Mother's Day: Seasonal Trends and Optimizations for Your Microsoft adCenter Campaigns

With less than a week until Mother’s Day (Sunday May 9^th this year), plenty of people want to know what they can expect, and how they can prepare for it. While last year saw many retailers negatively impacted by the economy, this year the economy is showing signs of a rebound, and the continued growth of Bing gives us reason to think the Mother’s Day holiday on Bing looks promising for retailers. We can then dig into some of the seasonality and key performance indicator (KPI) specifics for some of the Retail categories with the largest lift in Mother’s Day-related traffic including Beauty & Personal Care, Clothing & Apparel, and of course, Flowers. Finally, we can explore some of the best practices that have yielded positive results for advertisers and explore how you can apply them to your business.

Impact of the Economy

Let’s start by looking at traffic trends on Bing from the last few years for the Mother’s Day season and project what is reasonable this year (all graphs that follow are based on historical adCenter data). This data reflects aggregated paid search traffic on Bing across a number of Mother’s Day retailers including Florists, Fragrance and Cosmetic companies, Clothing & Footwear, and Food & Restaurants. On average we’re seeing anywhere from 15% to 25% more traffic compared to 2009. Knowing that allows us to set a more accurate overall Mother’s Day budget for Bing. 

The recently released NRF’s 2010 Mother’s Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch shows that consumers are planning to spend more on Moms this year which continues the trend in 2010 of slightly more being spent by consumers for Valentine’s Day, Easter, and even St. Patrick’s Day. The data in this study can also be useful in determining some ad copy tests as it indicates that men are the more likely purchasers of Jewelry, Flowers and Consumer electronics. Coupling that with adCenter’s demographic targeting capabilities could yield incremental CTR gains.

Category Trends

Here we can see the adCenter KPI trends for clicks and CPCs among those categories that saw the most dramatic traffic lifts related to the Mother’s Day holiday. Though the Flowers category doesn’t get the same boost in traffic that Valentine’s Day brings, Mother’s Day has historically provided their second largest sales of the year. 

In some cases last year, the average CPCs declined leading up to the holiday even as traffic began to rise and then had a brief, but dramatic spike very close to the actual holiday. In my opinion, this is indicative of new and smaller advertisers becoming more involved in the auction, but due to their size they don’t have the budget to compete aggressively with more established players on a maximum bid and CPC level. As a result they are able to garner additional clicks at a lower CPC which drags the overall category average CPC down.

As the holiday gets closer and competition heats up for those desperate last-minute shoppers, those smaller advertisers are no longer able to remain competitive in the auction. We can also see that traffic begins to pick up in either late April or early May with a traffic spike seen during the last week before Mother’s Day (which again, falls on Sunday, May 9 this year). Understanding the timing and size of these traffic spikes can give advertisers a more realistic and effective bid and budget strategy for managing to their Bing goals.

Ad Copy Trends

In looking broadly at the ad copy results aggregated across many retailers from last year’s Mother’s Day shopping season we can see some common themes in what made an ad particularly successful compared to others. Testing some or all of these tactics in your ad copy can help you determine what’s most effective for your business in attracting clicks from Mother’s Day consumers. Testing to find better performing ad copy can give you an advantage by improving CTR, boosting performance, and in turn helping to drive your CPCs lower. 

As we can see, consumers were very cost-and-value conscious last year for Mother’s Day (please don’t take offense Mom, we learned how to be frugal from you!) based on the success of using “Coupon” and “Discount” in both ad titles and body copy. Other value-related tactics that drove higher average CTRs included using the terms, “sale” and “promo.” Additionally, advertisers can strengthen their brand presence by using the trademark symbol, the term, “official” in the title and body copy, and, of course, including your brand name.

Now, with a better understanding of the effects of the economy, Bing, consumer behavior, and the trends we’ve seen in the relevant verticals, you’re better prepared to celebrate your best-ever Mother’s Day on Bing.

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