‘Tis the season to be jolly and make time for your holiday marketing efforts.
If you’re a marketer, you’ll already be busy planning your Christmas activity to maximise those sales before the new year, including putting the final touches to your PPC campaign in time for the holiday sales.
Christmas PPC tips
If you’re wondering how to get customers to come to you for their Christmas shopping, here are our tips on how to gear up your PPC campaign during the festive period.
Have a plan and budget
The Christmas sales are no longer limited to Boxing Day. The changes on the high-street have meant that most brands launch their holiday promotions well before 26th December, which means you should start preparing your PPC strategy now if you don’t want to miss out. Find out what your offers will be, if you will have enough stock and enough budget to run the campaign – you don’t want to run out of budget mid-way through the month before your holiday promotion has even started!
If you are going to take a well-deserved break over the festive period, make sure you have everything in place before you put your out of office on. Use your ad scheduling to make sure your ads go live at the right time.
Create Christmas ad copy
Your ad copy is the prime time to get into the Christmas spirit. Make sure you include timely references related to the Christmas holidays and festive lingo where appropriate to boost click-through rate and to keep your ads relevant to searches. Include terms like ‘present’ and ‘gift’ combined with your products to create holiday-relevant themes.
Create a feeling of urgency by emphasising the ‘limited time only’ nature of your Christmas offers, and list potential gift recipients for your products – consider what the relevant target audience is for your offering, and save money by focusing on that type.
Package your festive remarketing
Re-capture the people who have previously been to your site, or have previously converted on your site. These people already know who you are, and are therefore a lot less ‘cold’ and more likely to convert.
Remarketing ads usually generate good results, as they target users who have already expressed interest in the products you offer, therefore allowing you to re-entice them with specific ad creative or messaging. This is especially relevant during the holiday season, with festive-centric copy like ‘Don’t forget the gifts in your basket’ and ‘Still time to get that party dress in time for New Year’s Eve’.
Find the most wonderful time of day
Make sure you’re scheduling your ads to appear at the right time of day for your audience – use historical data to discover when your audience is most likely to be searching for your services/ products but bear in mind the adjusted daily routine of the holidays.
With scheduled customised ads, you also have the opportunity to include time-sensitive CTAs and even countdowns. What’s more, if you hook up your inventory to AdWords, you can provide potential customers with updates on your stock availability, which is especially handy for products that tend to sell out quickly.
Optimise your PPC campaign for voice search
With consumer spending expected to reach 18% by 2022, there’s no better time like the present to start optimising your PPC campaigns for voice search. Start evaluating your keywords and think about what Christmas shoppers are going to be searching for to help them land on your products.
Look at what you did last year
Review what you did to your PPC campaign this time last year. Although your holiday promotions might have changed slightly, looking at historic performance will give you an idea of what type of messaging worked, and what happened in the lead up to your promotion. Learn from what happened last year so you know how to make this year’s campaign even more of a success.
If you need help preparing your PPC strategy ahead of the Christmas sales, our in-house PPC specialists can work their magic to maximise your sales. Also remember, that PPC, like a puppy, is not just for the holidays but for all year round – and we can help you plan for your 2020 campaigns, so get in touch.