Cyber Monday

Holiday 2015 Paid Search Best Practices: Bid Indexing

Suzy Sandberg Digital Marketing General , , , , , ,

Bid indexing will improve paid search performanceNow that it is officially Fall and Holiday is fast approaching, it is time to dot every “I” and cross every “t” to make sure paid search campaigns are in top shape.  A surefire way to improve year-over-year paid search results during the critical six-week period from mid-November through December is to index daily bids based on prior year performance.  There are two reasons why indexing can help.

First is that there is always a crush of new entrants trying to win Holiday impression share on key terms.  Continue reading →

Beacons: Strong Offers will Drive Adoption

Suzy Sandberg Holiday Online Retail, Mobile Marketing, Online Retail Marketing , , , , ,

Beacons are coming for mobile marketingThere is much talk about beacons this holiday as another big department store, Lord & Taylor, officially announced that beacons will be rolled out in their retail locations in time for Holiday.

These are clearly early days for beacons, and it remains to be seen how effective they will be at driving sales in the fourth quarter.  The beacons enable offers to be pushed to shoppers while in the store. Continue reading →

Mischief Night: A Look at Online Retail Hijinks

Suzy Sandberg Digital Marketing General, Holiday Online Retail, Online Retail Marketing, Paid Search , , , ,

Mischief Night Hijinks with online marketingDoes anyone remember URL targeting, in which through a “normal” media buy, an advertiser was able to hijack a person trying to go to one site and navigate them to another?   This was legal, as was Gator  — another popular ad-supported media machine that eventually went away for similar, deceptive reasons.

There is some tremendously illegal and egregious internet activity in 2014 that deserves the attention of the serious security people trying to catch it and shut it down.  Not nearly as serious but annoying nonetheless is the legal, albeit black hat activity, that happens occasionally with online retail. Continue reading →