Web Marketing

17 Scarily Good Website Marketing Ideas for Halloween

October 29, 2016 by
17 Scarily Good Website Marketing Ideas for Halloween
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Did you know that Americans spend an average of $8.4 billion on Halloween each year?  That’s right, Halloween has become the second most popular US holiday after Christmas. So get into the holiday spirit to boost your business and show customers that you love All Hallows’ Eve as much as they do. Check out these 17 scarily good website marketing ideas for Halloween.

  • Spook up your online store – place some Halloween-inspired icons such as monsters, bats and skulls around your store. Switch to a spookier text font and alter the names of your products to give them a Halloween theme, think: Creepy Cake Decorations for a baking store or Zombie Survival Gear for an outdoor clothing range.
  • Run a Halloween contest – set up a contest on your social media channels asking people to send in photos of their Halloween costumes, decorations, parties and food. Give a prize for the winning entries and share photos of your own employees taking part.
  • Dress up your logo – make some temporary design changes to your logo. You could add some Halloween motifs like a witch’s hat or a pair of glowing eyes. Easier still, you could change the colour of your logo to black and orange for the holiday period.
  • Create a Halloween hash tag – think up a clever hash tag campaign that combines Halloween and your brand to circulate on social media. One extremely successful example of this is the #oreohorrorstories campaign.
  • Hold a pumpkin hunt – place pumpkin icons around your website, particularly on key landing pages, and challenge your customers to hunt for them. Offer a discount or special gift for anyone who finds all of the pumpkins and hand out clues on your social media channels. You can take this a step further by getting other businesses to join in and spread the hunt to their websites.
  • Have a Halloween flash sale – promote a time-limited flash sale of your products and services for the holiday period. Create an eye-catching poster to publicize the sale and share it with your social media followers and email subscribers.
  • Make a scary YouTube video – make a short video that ties your business in with Halloween. It could be a zombie invasion in your office or a scary prank involving your employees. Ford’s spooky Halloween car wash prank for instance has been viewed over 1.8 million times on YouTube!
  • Send a Halloween newsletter – schedule a newsletter to wish your customers a Happy Halloween. Share some Halloween tips with them or list details about festive events in your local area. You can also offer readers a gift as a Halloween treat.
  • Create some creepy GIFS – design some Halloween-themed GIFS to use on your website, social media channels and newsletters.
  • Produce a Halloween infographic – this doesn’t have to be directly related to your business as long as it includes your brand logo and a link to your website. Try something like: Scariest Halloween movies, Most popular Halloween candy or Classic costumes for Halloween. Make sure the infographic looks spooky and is highly shareable.
  • Organize a virtual trick-or-treat – link up with other businesses to offer treats for people to collect. Create a graphic to advertise what each business is offering and send it out to your mailing list and social media followers. Ask each business taking part to do the same.
  • Sponsor or host a Halloween event – do some festive advertising. Choose a local Halloween event like a costume parade or haunted house to sponsor or create some goody bags with your logo on to be given out at local events. You can even host your own spooky event and invite customers.
  • Change your favicon – alter the icon that appears next to your URL in the address bar of your browser. Give it a Halloween twist such as a flash of orange or add a Halloween motif.
  • Write a Halloween-themed blog post – create a fun Halloween post for your blog. Get creative and share holiday tips related to your business. If you run a home décor website, this could mean a top 10 list of Halloween decorations or if you have a food-related business you could write a post about spooky cake design ideas.
  • Run a social media poll – engage people by running a poll or vote on your social media channels. You could get your office staff to dress up in Halloween costumes or bring in spooky treats, take photos of them and ask your audience to decide who wins.
  • Give away Halloween treats – offer your customers an extra treat when they buy something from your site or sign up to your service over Halloween. This could be anything from a free product to a discount or gift card.
  • Produce some Halloween-themed products – make some special, limited-edition products for Halloween. Create an orange and black version of a popular product, for example, or add some Halloween emblems.

Do you have any more scarily good website marketing ideas for Halloween?  Share them in the comment section below!

17 Scarily Good Website Marketing Ideas for Halloween
Ecommerce Marketing

Click-To-Message Ads Bring A New And Easy Way To Talk To Customers

October 18, 2016 by

If you’re inviting a friend to dinner or asking them about the best hotels in New York City, you’re probably doing it through mobile messaging. Nearly two-thirds of smartphone owners use messaging more than five times a day to communicate with others.1 And people aren’t limiting their use of messaging to social communications – 65% of consumers say they’d consider using messaging to connect with a business to get information about a product or service, or to schedule an in-person appointment.2

In the coming weeks, we’re introducing click-to-message ads to bring the efficiency and effectiveness of messaging to search ads. By setting up a message extension, you’ll give users an easy way to text you to start a conversation and continue it whenever is most convenient for them.

Tapping on the texting option launches a user’s SMS app with a pre-written message tailored to the product or service they’re interested in. For example, if you’re a travel advertiser and someone messages you after searching for New York City hotels, they can send or edit your pre-written message text, “I’m interested in a reservation. Please text me back with more information.”

