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 1^st and 2^nd 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.

This economy has consumers very nervous and anxious.  What we’re getting is pretty much what we were promised by the Fed a year ago.  Now that the movie has been playing for over two years, the lead actors would still be named, ‘Erratic’ and ‘Volatile’.  ‘Unpredictable’, at least, doesn’t  need top billing.  Even last week, Paul Volcker, economic adviser to President Obama, gave his own unvarnished version:  “This is not a bounce back.  We are suffering from some very large, undermining problems.” (Note that he didn’t say ‘underlying’ which is way too vague.)

US State Budget Shortfalls - Click to Enlarge

Consumer confidence, housing starts are disappointing, but the oil spill and, now, Bush’s tax cuts and more state money-grubbing is grabbing the home and front pages.  Anderson Cooper from CNN is still working the back stories, but economy news stories like these are a drag on people’s perceptions and, no doubt, trickle back into buying behavior. 

Clever promotions are helping to woo parents and kids to open their wallets, but they’re shopping like the predictions said earlier in the year that consumption would be of the necessity variety, with an occasional sprinkling in of a special or luxury item.   Hot teen brands like Abercrombie, Aeropostale, J Crew, Juicy, Delias, Urban Outfitters, Wet Seal and others will release their July numbers soon, so we’ll have a good look inside then.

Regardless of the tea leaves and what actually happens, consumers will remain reluctant spenders.  Intriguing, fresh and new products matched with the right touch of incentives and promotions need intense focus.  And, I think we need accelerated thinking right…about…now.

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.

Affiliates, on the other hand, do want traffic to go to your site – they just want it to go through their ad instead of yours so they can get the credit (and commissions) for any sales.  This can also cause CPCs to rise, but there’s another more damaging situation that can come up as well.  Many times affiliates try to structure an ad so that it looks “official,” even to the point of hijacking your actual site URL in an effort to maximize effectiveness.  This practice can potentially lead to the affiliate’s ad taking over paid search impressions for your brand terms completely, resulting in much more costly transactions and lack of control over your brand messaging.

Finally, there are true competitors whose goal is clearly to get traffic to their site instead of yours.  To them, bidding on your brand terms offers an opportunity to compete for visitors who are more likely to be in a buying mode compared to visitors from generic term search results. Competitors can also promote offers that may target specific competitive advantages they think might persuade someone searching for your site to go to theirs instead. The damage here can range from impacting average CPCs on your brand terms to effectively stealing potential customers away.  And unlike with resellers and affiliates – you obviously won’t get anything from the sales your competitors make.

So what do you do?  The biggest difficulty with brand and trademark issues is that while Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Bing have various rules in place to help prevent some types of trademark bidding, it’s still sort of a wild-wild-west attitude when it comes to catching or putting any sorts of controls around who is bidding on your brand – especially in Google which is the most impactful of the three engines to your business.

Also, catching “offenders” is a challenge.  Most smart marketers know how to block ads from showing in locations they assume are being monitored, and some may even employ scheduling tactics so their ads show outside of normal business hours to try and avoid scrutiny.  In the case of affiliates, it’s also difficult to catch hijackers who may duplicate your exact ad word for word so that you wouldn’t even know the ad wasn’t yours unless you traced the actual URL path to see whether or not it redirected with an affiliate’s link before landing on your site.

Ultimately, it’s crucial to develop a formal trademark monitoring process that accounts for the above challenges (or employ an agency/service for the task) and take appropriate actions to try and stop or control how others are bidding on your terms.  

When you catch a competitor doing something you don’t like, you can ask them to stop.  Many times they will, simply because they wouldn’t want you to do the same to them. 

In the case of resellers and affiliates, ask them to limit the types of terms they bid on and cap their bids at a certain amount to minimize their impact on your CPCs.  Also, be sure to put restrictions on brand bidding in your agreements with affiliates and resellers if they aren’t there already.  This can help minimize issues in the future.  

With the right tools in place, trademark issues can be managed efficiently, and your brand can be more fully under your control again!

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.

Where the major thrusts of most web strategies revolve around generating commerce by anticipating search behavior and the resulting monetization of the consumer relationship, social media communications give companies the freedom to be friendly and not so obviously direct.  That’s why companies must be very careful about being “pushy” in the province of social media; they’ll risk losing hard-earned followers.

Likewise it’s also crucial that companies respond to comments in a timely fashion. Think of the old model – someone is at the cash register with one final question before they purchase, but the clerk is elsewhere or worse yet, talking on the phone.  Hard to keep the brand loyalty going if you’re not present.

Someone once likened social media to having a drink with a good friend. It’s comfortable, relaxed, unhurried.  Since the majority of social media interactions occur on Facebook and Twitter, companies should plan for a balanced approach to how they interact with fans and followers.

