Back-to-School Retail: Anxious Moments

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Chris Paradysz

The NPD Group says that teen spending is up 6-8% over last year.  And, they’re buying what’s typical: fashion, lifestyle, electronics.  I want to believe it, but I still don’t like what I’m seeing, reading and hearing about Back-to-School and the Fall 2010 retail season.  Although the Discount/Variety store sector continues to have busy stores and monthly positive trends, there is much hand-wringing in the specialty and department stores.

The BTS period is highly compressed but is a harbinger for the Fall and Holiday seasons.  With 09 comps so challenged as a benchmark but most having improved performance in 1st and 2nd quarters this year, many retailers bought product aggressively.  And, of course, orders have already been placed for the balance of the year.  Not surprisingly, we’re seeing pre-season promotions well before prior years.  Check out the Washington Post article about Target, Toys R Us and Sears “Black Friday” sales.

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Affiliate Monitoring and Brand Term Control in Paid Search

Posted on July 20, 2010 by David Slivken

For most marketers, a paid search campaign on your brand and trademark terms is pretty much a sure thing.  Between the benefits of brand reinforcement, the ability to control messaging, and the additional real estate offered by an ad itself along with additional elements now available in Google like site links and product extensions, this type of campaign should typically be one of your most efficient and powerful marketing channels.

But… the successfulness of your brand and trademark terms also makes them very attractive to others who may want to take away your traffic. Resellers, affiliates, and competitors all have reasons to potentially bid on your trademark terms, and each can damage the effectiveness of your campaign in different ways (either purposefully or not.)

Let’s start with resellers.  If products with your brand(s) are available at other online merchants, it makes sense that these merchants would want to advertise on searches for relevant terms so that they can generate sales from their sites.  The problem is that their ads could start to outrank yours or start to drive up your CPCs if not monitored.  And there’s a risk that potential buyers may not purchase your product from a reseller if it has strong competition from other brands on that site.

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Freedom to Socialize

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Nancy Seraphin

When it comes to social media, overselling can be a drag to your fans and followers.

July is a month that pays homage to independence and breakaways from uninvited rule by others.  In the U.S., July 4 gave us our freedom.  France’s long sought independence from the same type of control was celebrated yesterday, July 14, Bastille Day.

It’s fittingly appropriate to discuss social media in light of France’s Independence Day. For most people, their visual interpretation of French culture is one that has an emphasis on social gatherings revolving around respect for cuisine and fine dining at a leisurely pace. Our imagery tends to be dominated by visions of people in a café, sipping espresso or wine and nibbling on something delicious while engaged in a very deep and usually passionate conversation.  In essence, social media evokes this kind of mood. It’s a more languorous way to communicate with your customers, and it is quite personal.

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Rewind Paid Search Performance Index: June 2010

Posted on July 13, 2010 by PM Digital Research

Welcome to the PM Digital Rewind Monthly Index, a new feature that highlights paid search performance for online retail marketers during the prior month.  Based on aggregated and indexed performance data, the PM Digital Rewind Index provides immediate, ongoing perspective for the retail sector just a few business days after the close of a given month.  Note that while our recent Spring Apparel Rewind Study focused exclusively on apparel, the monthly PM Digital Rewind Index covers all retail categories.

June 2010

Despite lackluster results reported for offline retailers, June was a good month for PM Digital’s online retail clients. On a year-over-year basis, paid search spend for June was up a healthy 25%, but paid search demand was up far more (44% vs. prior year).  This shows dollars spent on paid search continue to go further and to become more efficient.  The only metric that hasn’t improved compared to June 2009 was average order, which was essentially flat (down -1%).

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Posted in Paid Search | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Using Web Analytics to Troubleshoot Weak Sales

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

Every year during the week of 4th of July, we hear from a handful of retail clients that demand is unusually low.  The initial suspicion is that there is a problem with the online marketing campaigns adversely affecting sales.  After noticing a fairly consistent pattern over time, we have learned that there’s usually not a problem with the campaigns. Rather, our experience has shown that consumer interest is unusually low this week.  Vacations, travel, entertaining, the beach, and the heat are likely reasons.  Apparel retail is at the tail end of the summer stock, with most merchandise on sale and Fall lines not yet in.  Back to school is still a week or two away.  Basically, in the past, this particular week has seen a deep loll in consumer interest in shopping.

