a new set of pages, and I’ve personally seen more than one retailer suffer as a result of such a policy. Once Christmas is over, demote the pages so they aren’t as visible to users, but keep them linked from somewhere like an HTML sitemap.3. Plan an integrated Social and SEO campaign for December, and support this with digital PR distribution. Executed properly this can be the key decider of who ranks during the all-important peak in search activity.4. Don’t neglect Google Merchant Center. Google is currently trialling a paid version of product search in Google.com so this is likely to be the last year in which you can take advantage of product search traffic without paying for it.5. Closely monitor your competitor’s activities. They are one of the best ways to inform your own strategy and campaigns. n

giving the best

possible experience for

your end users. n App-icon on

users’ phones is an excellent form of advertising for any company.

n Lots of consumers browse app stores looking for things to install, so it’s a great way of finding customers who might not have discovered you via other means.Cons:

n Apps are expensive to develop. You’ll need specialised

Mobile apps, are applications which mobile users can download to their mobile devices. They present users with a convenient way of accessing the information they want - when they want it. More importantly they allow brands another platform from which to connect with their target customer. When created well, mobile apps can be extremely successful in driving traffic to your website.Pros:

n You can tailor the experience precisely to a specific device, Adam

Bunn Director of SEO,

Greenlight

The traditional logic around Christmas SEO goes something like this:

a. Christmas search demand patterns are something like shown in fig.1 (p.7).b. SEO takes 3-6 months to take effect.c. Ergo, to be on the safe side, SEO for Christmas keywords should start in July.

Sadly these days this is not really the case. The main fallacy in the above logic is that SEO always takes this long to take effect. It’s a view based on an old fashioned approach to SEO. Slowly building up authority by acquiring links consistently from July onwards was the name of the game, freshness was an unheard of concept and Social Media and blogging was in its infancy. Today, freshness is usually the focus of at least three or four Google algorithm updates every month, which shows us just how important it is. It means that search engines are much more reactive to what we as marketers do and as a result “slow and steady wins the race” isn’t always true anymore.

This was rammed home to me a couple of years ago when we were approached by a company wanting to rank for “World Cup shirts” about three weeks before the 2010 World Cup. Utilising digital PR distribution,

the campaign we executed for them pushed them into the top three results on Google in less than a week (in the absence of any further freshness signals this is actually a ranking spot they still hold to this day).

It’s true that when you sit down to plan out all the activity you will need to do in the lead up to Christmas, it will end up spreading across six months. Also, several key milestones remain the same and probably always will, such as the need to alter site structure before and after Christmas in order to increase (and then decrease) the importance of Christmas pages in your site. But as shown in our Digital Campaign Planner we put together (available in box 9 of Greenlight’s Digital Advent Calendar) much more of this time should be dedicated to monitoring, analysis, strategy and integrating SEO activity with Social Media and Paid Media.

With all this in mind, here are Greenlight’s top five tips for a successful SEO Christmas.1. Above all, the thing to be taking care of right now is your website. Last year mobile search demand at Christmas really took off, so if your site isn’t mobile friendly you could be missing out on a lot of valuable traffic. On top of that are numerous other tweaks – utilising Schema.org formatting to gain rich snippets in the search results, optimising load speeds and so on.2. Use the same target pages every year. Although historical link equity isn’t as important as

Jan 11 Feb 11 Mar 11 Apr 11 May 11 Jun 11 Jul 11 Aug 11 Sep 11 Oct 11 Nov 11 Dec 11

Chistmas giftsGift ideas

Party dressesGifts for men

Christmas markets

Fig. 1 - Christmas search demand patterns

TOP FIVE TIPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL SEO CHRISTMAS

programmers to create them. n Apps aren’t cross-platform; you

will need to create new apps for Android, IOS and any other future app stores, which will drive up costs.

n People have to find the app in the app store and install your app. Many won’t bother or don’t like installing apps on their devices.

n You still additionally need to have a mobile friendly site for those consumers who won’t/can’t install apps on their device.

Whichever direction you wish your mobile strategy to take this Christmas, make sure that you start setting it up now! Give yourself enough time to trial your mobile site, so that by the time the Christmas frenzy starts, your mobile site works without a hitch and can handle the substantial number of mobile searches expected for December 2012. n

Ben Mckeown

Lead Designer, Greenlight


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1 When is the best time of day for a brand to post?

n According to Twitter, there are 140,000,000+ active daily users with an average of 340,000,000 daily tweets. Content posted on Twitter quickly disappears from most users accounts, especially on mobiles as users will not scroll more than a few times to catch up on tweets. Therefore, it is important to tweet throughout the day and at the times when users are most active. This can be discovered from listening tools and analysis.

