We've had an entire month of Holiday 2011 Run-Up Daily Golden Nuggets. All together, they are published as a 121 page book and available from our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/JewelerWebsiteAG.
Today's Daily Golden Nugget is the last one from the Run-Up book. There are a few lingering topics we didn't cover, so look for those throughout November.
Today we need to talk about your mobile website, and the need to appeal to the smartphone users. Regular phone owners will not be looking at your mobile site, so your target should be the technology users. Just like all marketing, you need to know who your target audience is and then how to appeal to them.
Some of the data we are presenting today comes from the Holiday Mobile Marketing Summit we attended in NY... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Over the last 6 months we've monitored an average 97.52% increase of mobile visitors to jewelry websites across our network. The actual number of mobile visitors to a single website is pretty small each month, as in about 60 visitors, but that number has nowhere to go but up.
Did you know that you can create mobile AdWords ads? According to Google, 1 in 3 mobile searches have local intent.
According to what we mentioned yesterday, 87% of people walking are using their cell phone. Of those surveyed, it was found that people use mobile search 77% of the time spent on their phone. Finally, 33% of that 77% are searching for something locally.
What does that mean with real numbers? 100 people walk by, 87 of them are using their cell phone. Of 87 people, 77% or 67 of them are using a search engine. Of those 67... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Of all the chapters in this Holiday 2011 Run-Up, this might be the most important. Consumers are using smartphones today, right now, this exact minute. The data is undeniable and we're going to step through it and show you what the experts are saying and how you can use mobile technology yourself.
In the past 12 months we've heard many retail jewelry store owners tell us that "their customers do not use smartphones" and they don't need to create a mobile website even though those same jewelers themselves have an iPhone or an Android. This is similar to what we heard in 2003 when jewelers claimed their customers didn't use the internet and they didn't need a regular website.
We have our own in-house mobile research methods, and we've been tracking mobile usage for more than a few years, but to get a broader view of the mo... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Search has become a natural part of the everyday consumer buying cycle. Consumers want to be informed, save time, and above all not be disappointed with their purchase. Search gives them all that, even when it comes to buying jewelry.
According to Google Think Insights, the average consumer will spend 11 days researching jewelry before making a purchase. Although not all research was entirely online, 91% of those surveyed said they started their research online and then followed through with going to the store in person or returning to the website on their PC at a later date.
For 2010, consumers reported that the most important source for their online research was a brick and mortar store's website, followed by e-tailer online websites. Search engines ranked at #3 for the source of online information. Many retail jewele... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Google collects data, a lot of data. They collect usage data every time you use their search engine or any of their services and the Android phone. This data is available through a few different online sources; the one we use the most is Google Insights for Search. Many of the ideas we come up with are based off actionable data we see from Google Insights. We have 32 pages of Google Insights for Search charts in our final Holiday 2011 Run-Up eBook.
In 2009 and 2010 Google extended the standard Insights service and published several reports referred to as "Think Insights." We've combed through their Post-Holiday Learnings for 2011 to find the usable golden nuggets jewelers should know about.
Let's start with the key Takeaways from the Holiday 2010 data: 1. Because of the economy, consumers shopped promotional periods... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We have two last topics to cover today that will complete our week long of Holiday Run-Up Google AdWords directions.
The first topic is fine tuning your AdWords landing pages for those gift givers. As we previously explained, the gift giver has a predetermined budget, and they will spend that budget even if the gift recipient would never have spent that much on themselves. You should fine tune your website to help those gift givers.
First, let's add a bunch of new links inside your product catalog. You need specific links that say: "Gifts for Under $100" "Gifts for Under $200" "Gifts for Under $300" "Gifts for Under $500"
These links don't have to be real pages; in fact they could be fancy URLs that lead the user into a special search page for your website. You're going to need your web programmer's he... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
As we navigate through the murky and expensive waters of Google AdWords during the holiday season, there are a few other things that could help close that sale.
Have you ever seen those holiday gift baskets at your favorite big box store? Here in New Jersey we have several Costco and BJ's stores. Right now, in the middle of October, they already have shrink wrapped holiday gift baskets for sale. There's a basket bundle of video games, another for movies, and of course a basket of edible goodies.
These baskets present the gift buyer with a perceived greater value. Among those bundled items is probably one quality item and then the rest are lower cost to produce or perhaps even closeout items from the manufacturer.
The movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" had its ups and downs in the ratings a... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Over the last 2 days we've given you ideas for targeting Pandora jewelry in your AdWords ads. Since the price point on Pandora is so low, the product lends itself nicely for gift givers on a limited budget. We're going to continue talking about Pandora today but before we give you specific ad ideas, we need to offer you some advice on Google AdWords trademark policies.
