Internet Marketing Blog

Christmas Season Search Engine Use

I did a bit of keyword research on Christmas-related searches just to see if I could glean any particular trends for these types of searches.

Christmas Eve Search Behavior

On Christmas Eve, the top Christmas searches were for the Norad Santa Tracker tool to track Santa's progress on Christmas Eve. These searches imply family search activity as kids and their parents follow Kris Kringle's gift deposits.

Additional family activity type searches include queries for Christmas carol lyrics and popular holiday entertainment such as "It's A Wonderful Life," and searches for Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart.

Cooking-related searches are also very popular, so grocery stores and other recipe providers would do well to optimize their sites for these queries.

Other types of searches include queries for store hours for those last-second shoppers--demonstrating the importance of including your store hours on your web site and within your local online listings.

Christmas Day Search Behavior

Christmas Day searches, not surprisingly, are heavily populated with post-Christmas sale-related searches as well as store-, and especially restaurant-hours searches.

Cooking-related searches are also popular.

Christmas Day searches also give an early glimpse into the gifts that were popular. This year Zune and iTunes searches were popular, as were Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band searches.

Christmas Searches Start Early, Real Early

When looking a historical search trends for Christmas-related queries, the one thing that stands out is that people appear to start thinking about and, presumably, then, researching Christmas gifts as early as August. That's when Christmas-related searches begin to spike upward.

This behavior is quite consistent from year to year, as this Google Trends chart of Christmas-related searches from 2004 to 2007 demonstrates:

This can be seen most clearly looking at at single year, as the following Google Trends charts shows:

And as the following Christmas searches chart from KeywordDiscovery.com confirms:

There is an obvious opportunity for online retailers in particular to engage customers long before the Christmas season even begins by examining and optimizing search campaigns targeted at these summer searches.

Black Friday Search Queries

I posted a piece yesterday examining people's Thanksgiving-related search behavior so I figure today is an appropriate time to examine people's Black Friday search behavior.

As you can see from the Google Trends chart below, a day after the 100 most popular searches are dominated by Thanksgiving-related queries, Black Friday is all about shopping; and about shopping for specific products in particular. Six of the top ten search queries are for specific products. Two of the top ten searches are for sales or coupons and only two queries are unrelated to shopping:

The obvious search engine marketing conclusion here, is that online store owners should do their keyword research and ensure that their individual product pages are search optimized and traditional retailers should ensure their sites are optimized for such words as "deals," "coupons," "sales," "shipping," "directions," etc.

Thanksgiving Day Searches

People perform Thanksgiving-related searches near that holiday, so we see predictable spikes in query volume for such searches.

Thanks to the magic of Google Trends, this is the search volume for the top Thanksgiving-related searches since 2004 (click on the graphic to get a larger size):

This is how the search volume grew for those same search terms within the past 30 days:

And this screenshot shows the 100 most popular search terms today:

Independence Day Searches By Minnesotans

It's no surprise that July 4th-related keyword searches spike heavily during the days before and after today's holiday and flatten out the rest of the year, but it is of some interest the exact searches people use to find that information. The following Google Trends chart tracks the search phrases "4th of july," "fourth of july," "july 4th," "july fourth," and "independence day" by Minneostans from 2004 to 2006.

If you visit this chart at Google Trends, though, you can dig deeper into this unremarkable data, you can see  which specific search terms were favored by Minneapolitans, Saint Paulites, Saint Cloudonians, Rochesterers, and Duluthiacs.

Residents of Saint Cloud, for instance, apparently do not like to use the search phrases "fourth of july" and "july fourth," while Duluth residents only prefer using numerals in their searches, using almost exclusively "4th of july" and "july 4th." Go figure.

Mildly interesting but irrelevant, huh? Maybe. But if you own a fireworks store in Duluth, this is important to know if you're doing any search engine marketing at all.

So there's my Independence Day Internet marketing information for you.

Happy July 4th (as a Saint Paulite, that's my preferred search phrase):

Valentine's Day Consumer Attitudes

Gender Differences On Valentine's Day

Yeah, I know, Valentine's Day is over, get on with it, already! Indulge me one last time and file this away for next year's Valentine's Day sales season.

The comparison shopping engine Shopzilla released the results of a survey conducted on their behalf by Bizrate Research of 981 online buyers that shows, not surprisingly, that lonely women get more depressed than married women on Valentine's Day. Big surprise, huh?  The only thing here is that I don't believe anyone every tried to measure it before.

Thirty-five precent of widowed women get depressed on Valentine's Day; 25% of single women and 25% of divorced or separated women do; and only 13% of married women get depressed on Valentine's Day.