2 Any tips on how companies can increase the number

of followers in the lead up to Christmas?

n Create visual content which is exciting!

n Engage with your current followers and follow influential tweeters.

n Create a search for keywords associated with your brand and/or industry to ensure you are not

missing out on live conversations. n Allow social sharing on your

website and ensure your Twitter handle is on all promotional material, email marketing, email signatures and is clearly visible on the website.

n Participate in industry Twitter chats – Travel Goodies are #TTOT #CruiseChat #FriFotos

n Ensure your handle is optimised for Search!

n If you operate customer service on Twitter, kindly state your hours in your information section to make users aware or they will expect timely answers at all times of the day.

n Do not buy followers – they are wasted stats and when you actually run a campaign, your numbers will be skewed in a negative way. Also, it looks terrible to active followers. Users and news sites commonly report these fake followers, outing your brand!

3 What is the importance of creating a hashtag

for Christmas marketing campaigns?

n The power of a hashtag is crucial for a strong campaign, especially over the Christmas period when users are bombarded with promotions and brand campaigns. It provides an easily identifiable visual to the brand and the campaigns as well as sparking curiosity in those who may not follow the brand. A powerful hashtag will influence others to join the conversation, some haghtags last longer than the campaign which provides lasting results for the brand. Users can easily click on the hashtag to follow the conversation and learn about the campaign.

n Hashtags allow the brand to easily track the reach of the campaign and the number of brand mentions. It will also attract new users and influencers.

n Be creative with your hashtags but make sure they are identifiable

to the campaign. Basic keyword hashtags like #travel and #fashion are commonly used and will not show you the true results of your campaign. Once you’ve narrowed down your hashtag choices, check to see if they already exist by using Twitter’s search function. If they do, is it positive and do you want your brand associated with those tweets?

n Most of all, promote your hashtag so your fans know to use it! You have to ask for what you want in Social.

n Twitter recently launched Event Hashtag pages, so an offline marketing campaign could qualify for its own page once Twitter launches this fully. Right now, the industry suspects these will be rolled out to big sporting and entertainment events first.

n Check out some examples of hashtag usage from Twitter: https://dev.twitter.com/media/hashtags

4 Interesting Twitter facts/ stats:

n According to Mashable: àThere are 140+ million active

users in 30 languages. à33% of users are aged 45+,

25% are 35-44 and 23% are 25-34. à59% of users are women àThe average user spends 11:50

minutes per visit on Twitter.80% of users access their Twitter via a mobile device. àThe first tweet from Space

happened on 22 January 2010 from @Astro_TJ. à In May 2010, Lady Gaga

became the first tweeter to have

over 10 million ‘Little Monsters’. n In 2011, Twitter stated a figure

of around 500K visits each day, but this statistic doesn’t clarify if they are actual individuals or spam bots which Twitter is unfortunately plagued by. Some argue that users who are not active in tweeting are not useful, but users who are on Twitter purely for receiving the most up to the minute information on topics that matter to them, are still influenced and build brand affinity.

n Twitter kicked off in 2006 and it took three years to reach 1 billion Tweets. In 2011, it announced 1 billion tweets are sent ever week.

5 Does Twitter have any upcoming developments that

could help companies improve their market visibility?

n Hashtags for Events – Twitter launched this new initiative via its

first commercial by teaming up with Nascar. Expect to see this in big, upcoming events!

n Improved Search – Twitter recently announced it will be rolling out new Search features which will provide users with better personalised results leading to a better overall user experience.

n Enhanced Profiles - These will be rolled out in the coming months, Twitter states it will increase engagement and drive business goals. The page redesign will allow brands to better promote themselves as well as feature important content which will automatically expand to show media. Right now, this feature is only available to selected handles. Check out Nike’s page for a preview!

n Promoted Tweets – Paid packages are available from Twitter to have a tweet promoted.

First tweet from space


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increase in spread, engagement and mentions but it might not be worth the risk. Having a celebrity who truly reflects the brand and its goals whilst also relating to the community and brand endorsements works best.

