As the holiday season quickly approaches, now is the perfect time to get a head-start on your holiday pay-per-click strategy. Shoppers are starting to build their wish list and shopping list this time of the year.
With the holiday season in full swing, you need to prepare beforehand. Digital advertising over the last couple of years has made strides in the holidays, and it won’t be any different this year.
In fact, according to Retail Systems Research, 67 percent of retailers believe that digital channels primarily influence a significant portion of sales.
Here are some ways on how you can prep your PPC campaign this holiday season, as well as achieve a high percentage of sales:
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Recall Last Year’s Results
If you’re a PPC campaign in the past, then you know that the first step in your holiday planning process is to do a quick recap of last year’s results.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What campaigns and channels worked last year?
- What buyer demographic performed well?
- Which creative made the most impact?
- What promotions drove the most purchases?
- Did you outperform your competition? Or did they outperform you?
If you don’t have these data from the previous year, it might be a bit too late to get it. But you can start gathering data on how your competitors are performing.
On the other hand, if something worked out well for you last the holiday season, then you don’t have to fix what isn’t broken. But new tactics are still worth trying to replace the things that didn’t quite work out.
Consider Using Seasonal Keywords
Do your research and consider adding a few seasonal keywords for your holiday PPC campaigns. This can help you boost your click-throughs and sales.
Since most of your competitors are already investing in paid advertising, you might want to do the same. Your keyword list should be made up of words like “Christmas presents,” “gifts for family,” “gifts for friends,” and the like.
That’s because most of these keywords are popular during the holidays. All you need to do is to do a quick search and be creative.
Be Willing to Bid Higher
During the holidays, the marketplace tends to be crowded with advertisers who are more willing to spend a lot on advertising. Unfortunately, this causes ads to go up. The bid costs usually start to go up in October and typically don’t go down after the New Year.
But before you proceed with your ad campaign, know first how much you’re willing to spend. You’ll eventually notice that the best (and most competitive) results are when you bid as high as you can.
Getting that top spot in Google is a massive edge on your part. But although you want to be competitive with your bid, you also need to set a limit to ensure that you’re not spending more than you initially planned.
Leverage Ad Extensions
Ad extensions are an excellent tool for your PPC optimization strategy this holiday season. It provides you with the real estate to give sellers the information they’re looking for.
Meanwhile, site link extensions allow you to send users to specific landing pages, product pages, or anywhere else they choose.
You can also incorporate call extensions in your holiday advertising because some people would want to speak with a company representative. Because of the steady increase in mobile holiday shopping, call extensions can be an excellent ally in generating sales.
For SMS, you could utilize message extensions. Promotional extensions are also popular over the holidays as it is used for highlighting promotional deals and discounts.
Finally, structured snippet extensions are used to provide further context about your products and services, letting you highlight particular selling points that could improve your bottom line.
Target Last-minute Shoppers
Do you know that 40 percent of shoppers wait the last minute before going shopping?
Most of them wait approximately ten days before Christmas before shopping because they either:
- Forgot to shop and now want to buy gifts for the holidays
- Waiting for last-minute discounts
Here are some ways how you can target these shoppers:
- In your copy or keywords, use terms like “last-minute deals.” Some shoppers are looking for deals by injecting the words “last minute” on their search query.
- Promise to give them priority or guaranteed shipping. Most late shoppers are looking for one thing ‒ that the package is guaranteed to be shipped before Christmas.
Run a Remarketing Campaign
This PPC optimization technique allows you to customize ads based on the behaviors of your previous website visitors, dramatically increasing the chances of improving your click-through and conversions during the holiday season.
Your remarketing ads target previous buyers, returning website visitors, and even those who have previously abandoned their carts.
Include Holiday Messaging and Imagery
Ads with a fantastic holiday messaging and imagery are the ones that quickly grabs users’ attention.
Moreover, it also plants an ideal holiday gift in the minds of your audience, generating an emotional appeal, and suggesting what they could be looking for.
Create Holiday-themed Landing Pages
Ads are the ones that will get people on your site, but it’s the landing page the secures the sale. That’s why creating a high-quality, holiday-themed landing page is vital.
It’s also crucial that you prominently display deals and promotions which correspond to specific ads. For example, if your ad claims that there is a 25 percent off on all Christmas sweaters, then your landing page should display the same message as well.
Automate Your Ad Campaign
Google, Bing, and even LinkedIn have ways on how you can automate your campaign this holiday season. So don’t forget to take advantage of it.
The last thing that you want to do is to manually upload, pause, and enable your ads when you could be doing something more important to improve your advertising efforts.
Preparing beforehand and setting your campaigns to be enabled or paused on specific dates (and times) will save you the stress of manually keeping with your campaigns.
The key here is preparing in advance as much as possible. You can buy gifts for the holidays at the last minute, but you can’t afford to wait in launching your PPC campaigns this holiday season.
About the Author
Kevin Urrutia is the founder of Voy Media Marketing Agency NYC. He helps businesses maximize the benefits of Facebook Advertising, leading to a dramatic improvement in sales while pushing down costs. Voy Media thoroughly studies each client and comes up with tailor-fit solutions to bring about the best results.
