>> lopez: hi, everyone. thank you for joiningus today for spring into action: online marketing for mother's day, father's day, & graduation.first off, happy saint patrick's day for all you irish out there, i hope everyone remembertheir green, i know i did. before jumping in, let's take a moment to introduce ourselves,i'm eric lopez from the google retail marketing team.>> tang: and i'm julia tang also from the google retail marketing team.>> lopez: you may remember us from our valentines day webinar back at beginning of january.let's take quick look at the agenda for today. julia will start by providing an update onconsumer behavior thus far in 2009 and what
the retail landscape will look like over thenext few months. then, i'll take a look back at mother's day, father's day, and graduationand see how the spring holidays have historically performed for the retail segment. next, we'llanalyzed search behavior around key retail category to help inform the timing of yourmarketing strategy and take you to a demonstration of insights research, a google tool you canutilize to perform a similar analysis. we'll then move on to key marketing tactics for2009 by taking a look at promotions we've start during valentines day and reviewingtips for running successful online campaigns. well, then, point out a few important resourcesfor you and ends with the q&a. some quick housekeeping items, this webinar will be postedon the google retail blog following the presentation.
the google retail blog can be accessed atgoogleretail.blogspot.com. we'll talk more about this resource a little bit later. theentire presentation will take approximately 30 minutes and will be followed by approximately15 minutes of q&a. you can type in your questions on the right-hand side of your screen andwe will answer them at the end of the content portion of the presentation.>> tang: great. let's get started. eric, right now, we're almost three months into 2009 andthe economy obviously continues to be part of our daily conversations though, particularlyfor those of us on retail. and as plans around the economy continue to take shape, we'rekeeping a pulse check on consumer sentiments from time to time, what they've been tellingus in the past few months really give us insight
into how consumer behavior is going to affectretail for the rest of 2009. we went to the field and ask consumers directly how theyfeel about the next six months. and in fact, across the board, consumers are optimisticand hopeful, which is exciting news. we're specifically referring to an omnibus surveythat we've conducted about two weeks ago. and what that study shows is that a greaterpercentage of people say that they will purchase in the next six months compare to the previoussix months. on this slide, we're looking at specific retail categories that we saw fromthe study, specifically the apparel, home appliances, home furnishing, electronics,and sporting goods. and you'll notice that all the blue bars are higher showing thatthere's a higher percentage of people planning
to purchase on the next few months as comparedto the gray bar, which represent the past six months. we also see the same chance withother retail categories. so they include fashion accessories, jewelry, watches, toys, pet suppliesand beauty and cosmetics. have you consider the facts that the last six months also includethe holiday season where consumers traditionally purchase more? these numbers were particularlypromising. [indistinct] to see consumer confidence outlook improving [indistinct] because whatthese means to retailers is that more consumers are planning to open up their wallets andbuy, so we should begin to see improvements in retail sales if this continues.>> lopez: it's really good to hear. >> tang: 86% of consumers say they plan togive gifts for the upcoming spring time holidays,
so we're looking at a good number of consumersfor mother's day, father's day, and graduation. and on top of that, 71% will spend the sameor more as last year. so putting all things in perspective, this is a positive outlook.with that said, without a doubt, consumers do feel affected by the changing economiclandscape. and we've seen how bad it translated into their consumer behavior and this continuesto evolve in 2009. consumers are telling us that in 2009, their shopping will involvea lot more of researching and going online. consumers are going to make sure they getmore from every dollar. now, these figures are not a big surprise. more than half ofthem will be spending more time researching and looking for deals before they purchase.and during the holidays on 2008, we especially
saw uptakes in coupons and other deal seekingsearches. and this can actually, have continue thus far in 2009 proving that this is notsimply a holiday phenomenon. for retailers who are promoting from mother's day, father'sday, and graduation season recognize that many of new customers are going to use theinternet more for gift ideas, to find out more about products, and decide which retailersthey're going to buy from. and an interesting point to note is how people are going onlinewhether they end up purchasing online or at the actual stores; 46% of them shop onlineand then eventually buy in-store and just as many of them do shop online and buy online.so that is an opportunity for online-only retailers. for a multichannel retailer, besure you leverage your website and your online