10 How beneficial is it to follow organisations and

companies? n Knowing what your competitors

are doing is always beneficial to a brand! It provides you with benchmarks and knowledge of what they are doing and how they are doing it. It also helps you discover conversations about your goods or services that you may want to get involved in.

n If you are a retail brand, follow your shopping centre accounts to ensure you are up-to-date on what is happening in the centre and see if they can promote you and vice versa. Any events in-store should be mentioned on the centre’s handle, they want visitors just like you!

n If you are a travel brand, ensure you follow your travel agents, airports, cruise ports, excursion companies etc. Utilising each other will increase your reach! n

tweeters in key markets, you naturally begin to enter streams of conversations with users who are interested in your brand/industry, resulting in many of them following you.

n Producing and sharing campaigns and content that are suitable for that market is really important. If you do not produce strong, engaging content, users will not follow you.

8 What are the key dates and times that people will

be talking about Christmas on Twitter?

n In December, Twitter is inundated with Advent Calendars, 12 Days of Christmas giveaways, Christmas wish lists and stocking stuffers. Most campaigns begin by launching hints and mentions two weeks prior to the start of the campaign.

n One of the busiest days on Twitter is Christmas day and the period just after it. We are a society who likes to share.

9 How advantageous is it to use a celebrity to promote

campaigns on Twitter? n It is always good to have a

celebrity promote your brand, although users are beginning to crack down on mindless celebrity endorsements. Recently, Nike ran into a problem with Twitter for its #makeitcount campaign, which included celebrities such as Wayne Rooney. The tweets were not clearly labelled as Marketing Communications. Sometimes this controversy will lead to an

FIVE ESSENTIAL PAID MEDIA TIPS By Dave Tillett

6 Are there any tools which can be used to monitor your

Twitter page analytics? n Agencies such as Greenlight

provide this service for brands, as most companies do not have the Social Media resource, knowledge or access to the different monitoring tools. Certain agencies have expertise of doing in-depth Social Media monitoring research. They are staffed by those who are passionate about the industry and who keep up-to-date on platform changes and campaigns, plus have extensive knowledge about a range of industries so you can be sure their ideas and optimisation suggestions are well researched.

n Social listening tools such as Brandwatch, Sysomos and Radian6 help analyse your Twitter results.

n HootSuite Pro account & TweetDeck

n If you are advertising on Twitter, it also provides some analytics for you.

n Schmap.it is a great tool and used by several Fortune 500 companies.

n SocialBro is a favourite amongst many big name brands, as it helps you learn about your community through search criteria and filters.

7 How can you use Twitter to target different sectors?

n Twitter is a great way to discover influential people in specific industries, as well as brand ambassadors. By building a relationship with these users, you can begin to show your industry knowledge and brand personality.

n By engaging with high profile

Patricia McElhinney

Social Media Project Manager, Greenlight

Having a well thought out Paid Media strategy, can make all the difference

between having a successful online campaign and falling behind. However, to stand out from the crowd, why not think about integrating your Paid Media campaign into other channels, such as Social Media. Greenlight’s Paid Media Campaign Director, Dave Tillett, takes us through his five essential Paid Media tips for Christmas 2012.

1 Google+ Google+ already has had a

significant impact on both PPC and Natural Search and with Google’s current drive to get as many advertisers as possible using the Social network, you can be sure that it has serious plans to integrate G+ into its entire suite of products. It’s crucial therefore to act now and build up a presence on the Social platform. So how do you get started if you don’t already have a page? Essentially there are

four relatively simple steps:A. Create a Google+

Business Page - Firstly take a peek over at Google’s G+ Business site (http://www.google.com/+/business/). This will provide you with all the tools necessary to create your advertiser page on the network.

B. Content – Content is king in Social Media, therefore be sure to brief your Social team on Google+ if they haven’t briefed you already! Ensure that content is being frequently added and user posts are being responded to. Don’t put all your eggs into one basket by only focussing on Facebook.

C.Verification – The most important step in creating a Google+ Business page is the verification process. Verifying your page effectively means that Google+ recognises it as being authentic and linked to your business. To check if your page is verified, simply look for a little tick box next to your profile name.

In order to be verified, there

are four basic requirements: n Your Google+ page must be

authorised by your commercial entity, organisation, brand, or product.

n Your Google+ page’s profile must contain a link to your organization’s website.

n Your organisation’s website must connect to your Google+ page, by adding the Google+ badge or by adding a snippet of code.

n A meaningful number of people must have added your Google+ page to their circles.