The survey explains that Valentine's Day depresses many women because they consider themselves more romantic than men (73% versus 64%), and that the holiday is more important to them (85%) than it is to men (73%). Nealry all women (90%) think that romance is at least moderately important on Valentine's Day and 71% say that their expectations have been let down on the holiday. Twenty-five percent of  women have been dissatisfied with their significant other's Valentine's Day gift.

Seventy-eight percent of women would feel comfortable buying themselves a Valentine's Day gift if there were single compared to only 57% of men who would do so; forty percent of women say they have bought themselves a Valentine's Day gift while only 12% of men have.

Purchasing Behavior & Gift Preferences

A Discovery Card Valentine's Day Shopping Survey finds that men will outspend (averaging $127) women (averaging $74) on Valentine's Day gifts. Women's lower spending is partly explained by the fact that 40% said that coupons/rebates would play a role in their Valentine's Day shopping decisions, compared to only 35% of men who would take bargains into consideration.

Most men (71%) planned on giving their significant other a night out on Valentine's Day while 66% planned to give flowers. Conversely, most women (53%) planned on buying entertainment products for their men.

Sixty-two percent of both men and women hoped to receive a night out on the town from their significant other. That's where they part ways in preferred gifts. Men want entertainment products (45%) and candy (26%) while women want flowers (55%) and jewelry (44%).

The Discovery Card survey also found:

• Most people (65%) will make their purchase a week in advance of Valentine's Day but one in ten men will wait until February 14.
• More than a third of women (39%) planned on spending nothing on their significant others for the holiday.
• 22% of men and 15% of women planned to buy their Valentine's Day gift online.
• 53% of both men and women said they'd use a debit or credit card to buy their Valentine's Day gifts.

Technorati tags: valentine's day | valentine | gifts | ecommerce | consumer behavior | consumer insights | surveys

Valentine's Day Sales

Constant Contact's survey of business owners, "2006 Small Business Valentine's Day Outlook," shows that most respondents feeling rosy about the Valentine's Day sales season:  55%  expected strong sales  leading up to February 14th, while 71% were expecting healthy online sales. Fifty-one percent said that Valentine's Day was an important holiday for their business.

Seventy percent planned on promoting Valentine's Day offers through the following methods:

1. Email markeing, 76%
2. Online marketing, 49%
3. Direct mail, 25%
4. Flyers, 25%
5. Advertising (TV/Radio/Newspaper), 16%

Thirty-two percent of small business owners expected customers to spend less than $25 on Valentine's Day gifts; 35% expected them to spend between $25 and $50; 14% expected customers to spend between $50 and $75; 9% expected them to spend between $75 and $100; and 10% expected customers to spend more than $100.

Small business owners believed that flowers would be by far the most popular gift bought by their customers:

1. Flowers, 59%
2. Jewelry, 21%
3. Chocolates, 16%
4. Clothing, 4%

Online Dating & Valentine Searches

Seasonal Marketing To The Lovelorn

The 15 most popular Valentine's Day-related search terms today (after filtering out the sex-related terms) are:

1. valentines day - 19th overall
2. hearts - 21st
3. flowers - 26th
4. valentines - 29th
5. valentine - 32nd
6. valentine cards - 36th
7. lingerie - 47th
8. love - 53rd
9. heart - 69th
10. love poems - 73rd
11. valentine's day - 94th
12. poems - 103rd
13. valentine poems - 187th
14. love quotes - 217th
15. cupid - 263rd

Over at Yahoo! Buzz, they provide their Top 20 Valentine Searches and a summary of their Valentine gift-related searches. They note that Valentine-related searches have doubled over the past week and that well over half of those searches are performed by those under 24 years of age. Thirty to fifty-four year-olds only account for 30% of their Valentine search traffic.

Online Dating

If you're looking to target desperately seeking singles, there are some things you should know.

According to February 2005 data from Jupiter Research, revenue growth for online dating sites, while robust in 2002 (73%) and 2003 (77%), has shrunk siginificantly in 2004 (19%) and 2005 (9%). Fees for such sites range from $10 to $50 per month.

According to a January 2006 report from Media Metrix, the top five online dating sites measured by unique at-home, at-work and university visitors for December 2005 were:

1. Yahoo! Personals, 24,041 visitors
2. Match.com sites, 3,604 visitors
3. Spark Networks, 2,832 visitors
4. True.com, 1,956 visitors
5. Mate1.com, 1,782

Online dating sites such as those mentioned above could be threatened by the rising popularity of free social networking sites. While not specifically online dating sites, places like MySpace.com and Friendster offer online dating as one of their social networking features. January 2006 data from Media Metrix ranks the most popular social networking sites measured by unique at-home, at-work and university visitors for December 2005:

1. MySpace.com, 32,309 visitors
2. Facebook.com, 12,414 visitors
3. Xanga.com, 8,716 visitors
4. Hi5.com, 3,073 visitors
5. Myyearbook.com, 2,422 visitors

Valentine's Day Online Consumer Behavior

A comScore report released today shows that "total online spending in the Flowers & Gifts, Health & Beauty and Jewelry & Watches categories rose 22 percent year-to-date, through February 9, 2006 versus the corresponding period in 2005." The Health & Beauty and Jewelry & Watches categories individually each rose 24% compared to the same period last year. Online sales in the Flowers and the Greetings & Gifts categories each rose 17% versus last year.