The procedure explained below will work for any vendor, not only Pandora.
Google AdWords monitors ads and will automatically disqualify and disable them when found to violate a trademark. It doesn't matter if you are a Pandora "Gold Store" or a "Silver Store," you are still not allowed to use the name "Pandora" in your AdWords ads without some type of permission.
Permission is easy to achieve if, and only if, you have a written contract with Pandora.... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Speaking of budgets, let's talk about your holiday AdWords budget. From January through October you should be spending your advertising budget on targeting keyword phrases that return the highest ROI. Perhaps these are long tail phrases like "pandora rose bead," but certainly not simply "pandora bead." The long tail phrases (those 3 words or more) are usually much less expensive than the 1 or 2 word phrases.
Here's the cost as of today's measurements:
"pandora bead" Extremely high search volume and competition Top ad position costs $3.29 per click
"pandora rose bead" Extremely low search volume and medium competition Top ad position for less than $1.50 per click
During December you should expect to see the AdWords click prices to spike up to $35 for most generic jewelry phrases. Last year we mea... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
You can spend 10 months trying to fine tune your Google AdWords campaign, really learning the ins and outs of how to attract your target customers to your jewelry store, but nothing you learn is going to prepare you for the affect that the Holiday Season has on AdWords.
The Holiday Season is about gift giving, and the holiday gift giving mentality is different than the rest of the year.
As you are most defiantly aware, jewelry is the gift to give throughout the year when someone is celebrating a birthday or job promotion, to say thank you, or to cheer someone up. Jewelry is given during economic hard times as a way of saying better times will come and during economic good times to celebrate what you have.
However, even though the Holiday Season has religious celebrations at its core, gift giving can greatly overshado... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Cyber Monday is the Monday immediately following Thanksgiving Day in the USA. Last year the company comScore tracked $1,028M (that's a Billion) in online sales that day. Sales were up 16% from 2009.
Cyber Monday got its name from the idea that holiday shoppers who were discouraged by their in-person weekend shopping experience would continue their shopping on-line that Monday morning.
This year Cyber Monday is November 28, 2011. Your strategy, should you decide to accept it, is to remind your customers early that morning about your jewelry store and what you have to offer. Even if you don't have an e-commerce jewelry website, you still need to get their attention.
According to our research we expect that on Cyber Monday morning, your customers will be tempted by emails from Macy's, Kay, Tiffany, David Yurman, Jar... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Today's Daily Golden nugget is a continuation of the holiday email research from the website Responsys. During the Holiday 2010 Season, Responsys tracked emails from more than 100 large retailers and published a report of holiday email trends.
We've taken their generic retail research data and reworked it for the retail jewelry store. The ideas presented here come directly from Responsys, with a little jWAG tweaking.
Let's turn our attention to the flurry of emails sent to consumers on the morning of Black Friday. For 2011, Black Friday in the USA is November 25th.
Any emails for Black Friday should be sent out during overnight hours, perhaps about 3am or 4am, so customers can find them waiting on their Smartphone first thing in the morning. Remember that many shopping malls and large department stores will open a... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Many large retailers and department stores have started a new trend of promoting online sales on Thanksgiving day and even opening their retail stores late in the evening on Thanksgiving Day. Responsys.com tracked a 32% increase on Thanksgiving day email traffic in 2010 and according to comScore, online sales for Thanksgiving Day 2010 jumped 28% to $407 million.
With this data it's obvious to us that that people are reading emails from their smartphones after their Thanksgiving dinner. They might be relaxing on the couch with the family, even watching the big game on TV, but secretly they are planning their holiday purchases.
You don't need an e-commerce website to benefit from a Thanksgiving Day email blast. You could use the email to plant an early thought and/or direct the person to your mobile website so they can view... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
During the months of November and December, email marketing experiences a huge spike in usage as the entire retail industry seems to remember that they can contact consumers through this "old fashion" communication method.
We have been monitoring emails from a handful of jewelry stores over the years, but we know that some of the best holiday email research comes from the website Responsys. For this Daily Golden Nugget and for this part of our Holiday Run-Up 2011, we're going to directly reference their research.
During the Holiday 2010 Season, Responsys tracked emails from more than 100 large retailers and found that every holiday related message contained one of the following types of messages somewhere in the body of the email. As usual, we've modified these where appropriate to make your job easier.
Just like you would decorate your store, once the Holiday Season starts you should add a holiday theme to your website.
