Preparations for school start in July
Growth in the number of generic school-related queries becomes noticeable in August, with a 75% increase from July to August and another 75% from August to September, and then hit their peak in September. We considered generic queries to include: школа ("school" - n.), школьный ("school" - adj.), школьник ("pupil"), первоклассник and первоклашка ("first-grader").
The search for school uniforms starts in July
Russians get their children ready for school well in advance — July sees active interest in school uniforms and children's backpacks. Not all Russian schools require children to wear uniforms, so it is natural that queries about children's clothing also pick up at this time.
Generic queries about children's clothing and footwear grow before September 1 at a faster pace than branded queries. In August of 2018, the number of generic queries for children's clothing and footwear grew by 50% in comparison to July the same year, whereas branded queries had seen an increase of just 19%.
Display advertising can come in handy when working on brand awareness, and can help lead to increases in the share of branded traffic. It introduces users to your brand and forms the rights associations with it, while also having an impact on search interest. Then you can gather a segment of users who saw your display ads, and enhance their effect by running performance ads with a call-to-action.
Like the users they are aiming to attract, advertisers in the Children's clothing and footwear category boost their activity levels in August — in 2018, August saw 13% more advertisers in this category than in July.
When competition is high, it's especially important to work with your audience. Use retargeting to bring back those who were already on your site and avoid losing users who are already interested in your products. You can also target a segment in Yandex.Audience consisting of customers from your CRM base who placed orders the previous year and make them an offer — their kids have likely outgrown the clothes they bought last year.
Advertisers of children's clothes and shoes got 49% of their clicks from July to September from mobile devices. Carefully apply bid adjustments by device type to avoid losing potential customers. Make sure that your creatives appear correctly on mobile devices.
Stationery is left until the last minute
Users might look for school uniforms ahead of time, but they don't rush to buy notebooks and pencils far in advance. Interest in stationery on Yandex Search starts to increase in the beginning of July and only hits its peak in the last week of August.
Users search for stationery from mobiles more often in August than in June. Stationery supplies show the largest growth in the number of search queries among all of the categories we reviewed.
When advertising products and services that users need right away, don't forget to create separate campaigns with adaptive creatives, clear and concise texts and higher bids for mobile devices. Use hyperlocal targeting for segments in Yandex.Audience to let the user know that your store is nearby and open now.
Advertisers of stationery products serve ads all year round and on all sites, which is logical — people generally replenish their stationery supplies as they begin to run out, regardless of the time of year.
Some electronics attract interest in August
August queries for computer equipment and electronics increase by 23% compared to the June numbers. The largest increase in interest is seen for phones, tablets and printers (both regular and multi-functional).
There is a possibility that some users are buying these devices for the start of the school year, but that is not likely to be the main driver of their interest in the category. It may be that the increased interest is linked to manufacturers' announcements about new models, or companies making purchases for their offices.
August brings increases in generic electronics queries (buy scanner in Moscow) as well and branded ones (official Samsung store in Moscow).
If you advertise household appliances or electronics, Dynamic ads and Smart banners simplify the process of making large numbers of identical ads while also making sure individual users see the products they are likely to be interested in.
Moreover, you can offer additional products to your previous customers or remind customers in your database about regular purchases. Offer headphones that match previous customers' smartphone models, for example, or remind them after a year about new smartphone models from the same manufacturer. Retargeting can help you with all of these tasks.
Advertisers of computer equipment and electronics got 44% of their clicks in the July-September period from mobile devices. As for advertising formats, Dynamic ads bring a significant portion of clicks. Moreover, our data show that using Dynamic ads can boost conversions from Search ads for electronics by up to 80%.
Autumn demand for furniture of all sorts
Starting in July, users become more interested in buying not only school supplies and uniforms, but also furniture. This is partially due to the approach of the school year — parents buy new desks and chairs where their kids can do their homework, and schools update their existing inventory. In August, interest also grows for cabinets and shelves in children's rooms, and furniture sets.
These product categories make it easy to suggest additional purchases via retargeting. Your potential customers looked for a desk for their child in the beginning of July. Using Yandex.Metrica, gather a segment of users who already visited your site and bought a desk from you, but did not buy a chair or shelves. Target this segment and offer these users a discount on the products they haven't bought yet.
Users keep searching for school desks after the school year begins — the number of queries picks up at the end of June and reaches its maximum in late August-early September even though school is already in session. To get a clear idea of when the peak period for your products or services is, we recommend taking a look at the statistics in WordStat and your own statistics for last year if you have them. We suggest you subscribe to our news digest, where you can find links to the seasonal and industry analyses we publish.
August of 2018 saw 16% more advertisers promoting furniture on Yandex search than July of the same year.
When setting up furniture-related ad campaigns, keep in mind that ad networks are the source of a quarter of the unique traffic for furniture-related ads.
Check to make sure that your site loads quickly from mobile devices — if it takes more than three seconds, try setting up Turbo pages in Yandex.Direct to lower your load times, reduce your bounce rate on mobile devices and increase the likelihood of conversion.
Familiarity with users' habits and behavior is one of the keys to creating finely tuned, relevant campaigns. Read more of our research using the tags "Seasonal trends" and "Research" below.