Understanding SEM Trends and Seasonality
January 19th, 2008 by Xavier MediaImagine you have an online greeting card company and it is the holiday season. It is the most obvious thing that your site will have to be full of Christmas and New Year cards, in addition to cards for other festivities that fall during that time. You can also be pretty sure that visitors to your site will be coming there specifically for these greeting cards. So what do you do? You immediately increase the number of Christmas and New Year cards on your site to make sure that when visitors come your way, they find what they are looking for.
But taking one step back, it is unlikely that most visitors will come directly to your site, unless they are repeat visitors who have bookmarked your site. It is more probable that they might look up greeting cards on a search engine and then find your site there and because this is the more popular way of finding things online, it is important that you have a strong presence on search engines.
Depending on the kind of product that your company is offering, seasonality might or might not be relevant to you. If seasonality is, in fact, something that affects the sales of your product then you need to ensure that this gets integrated into your search engine marketing campaign. In other words, you need to strategize your campaign in such a way that during peak season you take most advantage of buyer interest and demand in order to increase your return on investments (ROI).
When we talk about seasonality it does not have to be restricted to the time of the year when something happens. Seasonality can also include recent trends that increase interest amongst consumers for a certain thing. For example, a popular sportsman or a celebrity sporting a certain kind of hat or jacket could make it all the rage for a certain period of time. Fans could immediately go online to buy similar apparel and it is these kinds of unpredictable trends that can also have an effect on conversion rates. Online marketers need to watch out for and be prepared for such trends to ensure that they make the most of these opportunities.
It is integral that you understand the way seasonality affects your particular industry. Not all businesses are affected by seasonality in the same way and different industries have different peak seasons and only after you have your head around the highs and lows of demand for your product can you take seasonality into account when planning your online marketing strategies.
The emphasis of seasonality is on increased conversion rates compared to regular times and search engine marketers should tweak their campaigns accordingly after taking this demand into consideration. But this does not mean that you just increase your budget for online advertising during this time but you should also increase your bidding amounts appropriately. By raising your bidding and increasing your ranking on search engines, you are escalating the possibility of visitors coming to your site and making a purchase. Because you have the advantage of demand, you should work on increasing visibility and click through rates.
High season is, however, not all fun and games; in fact, it is a rather sensitive time. During a season of high demand you want to make sure that everything is done right. Keep in mind that your competitors are probably pulling up their socks also and getting ready to rake in conversions. During this time you want to make sure that you don’t bring about any kind of changes to your site because even the slightest change can affect ranking and that is a risk you do not want to take. And from a less technical point of view also, you do not want to change the look or feel of your site when there might be so many visitors logging on and off your site. The best option is to keep things as straightforward as possible in order to avoid confusion and losing clients. Revamps and changes should be done at a time outside of peak season.
The point here is that you have a short period of time when you have the chance to really increase your profits. A good amount of research and preparedness is needed here before you can plan out what needs to be done at peak season to enhance ROI. Some companies might have pervious records at their disposal that they can use to plan their strategies while others use a mix of experience and common sense.
The main thing to keep in mind here is to take action when the optimal time for your business rolls around the corner because, if all things go well, the returns that you manage during this short period of peak season could add up to more than the rest of the year put together.
Jeev Trika joined as a partner at e-ventures, LLC in October 2007, a firm dedicated to online communities, based out of South Bend, Indiana. His core responsibilities include sales and account management for the organization. He possesses extensive experience in sales methodologies and holds over 9 years of experience in assisting organizations with their online experiences. In October of 2007, Jeev was formally assigned to directly and exclusively strategize online communities for e-ventures, LLC. His professional services have been garnered by organizations like IBM Global Services, Siebel, Jordan Industries, Cayman Islands Government, and more. Jeev holds a Bachelors in Computer Science and an MBA, both from Purdue University.
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