Above all other marketing campaigns, this theme change will signify to your visitors that the holiday season has arrived. The theme change should take place whenever you start your holiday marketing. If your first holiday email or print ad is November 15, 2011 then that's when the website theme should change. Otherwise we don't suggest changing the theme until the evening before Thanksgiving.
Here are some good suggestions from what we saw during the Holiday 2010 Season and previous years from a few retail jewelers.
Let's start with some suggestions to modify the header of all your pages. You could add a specific link to your header navigation menu. Last year Land's End added the word "GIFTS" w... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every few months we like to remind you that the internet is not just about your jewelry website, or about Facebook, or Twitter, Google+, or any number of blogging sites, etc., etc., etc... It's also about video.
Where would our Holiday 2011 Run-Up be without some new information about video? So let's get to it.
In the past, we heavily recommended the Flipcam as one of the best portable video cameras. Even though these hand held video cameras are still available today, Cisco has officially discontinued the product line and will not support it after December 2012. These are still fantastic cameras and if you can find one in a store lower than $150 you should surely grab it.
Those who are video camera challenged might have video capability already hidden in their pocket, that is, if you have a smartphone. Most smartp... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Today's ACTION ITEM is to find out what keywords people are using to find your website, and then to make sure the content on your website is suitable. Not only that, but we'll show you how to find important keywords that other jewelry stores are not competing for.
This is Google's public location for their AdWords Keyword Research tool. If you have an AdWords account, you should log into that instead and go to your Reporting and Tools tab, then the Keyword Tool option.
Once you get to the Keyword Tool, you will find a form at the top where you can type in a "Word or phrase" or a "Website." To start this exercise let's type "www.jamesallen.com" into the website ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Review websites are popping up everywhere. Not too long ago, the only review sites we worried about were Google Places, CitySearch, Yelp, InsiderPages, MerchantCircle, and a few others. In the Spring of 2010, Google was so hungry for reviews they created new HTML tags to tell Google when a review was showing on a page.
Since then, reviews online have exploded because digital marketing agencies realized the power behind the tool. Does your marketing agency get it yet?
The review services mentioned above are typically out of your control, or you may have to jump through a few hoops to manage the reviews. Other online reviews can appear on your Facebook Business Page or on your website, and these are easier to control.
Your first ACTION ITEM for today is to contact your web programmer and tell them you want a review... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
There's an idea among first time website owners that it's best to slap up a website with perfect jewelry photos, prices, and a Buy Now button and they can sell online. At the other end of the scale there's another camp of first time website owners that feel it's best to slap up a website with basic information about the jewelry store and they will attract new customers into the store.
Both of these ideas are completely erroneous. There is no way to slap a website together and become a success. What's worse is that we know, and our staff has attended, many seminars at jewelry trade shows where both of these myths are perpetuated.
You might be familiar with the phrases "Business card Websites" and "E-commerce sites from vendors." The business card site is a basic 1, 2, or 3 page website that puts your name online. The e-c... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is Day 2 of our Holiday 2011 Run-Up preparations for your website. We want you to start adding all holiday related content to your site now so Google and Bing have time to find it by the time Thanksgiving comes around. For our European readers, that's the 3rd Thursday in November.
Google will take a while to find your new website content and show it in the SERPs. So what you need to do this week is figure out what items and brands you will carry during the Holiday 2011 Season and put that information on your website.
Let's explain using an example.
We noticed a recent ad for Alamea Hawaii that we liked so we'll give them a mention here. They produce hand-crafted wood and titanium rings. Their website is http://www.alameahawaii.com and they make a good candidate for t... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Starting today and continuing for the next several days (yet to be determined) we're giving you our concentrated action SEO, SEM, and mobile marketing action plan for the Holiday 2011 season.
Welcome to the Holiday 2011 Run-Up!
Last year's Run-Up presented a 9-part Online Marketing Plan; how many will be in this year's? We don't know yet because we're still putting it together.
The 2011 jWAG Run-Up will have the most recent search engine optimization techniques, best search engine marketing ideas, methods to improve your online catalogs, and mobile marketing ideas presented as action items to plan for and then execute on specific days of the holiday season.
BE WARNED: This is where we tell you exactly what to do so you have the best chance of winning sales over your local competing jewelry store. We're not... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
"...articles are easy to follow and seem to have information one can use right away." -Ann, Gallery 4, Hamden CT
"...serious kudos to you. We love your straight talk, pertinent information and plain language. I don't know how many industries have something of jWAG's caliber available, but I learn from the emails every day. Really, really nice work, and very appreciated." -Cheryl Herrick, Global Pathways Jewelry
