The Shopping Season Is Crucial to Maximize Ecommerce Results
Consumer demand typically increases during the shopping season which makes it valuable for ecommerce stores.
Since a high number of online customers are already in the market to buy, you do not need to work hard to create demand from scratch.
While shoppers usually search for deals and discounts in this period, it is still beneficial for online stores to capture this additional demand and new customers.
This is especially important for categories that have high purchase frequency such as cosmetics, food, supplements, pet supplies, fashion, baby products, or toys.
If these people have a positive experience, you may benefit from their customer lifetime value in the following months.
Since people make purchasing decisions relatively easily in this period, a good preparation can help you maximize your sales in this period.
Google Ads Can Generate Fast Results but Competition Will Be High
Google Ads can help ecommerce stores generate fast results during this period since it allows them to reach consumers while they are actively searching for products.
Search campaigns allow you to target relevant queries and search ads are displayed above the top organic search results. Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns allow you to display your products directly. Remarketing campaigns help you convert your visitors who showed and interest but did not buy.
This can create a powerful mechanism. However, since many ecommerce adapt similar approaches, it also creates high competition.
When these stores all bid aggressively for the same generic terms such as women’s dresses, laptops, toys, perfumes, or running shoes, CPC levels may rise significantly. This can drain campaign budgets quickly without generating satisfactory results.
Simply increasing the budget does not solve this problem. You should benefit from smart tactics to boost your results while maintaining efficiency.
How Can the 5 KEYS Framework Make a Difference?
In a time where Google is guiding the advertisers to use automated settings, broad match format, and larger budgets in search campaigns, the 5 KEYS Framework can help your store get effective results.
Each KEY focuses on a different aspect such as products, buying intent, audience, your brand, and competitors. This can help you find opportunities, improve your results, and use your budget more effectively.
Now, let’s take a look at these KEYs.
KEY 1: PRODUCT KEY — Keywords Related to Your Products
This is the straightforward starting point since this KEY helps you to target your categories and products.
If you have a large inventory, you may prioritize your bestsellers to use your budget more efficiently.
If a generic keyword is too broad and can include irrelevant people, you should prioritize subcategories and long-tail versions to improve relevance.
By now, you should know your bestselling categories and products. Shopping season is the time to focus on the keywords that generate strong conversions.
KEY 2: INTENT KEY — Keywords Related to the Shopping Journey
This importance of this KEY increases during shopping season.
You can skip the awareness stage and focus on consideration and conversion stages to catch the consumers in the buying mindset.
You can include keywords such as best, top, or which to grab the demand in the consideration stage, and target keywords such as best laptops, top business books, which air fryer should I buy, or best running shoes.
At the conversion stage, you can include keywords such as buy online, deals, or sale to target keywords such as laptop deals, buy air fryer online, or running shoes sale.
You should focus on your competitive advantages in the consideration stage and promotions in the conversion stage.
KEY 3: AUDIENCE KEY — Keywords Related to Your Target Audience
This KEY is can help your business find profitable niche segments and exploit opportunities.
Online shoppers often search for products that fit their needs perfectly.
Instead of laptops, they may search for laptops for college students; instead of skin creams, they may search for skin creams for women over 50.
These keywords provide you the opportunity to communicate with niche audiences.
If you can offer specific products for these segments, you can enjoy high conversion rates.
KEY 4: BRAND KEY — Protect Your Area
The Google Ads algorithm often matches broad match keywords with branded queries. Your competitors may also intentionally target your brand in their campaigns.
This can result in three ads appearing above your organic result. In such cases, your customers need to scroll the page maybe more than once to reach your store.
This is unacceptable in the shopping season.
You should target branded keywords in a separate campaign to make sure your most valuable audience reaches your store easily.
KEY 5: COMPETITIVE KEY — Look for Customer Acquisition Opportunities
This KEY can help you to acquire customers from your competitors. This can create an opportunity in the shopping season, especially if online customers like to browse alternatives.
Please keep in mind that when you target competitor keywords directly, this can lead to a low-quality score based on lower relevance, landing page experience, and click-through rates.
An alternative is to use competitor names and relevant generic keywords in broad match format. Google’s algorithm may match generic terms with competitor brand names.
You can also create a custom audience, including people who searched for your competitors, then target these as an audience in generic search campaigns.
When using this KEY, make sure that your negative keyword list includes keywords such as “customer relations, phone, address, etc.” to increase the effectiveness of your targeting.
Perform Your Tests Now
It is wise for ecommerce stores not to wait until the busiest shopping days to build everything from scratch.
The 5 KEYS Framework can provide you a good starting point.
You should perform tests before this period to understand the performance of different KEYS.
Once you have this valuable information, you can bid more aggressively in the shopping season and allocate more budget to the combinations that already work.
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The 5 KEYS Framework is a part of The Ecommerce Growth System, which contains three ecommerce marketing field books, an expert AI advisor, and exclusive resources providing practical real-world guidance about SEO, Google Ads, and Meta Ads, all tailored for ecommerce businesses.
You can reach The Ecommerce Growth System and join free here: https://koray-odabasi.mykajabi.com/joinus