Online spending in the Personals & Dating category rose 29% in 2005, totalling $351.9 million last year. The comScore study also found that 39% of visitors to Personals and Dating sites had visited more than one such site during the month and that 10% of new Personals site registrants, signed up for more than one site during the month. Among active registrants, 30% were registered users of more than one Personals site; 37% of active registrants were going to their Personals sites while at work.

In January, 2005, " more than 29 million Americans visited sites in the Flowers, Gifts & Greetings category." According to comScore, the top sites in this category last year were:

1. AmericanGreetings, 8.6 million visitors in January 2005
2. Hallmark, 6.6 million visitors
3. FTD.com, 1.9 million visitors
4. 1-800-FLOWERS.com, 1.7 million visitors
5. Martha Stewart sites, 1.5 million visitors
6. WeddingChannel.com, 1.4 million visitors
7. ProFlowers.com, 1.3 million visitors
8. LillianVernon.com, 1.2 million visitors
9. RedEnvelope.com, 1.1 million visitors
10. Celebrate Express, Inc., 970,000 visitors

Ecommerce With A Personal Touch

RomeoShops.com's tagline is "because guys can't shop," and  that pretty much sums up the value they offer: Helping guys shop for gifts for the women in their life.

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, they've added an advice section to their web site where visitors can ask the ladies of RomeoShops.com for advice. It's a great tool for building a relationship with their customers while offering a service as well.

Xbox 360 Sales

Xbox 360 sales are not what they could be and Microsoft has only itself to blame.

The marketing of Microsoft's next-generation video game console, the Xbox 360, may go down in marketing history as a textbook example of how to drive your customers directly to the feet of your primary competitor.

What makes the failure of the Xbox 360 launch so stunning is that it was executed by Microsoft, a company with abundant marketing savvy.

Microsoft launched their marketing campaign with a bit of buzz marketing in the form of the mysterious Our Colony web site. They continued by drip drip dripping a drop of Xbox 360 info here and a dash of Xbox 360 news there through various video game sites and techology events. Photos were leaked. The technical specifications of the box were revealed.

Soon enough they'd whipped the public into such a frenzy that they had to start qualifying some of the launch expectations: Due to their global launch, there would be shortages.

But once they announced that consumers could expect shortages, they had to deal with conspiracy theories positing that Microsoft was creating scarcity in order to amp up demand.

Not that I wouldn't put it past Microsoft, but I never really bought the idea. Microsoft is gunning for market leader, Sony, who will likely launch their own next-generation system, the PlayStation 3, in Spring 2006. The idea of launching before Sony was to lock people in to Microsoft's next-gen system. The Xbox 360 is also costing Microsoft more to make than their asking price; they have an obvious interest in recouping those costs in volume and in software sales, which are clearly useless if you don't have a console with which to play them.

The reasons Xbox 360 shortages are not in Microsoft's interests are too numerous to mention here, but for a superbly done piece on the subject, see the L.A. Times' Michael Hiltzik's Golden State blog.

Not only did Microsoft screw up their launch by failing to meet demand, the stories of shortages no doubt had the effect of driving up demand through the considerable influence of Johnny expecting an Xbox 360 beneath the Christmas tree.

So what's a desperate parent to do when they can't get their hands on the hottest item of the season and don't want to bid for upwards of $900 Xboxes on eBay? As Christmas approached, I noticed more and more electronics departments with only one or two Sony PlayStation Portables in stock.

You figure Dad can't disappoint Johnny, so with no 360 to be had, the kid's disappointment would surely be erased if he got coolest portable gaming system this season. And at a $250 price point, Dad can save a couple hundred in the process. At the end of the day, Microsoft has closed the deal for Sony.

I wouldn't be surprised to see that PSP sales rose precipitously as a directl result of Xbox 360 shortages. Sony seems to be anticipating just such a scenario.

Keyword Research On Xbox 360 Searches

One of the primary things we do for clients is conduct keyword research to determine the exact search phrases people are using to find information about their product or service.

After compiling a list of relevant search phrases, we analyze the list for volume of searches (popularity), intent (search mode: is the searcher an information seeker?, in purchase mode? etc.), and efficacy (how likely is it that we will have success using that phrase for search engine marketing given the competition and other factors?).