program from online advertising to email marketingand use them to address both your online and in-store sales. in terms of your online ad,think about your ad text and your [indistinct] pages. one example is to consider using thingslike, browse our wide selections here and come to our nearest location. that's alsoapplies for retailers with just a branch and moderate store. now, let's take a step backand put things in perspective. we want to look out how retail sales are doing both onlineand in in-store. here, we have some new stocks that we saw from comscore. on the left-handside, you'll notice e-commerce year over year category growth in blue as of january 2009and on the right side, you'll notice in-store year over year category growth in gray forthe same time period. and that is the information
from the department of commerce. as we cansee from the red box on the left, e-commerce spend by consumers has grown 2% this yearcompared to in-store retail [indistinct] with--just decreased 7% so far. and you can see thatfrom the red box on the right. the rest of the columns represent growth on the categorylevel. and you can see in many categories, online sales continue to grow this year despitethe economy, clearly out pacing that as in-store sales. eric, i don't know if you rememberseeing a new york times' article that came out on february 23rd, which talked about gaapand how gaap like most specialty retailers had a rocky 2008 and i'm quoting here, "aterrible january." but yet, the e-commerce division gaap directs--surpassed the $1 billionsales for the first time in 2008. the president
had this quote which encapsulates the changingstrategy and i think the direction of competitive retailers in this economy. he said, "we can'tovercome the financial crises on this recession. our job is to grow faster than any other apparelretailer, and we have done that." i think we can expect to see even more retailer shifttheir focus online under e-commerce channel this year. one hot topic we keep hearing fromretailers is around [indistinct] and online search advertising and how that might looklike right now. a very difficult question i answer because it depends on the retailerand so many other factors, how you maybe using online, how you're tracking and measuringthe impact. but as we just mentioned, consumers are definitely spending more time researchingand shopping around online, which will then
affect the number of clicks web pages or adsand just the general length of time it takes before shoppers convert these days. that isall going to a very different online now compared the year ago. the discussion we do want toget into today though is the impact on the online search on retail sites as it standsnow. and if you follow along the charts from the left to the right-hand side with me, wedo see that the value of search is continuing to grow for retail. a few metrics here showus that even in a down economy; online retail shoppers are increasing in number and continuingto convert. all three of these sites are comparing the first 45 days of this year against thefirst 45 days of 2008. from the left chart, we're looking at the number of shoppers onretail sites, and we've seen new shoppers
coming online, that's a 10% increased from2008. the middle chart looked at how much of the increase web traffic to retail sitesis the directory buildup search. and we do see that search is increasingly taking a greaterrole in dragging shoppers there. so that's an additional four percentage points. andmore importantly, if we look at the conversions that are happening on retail sites and howmuch of that is the retail of search, we again see search taking a greater role in draggingshoppers to convert on retail sites this year. so that's, of course, doing additional threepercentage points from last year. so this is happening at an aggregate level. conversionrates, of course, differ on an individual level. and we'd be sure to discuss in moredetail later some promotional, advertising,
and optimization tactics that you can checkto get your consumers coming and spending on your site. all i know, eric, i think themain takeaway is that online and search are becoming more important for the buying cycleis changing. and what we need to focus on is how you adapt your strategy and the wayyou look at your own data to make decisions today.>> lopez: great. so let's now take a look back at how mother's day, father's day, andgraduation performed last year. in 2008, mother's day, father's day, and graduation representedat $35 billion retail opportunity. to give some perspective and culmination that's roughlytwice the size of valentines day. so the spring gift giving season comparatively is a strongopportunity for retailers. it's important
to recognize that their moms and dads arethe primary gift receivers from mother's day and father's day. when we looked at who consumersplan to purchase for spouses, sons and daughters, grandparents, and siblings also receive gift.when crafting your marketing message or promotion offer, you want to keep this different audienceas much--audience in mind. in terms of your online campaign, you want to target thesedistinct audiences to keywords ad text and landing pages. now, looking at mother's dayspecifically, when we look at the types of gifts that u.s. adults plan to purchase forthis day, we see that gift givers make purchases ranging from flowers and greeting cards at73%, apparel items at 30%, music, books, and dvds at 26%. you'll also notice that dinnerout, travel, and homing gifts are popular
items around this time. we want to considerwhether your products fit into these broader categories by complementing these activities.as an example, if you are a craft retailer, appealing to the creative gifter through adtext such as creative gifts for moms or homemade gift ideas for moms is a perfect way to engagethese potential consumers. now, looking at father's day, we find that gift givers planto purchase gifts ranging from greeting cards at 68%, clothing at 37%, gift certificatesat 33%, books and cds at 22%, electronics at 19%, and supporting goods at 13%. you wantto plan your online advertising budget accordingly for these popular items and again think aboutpushing on [indistinct] products that might complement a special outing for dad. thisspecial outing for dad comes in at 41% of
