Almost, anyway. My writing hiatus will conclude in a couple of weeks when the dust on this permanent international jaunt has settled. I will never post without a purpose, however – and this little ditty is no exception. Although I will maintain very strong professional roots in Boston, I am extremely interested in meeting any and all Toronto Search Engine Marketing peoples that may come across this website. Please reach out and say hello. Your city frightens and confuses me. Whether we cross paths in a new think tank – or an OPP drunk tank – the evening is still technically tax deductible if we talk about NOFOLLOW tags.

Search marketing has fast become an essential means of purveyance and revenue for todays online retailers. I mean, that’s why we’re all here, right? As I prepare a quick client report on the reasons to aggressively ramp-up PPC spending for this most lucrative of seasons, I thought I’d spread a little cheer in the form of some findings. Normally I spread cheer by spiking the egg nog with a fifth of Gosling, but it’s only November and there’ll be plenty of time for that too.

According to Nielsen, online holiday shopping totaled $30.1 billion during the 2005 holiday season (October 29 – December 23). And that was a 30% increase over 2004. If the same spike were to happen again this year, which is well within realistic estimates, we could be looking at a 2006 “espend” in the neighborhood of 40 billion of your American dollars, Mr. Bond. Again, this is online purchasing alone, and there’s a simple underlying and fundamental reason for this consistent growth.

I use the word “confidence” frequently on this site, and I’m about to use it yet again. Everything your online marketing efforts strive to accomplish should have the final goal of creating consumer confidence in the crosshairs. Create it, foster it, hug it, feed it, keep it warm and then release it into the wild. The wild, of course, being the checkout confirmation page of your shopping cart.

As we head into 2007 and beyond, scores more people are fully comfortable shopping online. But what has changed recently is that these consumers now have good experiences to draw on, and are more trusting of online merchants, warrantys and especially – delivery dates. If I had ever managed to get my grandmother past Freecell in terms of computer use, here’s how our yearly conversations might have evolved:

• 2001: “You need socks. Drive your poor Grandmother to Sears.”
• 2002: “The guy at the fruit stand didn’t know what a Blade Runner was.”
• 2003: “I haven’t had a credit card since 1979. Get it at the gas station.”
• 2004: “Oh jeepers, go Gazoodle it yourself.”
• 2005: “I wish your grandfather was here to see this. More scotch.”
• 2006: “If Bezos can’t boost his organic, Blum is going to eat his lunch.”

And… scene. I hope I managed to make some semblance of a silly point. Revenues are skyrocketing because people aren’t afraid to shop online anymore. And more importantly, they have faith that what they order for their loved one is actually going to arrive on time. So in addition to a larger number of purchases, they are making said purchases later and later into the season – thus also contributing to the boom. It’s an exciting time to be in marketing, pass the egg nog.