Online events such as Hot Sale and Cyber Monday are a great opportunity to increase sales for the brands with an online presence.
To maximize this, eCommerce carries out different strategies of communication that allow them to reach more users and to be present with their products or services, for the searches they do.
One of the strongest and best sales results strategies corresponds to SEO. To learn how to apply it to these events, and what results it can generate, we interviewed Antonio Araya, Regional SEO manager at Falabella Chile and we asked him the following questions. Let’s see what he told us:
- What is it like to prepare for events like Cyber Monday?
Demanding but entertaining because of what it means to be present at events of this magnitude. You have to coordinate with so many people and diverse departments (from commercial to IT) to make sure that for a couple of days everything goes perfectly. Occasionally things go wrong, and you can’t control 100% what is going to happen and especially in big companies where there are so many people involved in the product, but you have to have sufficient clarity to know how to solve them as quickly as possible. Many eyes are on those of us who make SEO, especially on keywords like “cyber monday”, “cyber day”, and those kinds of highly searched keywords are the ones with more visibility for many people because it is a pride to be in the first place, almost branding, if not mails start to drop and comments like: “THEY CAN’T BEAT US ON THAT KEYWORD! DO SOMETHING!” :’D
- How long in advance do you start working on the strategy for this kind of event?
Ideally, months in advance, coordinating with commercials, IT, and partners to get the most of every opportunity that can represent an improvement in SEO visibility. The last time has led to the fact that given the nature of Falabella.com, a company present in several Latin American countries, it touches us hard due to the frequency and even the realization of the same event in 2 countries simultaneously, the same event several times in a short time, that’s why planning is crucial when it comes to being present in time and shape in every place needed.
- What role does SEO occupy within the action plan for these dates?
A fundamental role is to derive traffic. While particular traffic sources are starting to take center stage as direct and referred traffic, SEO is critical when it comes to volume. As usual, many of the efforts are focused on Paid Media, ergo, a lot of money, and I think there is still a long way to go in that as an SEO industry we can show that if part of that money was invested from technical resources to relationships public, and SEO can take advantage of those efforts to your advantage, you could return a good amount of constant sales, event after event.
- What impact and relevance do these events generate on the brand’s sales?
Very high, those who work in companies that are associated with events like this see how in their analytics systems those days there is a peak of all KPI, and although it is not my area of expertise, I think you can get much more out of it, not only for that immediate sale linked to the event but to take those user acquisitions (you have their data, basically) and start to involve them with your brand in a subtle way (not atomize them with thousands of emails the next day, please) to generate recurrence in your business.
- Is SEO one of the main traffic channels during online business events?
It will depend on your type of business and your attribution model, but if we go to an analytic standard configuration, it remains the main traffic channel. Other traffic sources however turn out to be very relevant, such as Direct, Pais Media and Referred. As a business interested in reaching the largest number of people, you should try to attend all those channels that you can influence, remember you are in a war with dozens of others screaming at the same time.
- What do you take into account in the actions that are carried out within eCommerce for dates like Cyber?
First of all, consider that terms related to “cyber” are not only searched in the event dates, there is a huge expectation on the participants, and possible offers, among others. To do this, the first thing you should do is create a drop page that talks about Cyber and what is coming, to the people who get there you can ask them to leave their email to notify them of your offers once they are released. That page will be your main entry access for those interested in your offers.
The preparation also includes that you must strongly analyze how your audience searches for what you offer, they don’t only do it by “cyber”, but it is accompanied by words such as the category of your product or service, different ways of writing the same term, in English with “y”, in Spanish with “i”, “lunes”, “monday”, many times as there are so many similar names like “day”, “week”, you should consider them all, and use them strategically in places of your eCommerce that point out to Google that this is a valid page for the search term.
Finally on the day of the event, search, search and search for your keywords (or help you with a tool that reviews them) to see that everything is still in order and correct if necessary, preferably daily, but those of us who have a large part of our attention on the event, it is inevitable to start searching throughout the day for the keywords for which you are positioning.
- What do you think are the problems that may arise during the event and how can we be prepared?
Usually, the problems linked to this type of event have been widely discussed, which is that the servers are 100% up during the entire event, and this affects SEO. Making available what is necessary for your site to be operational, but at the same time, doing what is necessary before the event to optimize the loading speed will not only help your servers but also the user experience when visiting you. Unfortunately, this is not something specific for this type of event and should be a lifelong rule, which will help you in these instances.
- Do they usually integrate marketing strategies concerning what they work in SEO for these dates?
Completely, you have to consider that a traffic channel alone will not make a big difference in events like this, and you should coordinate with other areas if you are in a large company, but rather worry about all channels yourself if you are in a smaller company. Whatever the mode, this is the time to throw all the meat on the grill, always efficiently.
- What do you think are the 5 tips that we cannot stop taking into account during Cyber Monday?
- I stole this phrase from there and modified it, but it works the same: “SEO is a long-term commitment, not a campaign.” No matter how much we do actions for this day, it will not have the desired impact if throughout the years you did not grant authority to your site with ongoing actions. If you generate affinity with your audience impacting them at all times and not only in the event, you will have a better chance of being preferred.
- Have excellent communication with everyone responsible for the event in your team. From the commercial to the technical area. You should try to find out everything that could impact your traffic.
- Research what your competition is doing, if you see something good, do it better in yours.
- If something happens at the event, don’t panic, analyze, solve, and manage expectations with your stakeholders.
- When it’s all over, it doesn’t end there. Report what you achieved, make all your effort count, and show that SEO generated business, raise the incidents that could have given better results to be solved next time. Start thinking about the next event.