plan purchases, so as you can see, this isa major purchased category, second only to greeting card. and then for graduation, themost popular gift is cash at 59%, and that's followed by cards at 36%, gift cards at 31%,electronics at 12%, and apparel at 11%. you, of course, want to promote all relevant areasof your business, but for graduation specifically, since the high volume of graduates receivecash, you want to specially target graduates to help and form their future purchase decision.in other words, you will want to promote goods and services they will have in need for. forexample, depending on your product set, you might promote business tutor job interviewsor furnishing a sort of new apartment or dorm room.>> tang: and now we want to share some google
internal data for the half year's mother'sday, father's day, and a graduation using a tool called insights research which looksat relative search interest over time. as marketers, you can use this tool to see whatconsumers are searching for over time across categories and within certain job or fees.there's a lot of analysis you can do with this tool, so let's show you a preview ofthe tool and walk you through a quick example so you can see how you may use the insightsto make actionable decisions around your marketing campaigns in real time. now, this tool isfree and publicly available at google.com/insights/search, which you can see on the screen here. okay.lets' say you're a flower retailer trying to better understand when people start searchingfor terms related to flowers around mother's
day. there are some filters that you can set.here, we're looking at on a national level, but you could change it depending on whetheryou have international campaigns or even regional ones within the us and then around march tomay. you can also narrow search [indistinct] down to specific categories if you'd like.according to the graph, search interest begins to uptake in mid-april and last up to mother'sday. marketers can time when to increase budget as interest level increases so that your advertisementis there when people are searching for it. you can type in your brand, a product suchas fragrance or beauty products for mothers' day or other search terms that you can see.now, we look at the bottom of the results page. we see on the left here--left side here,original search interest and then to the right,
a map highlighting some of the key state ofinterest. some top keywords based on the search terms you entered, and then the fact is risingsearch term. you'll notice that we're showing breakout share instead of percentages. andthis actually means the search terms grew over 5,000% since the last time period. now,what do we see here? cheap flowers on the list here at number five, growing over 5,000%last mother's day time period. i think the mothers on this call are probably wonderingwhether their children were the one searching for it or their husbands. unfortunately, theinsights research tool doesn't offer this level of insight yet. but in all seriousnessthough, refining the parameters of the report can help provide you with insights on howto take advantage of trends and make some
informed marketing decisions. for example,retailers can search on your top keywords and use this information to time when to beginyour campaign, or if there are particular regions that you may want to target. you canalso see if there are other interesting terms that are cropping up around that time thatyou may be able to incorporate into your own campaigns. if you have any questions aboutinterpreting the data, just click on the question mark on that tool on that page. and again,to access the tool, please visit google.com/insights/search. when it comes to mother's day, father's day,and graduation, we can use insight research once again to look at what the shopping cyclelooks like. here, we're showing three timelines based on the search terms mother's day gift,father's day gift, and graduation gift which
we're using as proxies. in terms of shoppingcycle, search interest on mother's day gift, so we're highlighting that in blue here, uptakesat the beginning of april. so campaign should be ready to go by then. traffic continuesto increase through may and peaks the week of mother's day. we see a very similar storyfor father's day for the gray line here. search interest in father's day uptakes at the beginningof may. so campaign should be ready to go by then, and then it continues through theactual day. and for graduation, search interest in graduation gifts uptakes at the beginningof march. traffic continues all the way through july, so plan your campaigns and budgets accordingly.for all of these holidays, since consumer, like we've spoken about earlier, is shiftingto heavy initial focus on research and finding
the best price, you should expect consumersto begin researching a little bit earlier and begin purchasing as the day approacheswhether it's mother's day, father's day, or graduation. so make sure you plan your budgetto reflect some of these peaks and traffic. and according to what we've just shown, theyear shopping cycle for these occasions is about to start. well the interesting to seekind of how this year will look like whether people are shopping earlier or later as wellas the variations of term that users might be looking for such as deals or coupons, socontinue to explore the tool and it's functionalities for yourself and see what insights you canfind as you continue to plan. and now, we want to take a look and understand the trendson a category level. first stop is the watches
