3 Search Marketing Tactics to Drive Last-Minute Ecommerce Sales

These proven search marketing strategies are great for eCommerce businesses that need to move stock quickly, offer timely promotions and generate last-minute sales.

There are many opportunities to optimize your search marketing strategy to generate last-minute sales, whether it is stock management or seasonal selling.

I have worked on hundreds of digital campaigns of short duration to increase online revenues. Here are some of my best tactics.

Best practice advice will continue to be a part of your marketing strategy. You can also plan for repeat trends in eCommerce websites or industries.

These three strategies can guide you shorten the time it takes to buy for quick wins.

1. Google Product Listings for Free

Many companies must take advantage of significant product listing opportunities in search engine result pages (SERPs). They only target paid product placements or don’t even bother to target them.

You can still make the most of organic advertising even if your product listings are not paid with Google.

Google announced in 2020 that companies could begin to appear across a variety of Google search properties, including Google Search, Shopping, Maps, and Lens, if they have a physical location (bricks and mortar).

This rollout began in April with the USA and has since moved to an international rollout for qualified eCommerce businesses.

Refer to the Google Merchant Center Help for more information. To be eligible, you must:

1. For local inventory ads and listing your products free of charge on Google, please follow Google policies.
2. You can submit your product feed and local product inventory feed via the standard Google Merchant Center.
3. You must opt-in to have your local products listed for free on Google. This can be done by selecting the appropriate item from the Google Merchant Center.

Online retailers can get free exposure to people ready to buy, regardless of whether they have paid for product listings.

This tactic could also be extended to other structured data (quick technological SEO updates), which can help target different Google Rich Results. It will also help improve your website’s visibility in searches.

2. Increase your focus on Your Core ROI and Commercial Impact Pages

Although it may seem obvious, there are quick wins that can make your highest commercial intent pages perform at a higher level within a shorter timeframe. Often the updates are already in your database.

Now is the perfect time to integrate conversion rate optimization (CRO), SEO, and other search marketing activities.

To make the most of CRO in a short period, it is essential to consider both the on-page (post-click) and in-SERP stages (pre-click).

While CRO should not be considered a permanent component of your marketing activities, it can help companies see faster results when added to existing strategies.

Many CRO experiments have been proven to deliver repeat wins. These are just a few examples of CRO experiments you can use to get started.

Use the most relevant Google Search Console (GSC), term/phrase in title tags, and meta description, if necessary. This will improve the query’s relevancy, increase click-through rates on SERPs, and help land more people on your site’s key pages. It will also increase the volume of people entering the conversion funnel.

Test ad copy using both organic and paid ads. Then, recombine data from both channels to share learnings.

Use a clear call to action (CTA) in ads to get the user to click. You should also ensure that every core page segment has a CTA. This is something you test and refine using the most recent data sets.

Use persistent CTAs and other conversion elements, such as short forms, to ensure that desktop and mobile users have the same CTA variants based on their most relevant data sets.

Update the content. Update the content with new statistics and data to allow it to generate new ranking signals.

Provide visual and in-text CTAs that target a range of commitment levels. For example, a CTA for social sharing has a lower commitment level than a CTA for buying.

3. Take advantage of the value of your home page

This tactic is often overlooked by companies trying to increase short-term sales via websites.

In most cases, the home page receives the most landing page visitors from organic search and other channels (except paid).

This means that even minor changes to your home page can dramatically increase the value of visitors to your website.

These updates will quickly improve the performance of your home page.

• Prioritizing content coverage and the display of high ROI products and services is vital.
• Add a clear call-to-action to the homepage and remove any conflicting messages or distractions that could distract users and keep them from taking the desired action.
• Improved page speed and loading time. These are important ranking factors that can be used to improve usability and conversion rates.
• Clear trust signals and other content that removes obstacles to users converting without the need to view any other content.
• Ensure that the site (and page) is HTTPS secure, mobile-friendly, and responsive.

The home page should serve many purposes and be a continuous improvement focus every quarter.

This ensures that you’re constantly improving, enhancing, or maximizing the value of this high-impact section of your website.

The home page is a great place to begin if you need quick results, manage stock levels or drive users to specific, new, or changing outcomes. It can also be the foundation for other activities leading to more significant gains.