How Search Capitalizes On Forrester's $95 Billion U.S. Online Holiday Sales Prediction

Forrester Research predicts U.S. online holiday sales will exceed $95 billion in 2015 -- up 11% compared with the same time period in 2014. Search advertising remains one of the most effective tools for retailers to drive consumers on engines with non-branded terms to specific retail site landing pages during the holidays -- reaching those buying online as well as offline.

Cold weather gear remains on shoppers' minds, with items like "flannel sheets" at No. 11 and "pajamas" at No. 13 -- all heavily searched non-branded terms on retail Web sites. The top three ecommerce search terms, however, contain the word "boots." Boots rank No. 2, followed by "woman's boots" at No. 4 and "rain boots" at No. 4.

Christmas pajamas rank at No. 4. "Christmas pajamas" sneaks in at No. 2, and "shower curtain" rounds out the top five. Perhaps the pajama interest signals a lingering trend from the Emoji Joggers sweatpants craze, which received a significant percent of searches last year from East Coast customers, per Google.

Forrester says marketers should learn from history. Holiday shopping season trends are predictable. Shopping demand begins on Thanksgiving, and consumers are increasingly likely to shop online to avoid the stress and inconvenience of shopping in stores.

Marketers should focus on making buys easy for consumers. Experts say email lists and search engine advertising are the best methods to drive consumers to Web sites and into stores through specials and promotions. Easy online checkouts with autofill features that assume shipping and billing are the same address information from Google's map application program interface (API) reduces keystrokes.

Forrester also says marketers should take advantage of Google's Shopping Insights tool, which provides data on product searches in different ZIP codes and can help to generate sales from those long-tail items.

Major sales worldwide such as Cyber Monday and China's Singles Day are becoming more common -- and these are opportunities to acquire new customer acquisition worldwide. Global marketing efforts like paid-search ads in other markets are most likely to be rewarded on these dates, per Forrester.

The Chinese holiday Singles Day is not likely to overtake the American high-profile commercial holidays -- Black Friday and Cyber Monday -- in search spend anytime soon, but it may become financially advantageous for marketing looking to broaden campaigns to China.

Total spend on Singles Day keywords by all advertisers totaled just $2,600 in October 2015, with none coming from retail advertisers, according to data from AdGooroo, a Kantar Media company. The company expects numbers to increase in November, with retailers such as Newegg and Bonton entering the field, but declined to make forecasts.

AdGooroo says Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain tops -- "Black Friday deals," "Cyber Monday" and "Cyber Monday Deals" generated more than $1.5 million in paid-search spend in October.

About 1,003 advertisers spent $3.6 million sponsoring 161 Black Friday-related keywords via U.S. Google Desktop Text Ads deom Sept. 27, 2015, the day AdGooroo found Black Friday advertising to begin in earnest, and Nov. 10, 2015

During this same time period, 637 advertisers spent $985,000 sponsoring 103 Cyber Monday-related keywords via U.S. Google Desktop Text Ads, per AdGooroo.

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