and accessories category. we've highlightedmother's day week in pink on the bottom here on the x-axis and father's day week in blue.here you see for the trend line, you continue to see increasing search interest over thetime period and then spikes coincide with the week prior to mother's day and father'sday. people are definitely interested in these types of gifts for moms and dads, and they'realso popular gifts for those who need the graphs. for the apparel category, the firstuptake follows the week of easter, and that typically is when starts shopping for springclothing. people kind of changing their wardrobe for the new season, and we probably have someearly shoppers for mother's day, father's day, and graduation. you'll notice here thatthe search interest to the apparel category
peaks just before mother's day and father'sday. it's difficult to isolate graduation traffic here. however from the line, you cansee some pretty regular fluctuations in search interests for the entire category. appareladvertisers, just to make sure you have enough budgets for this high search interest day.for gems and jewelry, we see a clear peak a week prior to mother's day. again, it'llbe interesting to see what happens this year as we get closer to mother's day. next stop,we have flowers, gifts, and greeting. once again, search interest starts to rise aftereaster. flowers, gifts, and cards--sorry, flowers, gifts, and cards are something morein target at moms but you do see another spike right around father's day as well, just afew times smaller. and now onto consumer electronics,
this one is interesting. you see three mainspikes for mother's day, father's day, and the one in between could be graduation. theseare smaller spikes, but the mother's day and father's day spikes don't look very different.i'm talking about electronics could be just as popular for moms as they are for dads now,which is what i think many of us might not have known before. and lastly, we have sportinggoods. we continue to see increasing search interest over this time period with much strongerinterest in late may and june as we get closer to the summer as people are looking for sports-relateditems and then the peak come some time during the father's day week. like we've just showed,retailers can use the category level feature on the tool to understand how and when yourcustomers are searching for your products
for these holidays. pay attention to whenthe spikes are and how high these spikes are. they'll give you an idea how much demand thereis compared to off-seasons. so eric, let's talk specifics. given all these insights,what specific marketing tactics should retailers do this year, what are they doing?>> lopez: great. so let's take a look at the marketing strategies and tactics as we headtowards mother's day, father's day, and graduation season. so all the substantial changes we'veseen in the economy and in consumer behavior over the last few months resulted in somepre-substantial changes as they were approached. many retailers are taking to engage and reachtheir consumers. in general, we're seeing many retailers pulling out all the stockswhen it comes to their promotional strategy.
we definitely understand that these promotionaltactics can be difficult to implement, but should these tactics be right for your business.a recent study by the e-tailing group highlights how some of your competitors are approachingthe recent changes in the retail landscape. year over year, we chose our increasinglyutilizing promotions such as dollars or percent of the net purchase, that's 175% growth, limitedhour sale at 131% growth, sweepstakes at 31%, and conditional free shipping at 26% growth.looking back to last month, we saw a number of examples of these promotions from variousretailers during the valentines day season with conditional free shipping increasingyear over year, 26%, this current shipping is really becoming a standard for e-commercesite especially around the holidays. free
shipping can take a variety of forms. here,we see free second-day shipping and free express delivery upgrades. the famous two for otherpromotions during valentines day, we also [indistinct] unique promotions targeting earlyshoppers, promotions, and sections of site dedicate to the budget cost to shopper andfree complimentary products with purchase. we're considering what we saw in the creativesfor valentines day, a proxy for when we will see for the spring holidays. and rememberwhatever your promotion or unique value proposition may be, always remember to incorporate thismessage in your advertising adwords. in terms of some key tactics for launching effectiveand successful campaigns, we want to keep a few things in mind. first, you want to startearly. as julia mentioned, 44% of consumers
will plan to use internet more often thisyear for gift ideas to learn about products and to decide which stores to buy from. andthen looking at the shopping cycle for mother's day gift, father's day gift, and graduationgift, we saw that search interest begins to uptake a few months out. all of this indicatesthe need to start running campaigns early as shoppers are researching and planning theirpurchases far in advance. they want to start early to ensure your brand is in the considerationset. you also want to call specific offers in the creative. for instance, you will wantto use price point such as gifts under $30 in your ad text. you also want to highlightany free shipping offers for a gift wrapping percent off when need time deals, last-minuteshipping all in your ad text. remember, 55%
