Holiday Search Campaigns Need Year-Round Care

While a search campaign's execution will always be somewhat time-dependent, search marketers need to begin planning for individual seasons much earlier, and implementing some measures on a year-round basis.

Firstly, an early start allows search marketers to rotate keywords and ad creative to determine which are most effective going into the peak season.

Secondly, the goals of searchers shift over time. The early season is the time to build general brand awareness, and later in the cycle, marketers should shift their focus to direct efforts such as online gift certificates.

Thirdly, it is a best practice to create special landing pages and mini-sites devoted to a particular seasonal services and products to build traffic on key search terms during off-season lulls.

Web Ads Perform Better For Direct Response Than Branding

According to a study released Tuesday by the American Advertising Federation, more than seven in 10 respondents (71%) also believe that the Internet is "very effective" or "most effective" for direct response advertising. Most (60%) indicated that the Web is only "somewhat effective" for brand advertising.

Researchers asked respondents how they planned to allocate their online/new media budget next year among search and seven types of emerging media--online video, blogs, podcasts, social networking, RSS, mobile and video games. Within those categories, executives said that search would receive the largest proportion (27%) on average, followed by online video (14.9%), blogs (8.4%), podcasts (8%), social networking (7.7%), RSS (5.5%), mobile (5.2%), and video games (3.6%).

Most respondents (71%) described search as "very effective" or "most effective," but also thought highly of emerging media. Among newer forms of media, online video was deemed very effective or most effective by 40% of respondents, followed by social networking (38%), video games and podcasts (23%), mobile (20%), blogs (19%), and RSS (11%).