Recent data from Hitwise on "xbox 360" searches will give you an idea of searcher's behavior. Hitwise released the following list of "Top 10 Sites receiving traffic from the search term "xbox 360" - based on volume of searches" for the four weeks ending 12/10/2005. The following list indicates which web sites got what share of traffic from the search phrase "xbox 360."

1.	Xbox.com	22.09%
2.	Microsoft.com	6.54%
3.	news.google.com	5.08%
4.	eBay.com	4.77%
5.	Atomicpark.com	4.14%
6.	xbox360.ign.com	2.53%
7.	MSN.com	2.29%
8.	Shoplocal.com	1.98%
9.	Bizrate.com	1.95%
10.	Walmart.com	1.83%

Based on the top 10 sites that people chose to go to after searching for "xbox 360," we determine several things. The top 10 sites can be divided into two general categories: informational and ecommerce. The preponderance of the searches were informational, with most people going to Microsoft-owned sites Xbox.com, Microsoft.com and MSN.com. That's unsurprising, given that the Xbox 360 is a Microsoft product. We also know that a subset of the information seekers looked specifically for news about the Xbox 360 because of the traffic to Google's news search engine and the traffic to the video game web site published by IGN.

The remaining sites are ecommerce-related. Even if we hadn't seen the news about Xbox 360 shortages, we could have gotten a hint that there were shortages because eBay was the top ecommerce site people visited. Why would people buy a product at a site where the price is not fixed unless supplies were scarce?

Atomic Park is primarily a software site but also sells Xbox 360s, so their traffic is probably a combination of people wanting to buy the actual console and people looking for information on Xbox 360 games.

Bizrate is a price comparison search engine, so the traffic to that site consists of people looking for a deal.

Shoplocal, as the name implies, is a site where you can find stores near you and, so, their traffic is fairly self-explanatory: Those people are trying to find a store in their neighborhood where they can buy an Xbox 360. The same might be said for Walmart, one of the official Xbox 360 retailers, because they have a store locator on their site.

Finally, when you look at the Xbox 360 searches in the three major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN.com, you'll notice that the ecommerce sites are not listed in the "natural" search engine results but that they are heavy advertisers in the sponsored sections of the search results page. That tells us that most, if not all, of their traffic is coming from pay-per-click search engine advertising.

Teen Marketing - Back To School Online Spending

A survey conducted by Digital Marketing Services, Inc. on behalf of AOL's shopping site, inStore, shows that "dads plan to spend nearly 25% more money on back-to-school shopping for their children than moms, with an overall budget of $336 compared to $270" and that kids are more capable of influencing dad's purchases than mom's. Dad is far more likely (68%) to shop online for Back to School items than Mom (42%). Parents' Back to School purchase decisions will be driven primarily by  cost considerations (59%), followed by their childrens' desires (28%),trends and styles (6%), and brand names (4%). Not only are Dads more likely to be influenced by their kids, they plan on being more generous as well, estimating they'll spend $336 for back-to-school shopping, compared to the $270 Mom expects to spend.  The inStore survey also found that nearly six in ten shoppers (58%) want to research their potential purchases in advance rather than buying on impulse (42%).

The National Retail Federation's 2005 "Back-to-College Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey" conducted  by BIGresearch reports that college students and their parents will spend $34.4 billion on back to school products, an increase of 33.8% from the previous year and more than double what parents of non-college age students will spend.

The report says that back to school sales would reach $13.4 billion this year and, when combined with back to school spending for college students, sales increase to $47.8 billion.

Underclass college students will spend the most. According to the report, the average freshman will spend $1151.68, almost half of it on electronics ($540.35). Sophomores plan to spend $1028.57, mostly on textbooks, home furnishings, and clothes.

Parents and their college-bound kids will combine to spend $11.9 billion on textbooks, $8.2 billion on electronics, $3.6 billion on home furnishings, $3.0 billion on school supplies, $5.7 billion on clothing, and $2.0 billion on shoes. Additionally, college students will spend $700 million more on electronics than last year.

Only 32% plan to spend their back to college dollars online. Six in ten of parents and their college student kids will spend the back to school dollars at the campus bookstore (59.8%) and more than half (55.8%) will spend money at a discount store. Forty-one percent will spend money at an office supply store, and just over a third (36.1%) will spend money at a department store.

Tween Influences

A June 2005 Nickelodeon/Youth Intelligence "Tween Report" provides a glimpse into influence 9-14 year olds have in their families purchases. The survey says Tweens get an average of $9.15 per week in allowance, which they save to buy technology, entertainment and fashion items. They depend upon their parents to pay for necessities. Nearly three quarters of Tweens "have a lot of say" when it comes to buying their own clothes. Girls have influence over clothing purchases and movie and music purchase decisions and boys have influence on which TV shows to watch and which video games and consoles to buy.