4 Marketing Strategies E-commerce Businesses should use to Thrive this Holiday Season

4 Marketing Strategies E-commerce Businesses should use to Thrive this Holiday SeasonPaid search marketing strategies in e-commerce and retail have helped to drive sales in the holiday season. By following data culled together from the last year and a half, key paid search marketing strategies can be mapped out to help provide some direction on where to invest time and effort.

 Black Friday continues to gain momentum in paid search

 Though Cyber Monday is the big day for online deals, Black Friday is not just a juggernaut reserved for in-store. As a matter of fact, Black Friday paid search sales currently have more momentum in growth than Cyber Monday. The gap between paid search sales continues to narrow between the two dates. In 2015, Cyber Monday’s paid search sales were 102 percent higher than that of Black Friday. In 2016, that number reduced to Cyber Monday being 69 percent higher. Marketers who invest in Black Friday-based paid search can still see decent rewards and, in some spaces, would be recommended to do so.

 Google Shopping continues to grow every year

 E-commerce sites are well recommended to use Google Shopping as Product Listing Ad (PLA) sales throughout the holiday season have continued to spike every year since 2014. To help support this growth, Google has initiated a number of changes – doubling the size of PLAs on mobile devices in 2015; allowing Yahoo to show Google PLAs on their domain in early 2016; and a roll-out of PLAs on Google image search in the spring of 2016. In the third quarter of 2017, PLA spending is up 37 percent over last year’s numbers. Marketers are well advised to ensure products and services offered on e-commerce are optimized for this medium.

 Phones and Tablets set to take 60 percent of all paid search traffic

 As the use of mobile devices continue to grow, the majority of paid search traffic is being found here. In 2013, phones and tablets made up only 30-35 percent of paid search traffic. Today, they make up almost above 60 percent. Though the growth in how much this percentage has grown year over year has slowed, it is still growing. Aspects such as PLAs, local inventory ads, and maps ads are playing a bigger role on mobile devices than ever before. These are the areas where one may wish to focus on to help procure some of the traffic these avenues are generating.

 Map Ads may see increases on specific days in the season

 Brick-and-mortar retail saw increases in traffic last year, from “Get location details” clicks leading into the holidays. These ads are provided to brands with active location extensions added to their AdWords campaign. In 2016, the highest amount of brand phone text ad traffic derived from these ads happened on Christmas Eve, a time when shoppers are looking to make last-minute purchases.

 Advertisers are well advised to keep these 4 strategies in mind when building their holiday marketing plan. This shopping season, an increasing shift to online shopping and mobile devices means that these trends are likely to continue growing.

 The ways in which paid search succeeds changes according to consumer tastes. The best advice anyone can receive is to be in the right place to catch consumers before the competition does. Follow this list!