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thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
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Posted: 2003-Sep-17 06:57
DM News is reporting that the National Retail Federation is predicting a 5.7% increase in holiday sales in the upcoming 2003 season. Last season say only a 2.2% increase in sales.
2003 spending is forecast to reach $217 billion for combined online and offline spending.
Are you doing anything differently to gear up for holiday sales online this year? What lessons have you learned from past holiday seasons?
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sirduncan
Joined: Jun 15, 2000
# Posts: 481
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Posted: 2003-Sep-17 14:00
oh goodness, thejenn. I'm so busy trying to get my site better known that I haven't even considered the holidays yet. Is it really that time of year already?
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thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
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Posted: 2003-Sep-17 17:17
It's certainly getting there.
You figure that folks will likely start their online shopping sometime in late October so that they can find what they want, and have it shipped before the holidays arrive.
That means that any new product offerings that are going to be added for the holidays, and that are actually goign to be promoted via search engines, PPC, e-mail marketing and the like, need to to be planned for and promoted now.
These things take time. We've gotta be ahead of the curve sirduncan. 
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shorebreak
Joined: Nov 09, 2000
# Posts: 167
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Posted: 2003-Sep-17 18:23
TheJenn,
We're seeing our clients - mostly companies that are spending $10K-$1M/month on PPC - already gearing up for the holidays in terms of adding 2-5x more keywords, implementing keyword-level tracking and portfolio management, etc. They're hoping to maximize their exposure to profitable sources of traffic by end of October so that Nov/Dec is all spent fine-tuning and reaping the benefits from Overture/Google/etc.
Not sure whether it's a propos to your question, but our data is suggesting that the Piper Jaffray estimates on the growth of paid search - $2B this year growing to $7B by 2007 - are low by ~20%. Why? Because companies are growing their paid search spends faster than anyone would have ever guessed, party due to its effectiveness and partly due to the paucity of other effective and measurable advertising formats.
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thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
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Posted: 2003-Sep-17 18:42
Shorebrea, that's interesting and I can certainly see where I might agree with your personal thoughts on the increase as opposed to the PJ estimates.
It simply makes so much more sense, from a financial standpoint, to spend a few weeks to a month testing a large variety of messages, keywords, landing pages, etc... and really do some serious analysis about what the most profitable online avenues are. Once those are determined and companies can do a decent estimate of their expected profit margins on certain keywords, they can pretty spend as much money as traffic will allow them to.
After all, if a company can make $1 for every $3 they spend, they'd be insane not to dump as much money as they possibly can into their accounts.
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shorebreak
Joined: Nov 09, 2000
# Posts: 167
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Posted: 2003-Sep-17 18:51
Yup, and until paid search is exhausted in terms of both inventory and relative ROI, there's going to be a huge diffusion of ad dollars from TV, print, radio, billboard, DR, banners and to a lesser extent email - most of it flowing into paid search.
SEM consultants and SEM technologies that can catalyze/accelerate this this flow will be in good shape until the saturation point, by which time some other advertising format will come along, for example the new speaker technology discussed in the 9/15 issue of Forbes ('Now Hear This').
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thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
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Posted: 2003-Sep-17 20:03
Nice plug for Forbes...now I have to go read that article and find out what you're talking about.
I hear a lot of concern from folks within the industry tht we're going to hit the wall on things like PPC saturation. That's certainly true, and at some point, things will fall back into more realistic levels. We all know that plenty of sites are losing money on PPC ads just for the sake of "owning" the landscape. Eventually, they won't be able to do that anymore and bids will fall back into ranges where people can be profitable.
As you say, there's a lot of money to be made right now and the SEO/SEM that can deliver solid proof of ROI is going to be the one who lands those accounts.
At the same time, there are certain niches within all industries that are so untapped that the clock won't run out on them for quite some time. I'm continually amazed when conducting research for new clients just how many products, topics, phrases are out there that are so wide open as far as reaching potential buyers.
...always staying one step ahead of the pack...that's the key. 
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RodB
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 1435
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Posted: 2003-Sep-18 09:13
Bring it on
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gal
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 1148
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Posted: 2003-Sep-18 14:12
My first Christmas with my site I did not anticipate any holiday surge--boy was I wrong. Last year life got in the way, and I did not have as much inventory as I should have.
This week I added inventory, sent out a newsletter with a "Shop for the Holidays" theme, and am planning to add even more inventory.
Since I deal in vintage watches, inventory adjustments are not simply a matter of ordering more stock. I scour many possible sources and step up buying. Each piece has to be cleaned, maybe serviced/repaired, photographed, description written, entered as a product in merchant set-up, and "included" on the site, and well as sending a newsletter for each new batch. The lead time from the decision to get more inventory to it hitting the site can be months.
So, I am already in Holiday mode. If I waited until November, I would be sitting out the Holiday sales period.
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