At Hitwise our clients are always discovering new trends within our data and then applying them to their own businesses. From those findings we frequently get asked by clients to let them post their findings to our research blog to share actionable findings from their discoveries. Today, I am happy to introduce guest blogger, James Bake, Hitwise user and Internet Marketing Professional. He talks about taking advantage of coupon and promotional opportunities through partnerships online. You can also read more from James on his blog about Search Engine Marketing.
Coupons and promotions are an essential part of the shopping experience, and promotional search terms are popular on almost all referring search term reports. Like many online shoppers, I have learned that promotional codes can be found all over the web. As a commerce site, there is an array of opportunities to employ the promotional frenzy to work for you.
Along with finding discounts online, I am also a fan of using analytics to prompt action. The Hitwise Clickstream reports can be used to locate upstream websites that are driving traffic to your website as well as those driving traffic to competitors. In this particular post, I encourage you to focus your attention on websites from the Rewards and Directory category, including coupon and rebate sites. The findings from this report can identify key partners to develop relationships and inform your competitive surroundings.


Next, use the Hitwise Search Intelligence tools to discover coupon search terms that visitors are using to find your competitor’s site, your top reward/coupon partner, and even your own site. Some examples of common terms include, ‘promotional code’, ‘coupon code’, ‘free shipping, ‘cash back’, and the list goes on.
As an example, here are the top results for searches that drive traffic to Michaels.com that include the term ‘coupon’, ‘discount’ and/or ‘code’:

I offer the following prescribed advice to maximize and strengthen your site’s marketing efforts with online partnerships:
Improve natural rankings on coupon terms using search engine optimization:
Create a landing page to house all your active partners with coupon offers. For this posting, we’ll call this the Promotions Page. This dedicated landing page is a way to promote exclusive partnerships by providing links to partners with valid promotional codes. Promotions do not always have to be deep discounts, but rather cash back rebates to schools and/or charities with the help of online partners, such as Upromise. This is a website dedicated to help online shoppers save for a college education by directing their spending to Upromise partners. This Promotions Page is also to trade exposure with those partners. For three months, you will feature these exclusive partners’ promotional offer on your landing page and for the same duration they will feature your product/service on their homepage; conceivably sending a featured email to their member base. Work with partners to provide back links to each other’s websites in efforts to boost your natural search rankings.

Promoting coupon terms using search engine marketing:
As part of your search engine marketing efforts, build out pay-per-click campaigns to include bidding on coupon terms and directing traffic to your Promotions Page. Shoppers are out searching on the web looking for your promotional codes. Why risk the chance of losing those shoppers to a competitor by having them hunt for a discount code or become disappointed in finding invalid/expired coupons? While maintaining your own Promotional Page, you have control over the offers your audience sees. Test this by conducting a search on your favorite search engine for ‘your company + coupon code.’ Most likely, dozens of coupon code sites appear in the results. By clicking on one of these coupon sites, you will find your promotional offer along with your competitors offer or worse you may just find your competitor’s offer.
Directing existing traffic using internal search engine:
For commerce sites with customizable internal search engines, I would recommend setting up coupon terms to be directed to your site’s Promotions Page. This way, if a visitor is on your website and searches for “coupon” within your internal search engine, they will be directed to your site’s Promotions Page. By using this strategy, visitors bypass going elsewhere to find coupon codes and potentially being snatched up by your competitors.
Building relationships with online partners that work with you and your site helps you maximize your marketing exposure, capture your target audience and convert them into customers on the spot. By analyzing the competitive intelligence data collected by Hitwise and gaining a deeper understanding of the audience at hand, you can be in a position to have an unparalleled competitive advantage when developing and executing your online marketing plan.