Fine tune your Digital Marketing strategy and get ready for the biggest spending Xmas on record. The 8 Million Stories (8MS) team have created a list of tips for your SEO, Paid Search and Social Media strategies to ensure you get maximum traffic and sales this festive period. The full blog post can be seen here; http://www.8ms.com/2013/11/15/seo-ppc-social-media-tips-christmas/

1. 8 Million Stories (8MS)
Social Media, PPC and
SEO Tips For Christmas
15th November 2013

2. Christmas 2013
It’s one month until Christmas.
Retail experts are predicting 2013 will be the biggest
consumer spending Christmas since 2007, with online
takings set to soar past £10 billion for the first time.
Are you ready?

5. Social Media Tips For Christmas (1/4)
Images - engagement, emotion and
relationships are key in any social
media strategy. Images - especially
Christmas ones - are a great tool to
build both. Tweets, Facebook updates
and Google+ posts with pictures
typically generate the best response.
Try product images, picture collages,
lifestyle images or a combination of
all three.

6. Social Media Tips For Christmas (2/4)
Campaigns - Do you have a Christmas social media campaign planned? Is it
targeting one platform or multiple? Don't try and go all guns blazing if budgets
and resource are tight.
Focus on being helpful - This is the important one. Christmas sales will come
naturally if you provide good products, along with good customer service. Focus
on posts that are helpful, not on posts aimed at making a sale.
Online customer service hours - Be transparent early. Create a post on each
social platform (as well as your main site) clearly stating when customers can
expect a response between Christmas Eve and the 2nd January. Managing
expectations early will be extremely beneficial over the festive period.

7. Social Media Tips For Christmas (3/4)
Remember omnichannel - Interact with people. Join in conversations.
Customers often have questions or start conversations in-store, and social
media platforms should be no different.
Schedule posts - Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day will be very busy
on social media, as people share, tweet and Instagram their presents. Schedule
updates wishing everyone a lovely Christmas (with a nice 843x403 image on
Facebook), and similarly wishing everyone got what they wanted from the fat
man in red on Boxing Day.
Try a funny video or image - Generally everyone is in a relaxed, jolly good mood
around Christmas. More time is spent on social media, so it's a great time to try
out a new platform or media asset.

8. Social Media Tips For Christmas (4/4)
Think about helpful content - a video with commonly asked questions
during the festive period, a set of gift ideas blog posts, or a delivery
times / dates cut off visual are great additions to your social assets at
this time of year.
Keep an eye on the weather forecast - If the forecast is looking snowy,
icy and generally bleak, post updates and let customers know that they
should get their orders in earlier to ensure there aren't nasty surprises
with delivery problems.

10. PPC Tips For Christmas (1/3)
Prepare seasonal campaigns in advance - Sure, this is stating the obvious, but
there's still time to set up your Christmas campaigns if you haven't already.
Build campaigns that align with promotional calendars, and remember
customer service is just as important as selling at this time of year.
Adjust budgets - CPC prices will inevitably increase during the festive period. Be
sure to adjust daily budgets to accommodate the expected increase in spend.
Refine negative keywords - Christmas is a very important time for reducing
unwanted impressions and unqualified clicks.

11. PPC Tips For Christmas (2/3)
Hone your mobile strategy - ensure brand campaign ads contain information
about last delivery dates, Christmas and New Year opening hours, and contact
phone numbers.
Search Query Reports - check search query reports for new seasonal keywords
that are triggering your ads. Add these to your campaigns if relevant, or add as
negatives to minimise wastage.
Product Listing Ads - if you’re using PLAs, ensure you keep your product feed up
to date, especially any products that are likely to be popular at this time of year.
Out of stock - using data feeds to align your PPC activity with stock levels is very
important during the festive period. Ensure you set appropriate bids depending
on your product availability and pause keywords related to any products that
are out of stock.

12. PPC Tips For Christmas (3/3)
Competitor monitoring – look at your competitors’ ad copy to ensure that your
copy stands out and reflects any USPs. Can you offer better delivery deals? Gift
wrapping? A price match? Or maybe a click and collect service after your
delivery deadline?
Plan your festive budgets – if your sale starts on Boxing Day and you have
monthly budgets, ensure you allow sufficient budget for the end of the month
when traffic may spike. Also consider revising your day-parting and time-basedbidding settings to ensure that budget is available at peak Christmas shopping
hours.
Sale ads – if you have a sale starting on Boxing Day and you won’t be in the
office to change your ads, make sure you set up automated rules to pause your
pre-Christmas ads and launch your sale ads.

14. SEO Tips For Christmas (1/4)
Optimise for mobile devices - as mentioned at the top of this post, mobile and
tablet traffic to retail sites over the festive period is expected to boom. Ensure
your products can be found, selected and purchased on mobiles and tablets.
Opening times - despite having plenty of time to buy Christmas products, us
Brits often leave it until the last minute. We'll be dashing around the shops,
searching Google for 'next opening hours oxford street' and 'waitrose opening
times christmas eve'. Make sure your festive opening hours are clearly visible on
your homepage, test different Google searches on desktop and mobile, and
make sure your contact details are available.

15. SEO Tips For Christmas (2/4)
Check Google Map locations - People will be driving to pick up presents and do
last minute food and present shopping. Having the wrong postcode and
location on Google Maps simply adds to the stress. Check all your locations
have the right postcode, and swear at your web and IT team if anything is
wrong.
Use reviews - there are going to be A LOT more eyes on your site during the
festive period, and users will be weighing up whether to purchase from you, or
one of your competitors. To help swing them in your favour, consider
implementing review rich snippets. As mentioned in our white paper, John
Lewis use this technique well.

16. SEO Tips For Christmas (3/4)
Check last years data - Did your server load buckle? How many 404 errors were
there? Is there any way to improve your page loading time? What were your
best performing keywords and landing pages? You'll have lots of data at your
disposal from last years Christmas performance. Check for trends, and try and
make sure any major errors are not repeated during the 2013 festive period.
Site loading speed - every nano-second counts at this time of year, so make sure
your site pages are loading as quickly as possible. At the very least, check that
all bulky images are compressed and optimised for the web as much as
possible.

17. SEO Tips For Christmas (4/4)
Google Shopping / PLA optimisation - More competitors will enter the market
over Christmas, and they will all have the same idea in mind - optimising
product data feeds. Ensure that shoppers have a positive customer experience
and can get all the information they need. Check out the FusePump white paper
on Google Shopping for more information.
Look at the bigger picture - more traffic from SEO, means more sales, and more
customer data. Don't think about Christmas as a single sales period - think
about how you can turn one-off customers into repeat customers throughout
the year.

18. All The Best For The
Festive Period!
The 8MS Team