Winter is Here: 5 Tips to Help You Survive this Holiday Season

I Know its only August but Winter is here and it’s time to start thinking about your holiday PPC campaigns. With just 125 days left until Christmas (plus all the holidays in between) it’s time to start prepping. Here are 5 tips to help you survive this upcoming holiday season.

 

1. Start Now!

With only 95 days left until Black Friday you have no time to spare. Start planning now so that you don’t miss out.  This is the time to build your campaigns (if you haven’t already) to gain some valuable insights, improve quality score, and test new ideas to help you identify areas of growth. When the holidays are here don’t waste your time or budget on trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

2. Don’t Forget About Mobile

Last year mobile accounted for 21% of ecommerce sales in Q4 with a 44% increase from the prior year. Do you have a mobile friendly site, and if so how is the user experience? Holiday shoppers have no time to waste and making sure your site produces a quality user experience is key. Once you have that covered, test out a mobile campaign to see what type of performance these campaigns could offer. Take those learnings and insights and use them this holiday season!

3. Seasonal/Holiday Keywords & Ad Copy

This is an easy one to forget, but make sure to include some holiday keywords into the mix. People will be searching for the best holiday deals, so stay on top of your consumer’s holiday search habits. Create relevant keyword lists to capture this traffic. In addition to keywords you should also build out some holiday ad copy. Get in the holiday spirit! Use your ads to attract your customers. Count down ads can be ideal during this time to remind consumers they only have a short amount of time left to make their purchases.

4. Utilize Ad Extensions

Ad extensions can be helpful in many ways, not only do they take up more space on the SERP – According to Google, on average ads with extensions have seen a 10-15% uplift in CTR compared to ads without. Use these extensions to include some holiday and seasonal copy as well.  Create links to holiday pages or share with your consumers a special deal for the holiday season.  Additionally, ad extensions help to improve your ad rank, which can help you spend less money in the auction. (who doesn’t love saving money?)

5. Data.

If you have the data available from last year – use it!  Past performance data can help you better understand your consumers. Use this to help with ad scheduling, location targeting and device modification to optimize your campaigns to the fullest. If you ran holiday ad copy last year, determine what worked well for you. Use this data to optimize your campaigns and push spend in the right direction.