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Back to School with Google’s Free Research Tool

Posted on June 23, 2010 by Paul Freibott

Just in time for Back to School campaigns, a practical demonstration of how online marketers can get the most leverage from Google Insights for Search  – for free

With retailers and parents alike getting ready for back-to-school shopping, it’s a good time to remind ourselves of the need to do our own homework as marketers. We’ve written before about third-party keyword research tools, which are irreplaceable for competitive research but also a considerable financial investment, especially for small to mid-size companies.  Happily, anyone can use one of the best, deepest data resources available for search trends completely for free.

Cram Session:  How to Use Google Insights for Search

Google Insights for Search is essentially a souped-up version of Google Trends, the search engine’s simple report on “Hot Topics” and “Hot Searches.”  Beyond merely finding out what’s hot right now, the Insights tool offers the ability to analyze historical search patterns.  You can track searches as far back as 2004 (further even than most paid tools) and quickly grasp the seasonality of particular keywords as well as entire market segments.  Note that you’ll need to log into any Google account (you probably already have one via Gmail) to access certain features, like indexes.

First Assignment:  Use Daily Data to Show How Early Back to School Searches Start

With the fall semester on our mind, let’s take a look at what data Google has for “back to school” searches.  We entered that term in the Insights for Search tool, then applied a filter to show only U.S. queries in 2009 for the key months of July through September:

First, we see that in 2009, searches continued to build up to a peak on Monday, 8/24.  A second peak date of roughly the same magnitude is also revealed on Tuesday, 9/8 — the day after the Labor Day holiday.  Perhaps recession-weary consumers were seeking after-season, inventory-clearing discounts.

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Oil Spill Disaster: What It Could Mean for Ecommerce

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Chris Paradysz

Disclaimer: I’m not a meteorologist or have any expertise in oil spills or environmental disasters.  But, I can read.  Because the story is still evolving, the truth is clear.  Video doesn’t lie.  Even BP admits to pretty much what the environmentalists say.

Every day, the impact hits me a little bit harder, but it’s cumulative.  It seeps into my daily business thoughts.  I’ve been calling this an economic disaster since the day it happened.  Ground Zero:  April 20, 2010.

Estimated Oil Spill as of 4/22/10

An acquaintance and client, Jerry White from the Landmine Survivor Network (now Survivor Network), calls landmines ‘weapons of mass destruction, one at a time’.  The BP calamity falls into the same category.  Most Americans can’t see it, touch it, watch it, or even imagine it.  Less than 10% of the population has direct access but 100% of us are going to feel it.  It will reverberate and seep into the economy in an insidious way starting with Wall Street and, then, onto Main Street.

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PM Digital Spring Apparel Study Released

Posted on June 7, 2010 by PM Digital Research

Our lastest Rewind report on paid search performance underscores dramatic improvements for apparel retailers in Spring 2010. 

PM Digital’s latest Rewind report has been released with a look at paid search performance for apparel retailers during the 2010 Spring fashion season.  And the news was very good.  Consumers shopping online for apparel increased their total paid search demand by an impressive 33 percent over the same months in 2009.  Even better, apparel marketers achieved this swell in demand from February through April with a modest increase of 2 percent in year-over-year spend, revealing that search ad dollars went further this year than they did at the same time last year, with CPCs falling by -1 percent.   

Click here for a full copy of the PM Digital 2010 Spring Apparel Rewind Study.

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Facebook Is Killing the Internet – And I Love It

Posted on June 2, 2010 by Tim Kilroy

OK, so right off the bat, let’s get over the whole Facebook privacy thing. While it has spurred some really interesting discussion, Facebook is not out to steal your credit card, your social security number or anything that is really, really private. We can talk about that later. Today, I want to take a look at how Facebook is just killing the internet…and, I love it.

Facebook is a giant monster. 4 bazillion people use it every day. And according to a statistic I just made up, every man woman and child in the United States wastes 119.7 hours each week playing Farmville and Mafia Wars.

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PM Digital Is Fastest Growing Search Engine Marketing Agency

Posted on May 19, 2010 by PM Digital

PM Digital has placed in the top five search engine marketing agencies in the 2010 edition of Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide of the largest retail websites in the U.S. and Canada. The agency also achieved the greatest year over year growth of 125 percent, adding ten of the top retail clients for a total of eighteen –- more than any other search engine marketer.
 
PM Digital’s eighteen retail clients, which include Bloomingdale’s, Spiegel, and The North Face, among others, together earned more than $4.4 billion in online sales in 2009.

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Posted in Online Marketing | Tagged , | 2 Comments