Think of it this way. If you meet a sales professional at a networking event and they aggressively drill you for whatever sales potential your company might hold for them, they never ask you anything meaningful about YOU and then they push their business card in your palm, are you likely to ever do business with that person? But in an alternate scenario, if you meet a sales representative from that very same company because they joined a conversation you were having with a respected associate, and they listened to you, asked probing questions, and seemed honest and friendly, wouldn’t you be more likely to consider doing business with them? Social Media offers an incredibly honest way to connect with your customers and earn new brand followers by providing a voice to your brand that is genuine and authentic.

In a final French analogy, think of how the concept of the peloton functions in the Tour de France.   The team riders cluster themselves into a tight bunch to save energy by riding close to one another in a technique known as drafting. The reduction in drag is dramatic.

In social media, if you want your company to earn a coveted position in a future customer’s personal peloton, it has to be an earned position. If you only use these platforms to sell and monetize, your message will ultimately become a drag.

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%).

June 2010 Top Sales Days:  Thu 6/3, Wed 6/2, Mon 6/14

Both sales metrics, demand and number of orders, tracked very closely to one another in June.  The top days came right at the start of the month, immediately after Memorial Day, but smaller peaks in sales were observed later in the month on Mon 6/14 and Tues-Wed 6/22-6/23.  (Father’s Day was Sun 6/20.)

June 2010 Top Spend Days:  Wed 6/2, Thu 6/3, Tues 6/1

The top days for paid search spend aligned with the top days for sales, right at the start of the month.

June 2010 Top Clicks Days:  Wed 6/2, Thu 6/3, Tues 6/1

Clicks also followed sales and spend patterns very closely, although they remained closer to the average index of 100 in general.

Look for our next PM Digital Rewind Index covering July 2010 to be released the first week of August.

Before tearing apart all aspects of a campaign trying to identify the problem, look first at web analytics to see if the percentages of sales from each of your marketing channels are consistent with what you typically experience.  For example, if you normally see that 25% of your online sales come from paid search, 15% from natural search, 25% from direct load, 25% from email and 10% from affiliates,  check to see if the percentages are the same in the week that sales are low as they are in a “normal” week.  In Google Analytics, this information can be found in the Traffic Sources Overview.  In Coremetrics, you can get at this data in the Marketing Channels report.  In Omniture SiteCatalytst, this same information is found in the Traffic Sources Referrer Type Report.

At any time of the year, looking at this data is a great way to benchmark your sales by channel.  By doing this, you are able to easily troubleshoot issues when sales dip for whatever reason.  If the percentage of sales from a particular channel is much lower than normal, look first at that channel to isolate the problem.  If the sales percentages for all channels are about the same as normal but sales are still low, it indicates that business is slow overall. A particularly strong email promotion can throw these percentages out of whack, but normally it is well known that the email was a strong producer, and fairly obvious then that a higher percentage in that channel will lower the percentages in all the others.

Try setting up auto-generated site analytic reporting to regularly and easily keep on top of sales trends.  With extremely high temperatures in the Northeast this holiday week, hopefully consumers are inside sitting at their computers shopping.  Or, they could be sitting under an umbrella on the beach with a tall cold drink… in or day or so, we’ll get a chance to see how July 4^th week, 2010, has performed.

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.

2009 – Same As It Ever Was?  Looking at Year-over-Year

The obvious follow-up question is, how typical was last year?  How well does 2009’s peak week represent back-to-school seasonality in general?  To find out, we added in the prior years of 2008, 2007 and 2006 and compared:

At first glance, we notice that the latter spike in September 2009 gets flattened when averaged with other days that same week, while the earlier main peak is still visible. Second, we notice that three of the four years peaked during the third week in August, but that 2008 looks like the odd man out, peaking a week too early.  Or did it?  Actually, because Labor Day came early that year (September 1), the pattern remains the same.

The takeaway?  Google Insights for Search data confirms that for the last four consecutive years, back-to-school interest peaked exactly two weekends before the traditional end-of-summer holiday, even when that holiday moves around.  Good to know if you’re planning summer sales strategies for school supplies, backpacks, laptops or teen apparel.

Smarter Searching:  Back to School Coupons

We know from experience that coupon-related searches have been gaining in popularity.  So let’s use Google Insights for Search to help us dig a little deeper and see whether coupons play a role in this season too.  If we chart “back to school coupons” from June to September, year over year, you’ll see similar growth, especially in 2009.  We also see that these searches have been starting earlier every year.

Let’s Pack It Up:  What every student needs for Back to School

For our final exploration, let’s see what Google Insights for Search has to say about a crucial product term for this season.  Let’s look at the chart for “backpacks” vs. the generic “back to school” phrase:

Since at least the start of 2009, “backpacks” interest has tracked so closely with generic “back to school” interest that the two concepts seem practically synonymous.  (Of course, you might not need Google data to tell you this if you’ve got a Jansport-burdened teen at home.)  Also:  “backpacks” searches pick up earlier and peak two whole weeks before generic “back to school” searches.  Naturally, this comparison can be done in Google Insights for Search with any number of product terms to help devise one’s strategy for the season.  So whether you’re selling backpacks, laptops or skinny jeans to this market, or to any market, remember what you already know to be true:  your situation is unique.  Test, test, test.  Optimize, optimize, optimize.  Research, research, research.  And when you can do it for free, even better.

