Christmas is an incredibly busy period for all and especially those in the marketing world. There are lots of points to cover when planning your Christmas PPC campaigns, below are a few things you should be ticking off your list for your Christmas PPC strategy.
Tailor your ad copy and keywords
This is definitely a no-brainer but can often be missed. Your ad copy will garner a much higher CTR if you’re honing in on exactly what the customer is thinking. Christmas PPC is no exception to this rule. A great way of performing some analysis is to take Wham’s advice and learn from last Christmas. Take a look at your search term reports for previous festive periods and see what people are actually searching for.
Customer intent is sometimes difficult to gauge. Fortunately with the addition of buzzwords like “Christmas delivery,” “gift wrapping” and “Xmas sales” you’re able to confirm that the potential customer is likely ready to purchase.
Spotting phrasing like this in your previous search terms can give you a great idea on the keywords and ad copy you should be looking at adding in for the holidays. If you’re offering Christmas services like speedy delivery or gift wrapping make sure to take advantage of the countdown timers just to enforce an extra sense of urgency!
Push your best promotions with ad extensions
Not so long ago, Google introduced a new ad extension that’s tailored perfectly for holidays in the promotion extension. You can choose which holiday you’re targeting and put your best offers in there to add alongside your ad copy. Making use of this is crucial because if you’re not, you’re missing a trick that the competition is likely using. Make sure to do some research and see what offers the competition have in their ad copy, website copy and promotion extensions to make sure your promotion is both competitive and enticing enough.
Don’t let the budget affect the performance
Running out of budget is the biggest Grinch of the festive period. Take a look at your historical data and find out what the spend jumps were like last year when comparing your monthly average to that final chunk in November and December. Consider opening up ad schedules as much as possible as shoppers will lose all sense of normal habits when it comes to Christmas shopping and will often be rushing around right up until the last minute.
Again, perform an analysis using the historical performance data from the same period in previous years to backup any changes. According to WordStream, bid prices can rise by up to 140% in the festive period with the huge increase in conversions bringing an equal increase in competition, so don’t let your competitors price you out of the market. Keep an eye on the Auction Insights report and your impression share to ensure you’re aware of any drops and are ready to combat this with more aggressive bids and budgeting.
76% of mobile shoppers change their mind after searching online
Yes, you read that right! According to Google, 76% of shoppers changed their mind on which retailer or brand to buy from after they’d searched online. This is huge! Don’t miss out on the huge amount of search coming from mobile devices from people doing their research. Make sure your device demographic bid adjustments are sky high if your historical data supports the performance. It’s also crucial nowadays to ensure that your site is mobile friendly and will load quickly. SOASTA reported in their State Of Online Retail Performance that for every second in load time, conversions can drop up to 20%.
It goes without saying that when making any changes, always take as much historical data into account as possible to ensure that decisions are justified. It’s also a great way to get an idea on the scale of changes you may need to make.
There are lots of different areas to cover to perfect a Christmas PPC strategy but if you get all of the above right, you’ll definitely be on track to festive success. You can learn more about strategies for the festive season here and, if you need any assistance, just get in touch.