of consumers are more likely to look for offersand promotions this year as compared to last year in order to save money, so this promotionallanguage would be more important than ever. if you're not running a traditional promotion,you want to include your unique value proposition in your ad text. you also want to craft yourmessage and promotional offer to the appropriate audience. remember, that there are four distinctaudiences to target this time of year, moms, dads, grads, and gift givers. for instance,recent grads might not be looking for the same products of using the same websites asthe gift giver looking to buy a present for their father. it's best you would want tocreate unique campaign as the messages for each of these different demographics. forinstance, if you're running on terms such
as gifts for her, you'd be able to createof what messages that might resonate well with men since both husbands and sons purchasemother's day gifts for their mothers or wives respectively. for grads, promoting goods andservices, they will use or having needs for. some examples we gave earlier include businesssuits for job interviews or furnishings for a new apartment. we also want to run ads onsites that recent grads are likely to visit. for instance, youtube reached 66% of collegestudents. considering innovative ads promote offers to these demographic on sites or socialnetwork like this. next for dads and moms, promote ideas on which he or she should askfor. so you will want to target offers and promotions on product he or she would liketo receive. for moms as we've seen that might
be jewelry and an apparel item or even a night-out.for dads, it might be clothing, sports equipment, books, or cds, or electronic items. and forthe gift givers explain what types of products or services are offered and who they mightbe geared for. if you want to use the feminist that describe the type of mom, dad, or grad,your price will appeal to. for instance, for dads, if he's a gadget lover and an outdoorman or maybe a sports enthusiast. additionally, if you have a gift guides on your site, promotethem as, it just make it easier for the consumer to pick out gifts and it's a great way toreposition your current inventory for the spring gift giving season. you will also wantto keep your creative fresh by rooting new creative copy as the spring holidays getscloser. early in the bank cycle, you want
to let gifters know that the holidays areapproaching through ad text that way you can create some demand around your product. asthe holidays get closer, one really successful tactic we've seen is letting the customerknow it's not too late for gifts to arrive in time like providing shipping cut-off deadline.calling out shipping cut-off deadline in ad text create extensive urgency and will helpto drive sales. and as the holiday arrives, switch messaging from shop browse to conveyurgencies such as ad text like last-minute gifts. and lastly, you want to consider alast minute push before the holidays. since as we've seen through the retail search andsites we discussed, search interest picks immediately around the holidays. you may wantto consider running display campaigns to get
more reach the weeks before your shippingcut-off deadlines, you may watch to convey urgencies through ads by reminding consumersthere is still time to get dad the perfect gift. if you have physical storage, you mightconsider targeting last-minute shoppers by calling up store locations; drive in for salesor by implementing local business ads, capture consumers as they search for these locations.there's really a number of options for you. now, let's take a look at some examples. youwill want to target gift givers on mother's day items on search, do running on keywordssuch as gifts for moms and running ad text that compliment to these terms. maybe thisgraduate is looking to use all that cash she received from her high school graduation toinvestment like to get around for a new college
campus. if you want to target her as she'slooking for the nearest bike shop on google maps doing local business ads. i mean, iteasily creates a local business ad by logging into your account and clicking on local businessads in the ad variations tab. and lastly, if you're looking to target gift givers whoare shopping for dads to display ads, you might do so by targeting this content site.if you're a pant retailer or even selling [indistinct] products like ties, belts, orshoes, you might target users at the site with an ad that says the perfect pair of pantsfor your dad. and if you don't or you have display ads, we have feature available thatwould make it easy for you to create your own in a matter of minutes. you might rememberthe walk through--we did a display ad builder
tool during our [indistinct] webinar. allyou do is log-in to your account and click on display ad builder on the ad variationstab. the tool will then walk you through to the display ad creation process. there's actuallya few brand new options that will help create mother's day, spring and coupon display ads.these options are available by clicking on the seasonal link. you will notice that we'vehighlighted a few of templates here; they come in multiple sizes so you can customizeto fit your needs; if you also want to check us frequently as the new templates will bemade available. so now, let's take a look at some additional resources for you. in additionto the information and tips we've discussed here, our team also maintains a blog at googleretail.blogspot.com.our goal is to provide retail data trends
and invites to help you run your businessmore effectively. you can bookmark that and check back frequently. we want to share timelyinformation with you all so we're constantly updating it with new content. and if you'dlike additional information regarding the free tools we've covered today and additionalfree tools that will help you uncover opportunities to better plan, target, measure, and optimize,please visit our do more with less site and that's at google.com/domorewithless.