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.

Estimated Oil Disaster as of 6/9/10; grey arrows indicate loop and currents leading to the Florida Straits.

Sparing most of the torturous details, the best-case scenarios for the Gulf Coast (Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Alabama) are a sick paradox: 1) the spill gets capped tomorrow morning and the combination of controlled burns, oil capture, no hurricanes, Army Corps of Engineers, BP’s own experts, and luck minimizes the damage; 2) the oil catches the Gulf stream waters and the Loop Current and moves around the Florida panhandle and southern tip of Florida and travels Northeast.  The Gulf gets spared (?) from its worst effects but the Northeast gets its own brute force impact.  Every coastal state would be impacted.  That’s 13 states and 36% of the population.  But, whether the oil slick moves in the direction geologists are considering is irrelevant.  The facts are what they are.  The damage is done.  It’s just a question of degree.

The industries who are already dealing with it and will be confronting it this summer and, potentially for years to come, include the obvious like restaurants, hotels, resort travel, fishing, shipping, hunting, boating, swimming, and even scuba diving.  There’s no doubt that those who sell directly to consumers and business in each of these industries will  see a negative impact due to lost jobs, lack of access, marine life reduction, and danger.  And, I’m just focused on businesses that have ecommerce.

Let’s look at a simple view of revenues with a low negative 2.5% impact.  As a reasonable estimate, let’s assume $5 Billion in aggregate sales across a variety of companies and 40%, or $2 Billion, in ecommerce sales.

($5B total sales * 40% ecommerce) * – (2.5% economic impact) = $50 million

Breathtaking.  Even if I’m wrong by 50%, that’s still a $25 million in revenue loss in one year.  As marketers, we need to seriously consider our forecasting and anticipate economic wreckage certainly in the Gulf Coast region.  That has already happened.  And, if the worst happens and we have to compound this loss with a worse-case economic scenario that includes damage to the eastern seaboard economy, let’s understand this now.  Retailers’ shipments will still arrive and promotions can still happen.  Paid and natural search efforts will continue and websites will still accept orders.

But let’s not assume it’s not happening just because we can’t see it.

Next up:  What we can do to better understand the potential impact.

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.

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.

But what is the net/net of Facebook for marketers? As I’ve talked about before, Facebook has altered the presentation layer. Marketers are seeing traffic growth to their Facebook page dramatically outstrip the traffic growth to their own web site. Putting the numeric economies aside, this means that Facebook is a growth channel. Facebook is suddenly #1 in traffic growth potential for many marketers.

Now this sounds pretty amazing, doesn’t it? You’ve found a new growth channel! But wait, it is this very interactive growth channel, that may not have conversion opportunities, that allows users to publicly ask question and make statements external to your control and allows the conversation to be bidirectional. And, as a marketer your message lives inside of Facebook’s world. On every one of YOUR Facebook pages is the blue Facebook logo. They are subverting your brand experience!

And that is the best thing that could ever happen to your marketing efforts.

Facebook is killing the internet because it changes the paradigm. No longer do consumers need to go to your website to interact with you. No longer to they need to use a search engine to find out what you sell. No longer do they need to rely on your multi-channel advertising efforts to learn about your brand. They just need to go to Facebook and pay attention to what their network “likes”.

And for e-commerce players, Facebook and other parties are making it easy to add transaction capabilities to your Facebook page. You can upload products and start generating sales in just a few hours. In fact, some brands have shut down their websites entirely to become Facebook only entities.

Facebook is becoming the primary channel of online interaction for a growing cadre of consumers. Why is this a good thing? Facebook forces you to relinquish some control and share it with your consumers. There are limits to what you can do on your brand’s Facebook page. Consumers now have a forum in which to publicly air their grievances and praise. Facebook is dynamic. It is ever-changing. It runs fast.

In short, Facebook keep you on your toes and makes you react and run faster than ever before. Facebook alerts you to consumer perception of your brand. Facebook demands that you be better.

Yeah…there…I said it. Facebook demands that you be better. You can’t be lazy on Facebook. You can’t delay changing your specials or responding to consumer concerns. Facebook won’t let you hide. Your actions are out there for everyone to see.

So, Facebook is killing the internet. It is gobbling up traffic like crazy. And it won’t put up with bad marketing. Facebook is killing the internet…and I love it.

 
PM Digital has grown exponentially since it was launched in 2002. In the past year, PM Digital expanded its existing search engine marketing capabilities by providing access to an even deeper pool of talent in the natural search and social media marketing areas. MediaHarbor® continues to evolve and help PM Digital’s clients drive results. Built exclusively by PM Digital, MediaHarbor® simplifies and optimizes search performance on a real-time basis and gives clients an edge by effectively scaling and leveraging their search campaigns.
 
An important industry resource, Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide provides profiles on each of the 500 biggest Web merchants in North America based on annual sales on the web, including corporate strategies and merchandising and marketing tactics. This year the ranking also includes sections for social networking and shopping comparison site affiliations, site search features and functions and mobile commerce applications.