The third step is often the most confusing for advertisers, as the link between the website and Google+ page needs to be done both ways. To help you out, information on linking the two can be found here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1708844

D. Adwords Social Extensions – Once your page is verified, you will then have the advantage of being able to implement Social Extensions within your Adwords


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‘product type’ variables. This will allow for more effective campaign management.

5 Bestsellers In the lead up to Christmas,

keep note of what products are likely to be the best sellers across your categories and work with your buyers to ensure you have enough stock to meet demand. As an example, Hamleys has recently released what it believes to be the top toys for Christmas 2012:Hamleys Top Toy List 2012

n Monster High Dolls, (Mattel) n Web Shooting Spider-Man,

(Hasbro) n Moshi Monster App Monster,

(Vivid) n Subbuteo, (Paul Lamond) n Innotab 2, (VTech) n Nerf Elite Hail Fire, (Hasbro) n Barbie Train to Trot Tawny,

(Mattel) n Master Moves Mickey, (Mattel) n The Lord of the Rings, The

Battle of Helms Deep, (Lego) n LeapPad2, (LeapFrog) n Cabbage Patch Kids, (Jakks)

Create your Adwords campaigns for these bestsellers as early as possible in order to build Quality Score and traction in the SERPs. Utilise Product Listing Ads / Extensions to further boost your prominence in the Search rankings. n

Adcopy. Simply click on the Ad Extensions tab within Adwords and select Social Extensions to link your G+ page to your Adwords campaigns. Google has reported advertisers seeing as much as a 22% uplift in CTR as a result of Social Extensions, the biggest increase seen from an Ad extension since Sitelinks was launched!

Google+ can also act as a great brand defence tool. Once you are verified, the right hand section of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), which would typically be reserved for Paid Search listings, in effect turns into a hybrid Google+ / Natural Search space for core brand searches.

Having a presence on Google+ will not only benefit your reach and volume over this Christmas period, but it will also follow through way into 2013 and beyond.

2 Facebook If you are a retailer that

generates a large proportion of your Q4 / Q1 revenue from the Christmas sale period, now is the perfect time to use Facebook as a mechanism to acquire a strong ‘fan base’. You can capitalise on this investment across the latter half of Q4 by pushing promotional messages to the group once you are in the sales period. As well as sales that you will get from the initial investment, you can essentially remarket to these users during the sale period to further exaggerate ROI.

3 Happy Mondays Two dates retailers should

have noted in their 2012 calendars are the 23rd November (Black Friday) and 26th November (Cyber Monday), but what about December? If we compare calendar dates between December 2011 and 2012, there is clearly more scope this year to capitalise on ‘last order delivery dates’ in conjunction with the typical Monday sales rush.

Advertisers are effectively awarded an extra Monday in 2012, with which to potentially guarantee delivery before Christmas. When cutting up your Q4 budget make sure you phase your budget in line with your last order dates in order to squeeze as many sales out of the festive period as possible.

4 Google Merchant Feed If you haven’t got a robust

Google Merchant Feed currently in place, use Q3 to task your developers to structure it accordingly so that you can make the best use of Google Product Extensions and PLAs (Product Listing Ads) in time for the Q4 peak. Google is constantly testing ways in which to display PLAs / Extensions in order to try and maximise CTR. We have also seen CPAs from PLAs which are comparable to those delivered from brands, therefore don’t be left behind simply because your feed isn’t in a good shape.

Ensure your feed is structured in a way that you can create granular campaigns in Adwords which can be filtered by ‘brand’ or

Dave Tillett

Paid Media Campaign Director,

Greenlight

In July, Greenlight hosted a Christmas Conference netting a

panel of representatives from some of the biggest names in the Search

& Social Media space, including Facebook, YouTube, Sysomos,

Google, Kred, Marketwire, Hydra, Criteo and Brandwatch.

Each had a chance to tell the audience, made up of digital marketers from a cross-section of

industries, exactly how their platform can best be harnessed to derive maximum exposure online

before, during and post-Christmas season.

Our videos and slides captured it all. They can be viewed and are available to download from our

Media Centre on our website gossip.greenlightdigital.com.

So get clicking!


#Christmas12

Greenlight,Level 14, The Broadgate Tower,

Primrose Street,London, EC2A 2EW

www.greenlightdigital.com

greenlight's magazine: christmas edition

Spiritual