Many advertisers are already using click-to-message ads to take advantage of a new and faster way to connect with consumers on mobile to increase conversion rates:

“Click-to-message ads have proven to be a great way to help prequalified customers start the hotel reservation process in a way that is convenient and easy for them. They can text an agent to get questions answered, continue the conversation on their own timetable, and trade booking information before completing the final checkout over the phone or on our website. It’s a seamless and streamlined process that helps increase brand trust. The conversion rate on message extensions is 41% higher compared to other ad extensions. Paired with customer support software, they’ve also allowed our agents to respond to requests in a more efficient and cost-effective way. ”
– Gabe Thayn, Director of Search Marketing, TravelPASS Group

“Click-to-message is a useful tool that allows consumers to engage with our business in a way that’s comfortable and efficient for them. They could be on their commute or in a rush, so they can text us quickly through click-to-message. It’s also a good medium to get questions answered that aren’t addressed on our website, or to reach us during hours when our office is closed. Our main performance objective is to help customers as much as possible – when we take care of their questions and needs in a helpful, relevant way, that leads to better business results.”

– Gavin Chan, Digital Marketing Manager, AnyVan

“The results from click-to-message have been phenomenal and we’ve seen a 80% higher conversion rate when compared to other similar channels. We can now tap into an important consumer base that prefers to use SMS to learn more about our insurance products. Besides giving users a new way to get in touch with us, we feel this is by far the fastest and most cost-effective way to connect with them.”

– Gavin Parker, Paid Search Manager, Auto & General 

“We started testing click-to-message as soon as we heard about it. Text messaging is a popular medium of communication among young professionals and the opportunity to engage them through SMS is very exciting. We sell industrial equipment and supplies, which can be very technical. Sometimes customers don’t have time to talk over a web chat or phone conversation, but still need more information. Messaging helps simplify these exchanges and the customer response has been very positive since they can post a question and follow up in their own time.”
– Ashar Mairaj, VP of Marketing, Global Industrial

Mobile users have more flexibility than ever to choose how they want to connect with businesses. Through messaging, you can initiate valuable conversations with them by tapping into one of their most preferred modes of communication. Learn more about click-to-message ads by visiting the Help Center. Also read our new best practices to learn how to use click-to-message ads to build a faster consumer experience on mobile and deliver useful information that gets customers closer to purchasing.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Google Shopping Partners With E-commerce Platforms To Make Selling Online Easier Than Ever This Holiday Season

October 17, 2016 by

When it comes to attracting customers over the busy holiday season, showcasing your products online can help you get in front of more people, and many retailers already use e-commerce platforms to upload and promote their products online. Today, we’re excited to announce partnerships with three major e-commerce platforms — BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and Magento — to make it easier than ever before to get started on Google Shopping for the holidays, and beyond. If you’re using any one of these platforms (or if you’re thinking of using one of these platforms), our new partnerships let you easily submit your product information to Google Shopping and quickly reach millions of new customers searching for what you sell.

Get up and running on Google in just a few clicks

With this direct integration, you can save time and extra work by using your existing BigCommerce, Prestashop, or Magento account to easily submit your product data to fuel a new Google Shopping campaign.

With just a few clicks, your product information is populated in your Merchant Center account, helping you reach new shoppers on Google.com and other Google properties. This integration lets you:

  • Find new customers, right where they’re searching. Connect your products to the customers who matter most — the ones searching for what you sell.
  • Easily display your rich product imagery and details. Put your product images, price, and other differentiators front and center, so that searching shoppers can easily find you.
  • Get up and running quickly, minimizing your holiday workload. Use the product information you’ve already entered in your ecommerce platform without needing to submit this information separately to Google.
  • Showcase your newest inventory. Roll out new products to Google Shopping, simply by adding products to your ecommerce store.

Early successes

We’ve been testing this technical integration with our ecommerce platform partners, and have already seen impressive results from small businesses, brand new to Google Shopping.

Peter Baseio, founder and CEO of baby product company Organic Munchkin, connected his BigCommerce account to Google Shopping to reach new customers with rich, visual ads. “Google Shopping allows our products to be listed in a visual format, increasing brand awareness for our niche market, as well as revenue,” said Baseio. “It has tripled our revenue stream, bringing in customers we never knew we had access to.”

Sam Gong, co-founder of Man Crates, used the integration to help tens of thousands of new customers find their unique assortment of gifts. “Google Shopping is an incredibly cost-effective way for us to reach new customers on long-tail search terms and recapture visitors that have found Man Crates through one of our primary marketing campaigns,” said Gong. “It’s well integrated with BigCommerce, incredibly easy to setup, and easy to measure and manage on an ongoing basis. It’s an absolute no-brainer for just about any ecommerce business.”

Ready to get started?

If you’re not using an ecommerce platform today, find out how to sign up for one by checking out the BigCommerce, PrestaShop, or Magento website. If you’re already using one of these platforms, visit our Help Center or the BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and Magento help pages to learn more.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog