Now that we’re back home in Princeton after our summer trip the Etail Boston, I wanted to share some prominent feedback from the retailers & an important piece of advice given by our CEO, Udayan regarding the questions that the retailers had. The show attracted over 800 retailers eager to gain new information and actionable insights. The mood at the show can be described as “cautiously-optimistic”. The recent economic volatility was partially responsible for the anxiousness.
Many retailers asked us questions related to our ongoing SEM key parameter study (we started this research on SEM campaigns of 32 mid sized and large US online retailers – all our clients – in September 2008. The results are published by us quarterly).
The top 3 questions were –
- What’s the projected Cost per click for our category in November-December this year?
- The uncertain economic scenario has impacted the conversion latency for most acquisition channels. How should we factor this in our holiday marketing campaigns?
- Can you suggest a simple yet powerful framework to optimally manage SEM campaigns?
Udayan participated in a panel discussion on holiday preparedness. His most important piece of advice for retailers regarding preparing online marketing programs for the holiday season is an extremely powerful yet simple framework to manage any online marketing program – the GOST framework.
GOST is an acronym for “Goals/Objectives – Strategic Initiatives – Tactics”
The GOST framework has been applied by us on a wide range of retailer’s online marketing campaigns – SEM, CSE, SMM – and it has always delivered exceptional results.
Using GOST to run exceptional online marketing campaigns is just one of many useful tips from NetElixir’s 2011 Fresh Ideas Holiday Workbook. If you find this helpful and would like to have the workbook for yourself, please email me at Brittany@netelixir.com and I can send you a complimentary copy.
I hope that with this piece of vital information, along with the rest of them given in our workbook, we can help retailers plan successful online marketing campaigns this holiday season and have the highest ROI possible!
–Brittany
