An Ultimate Guide on Managing Holiday PPC Campaigns

The holidays are almost here! And by now, you should already be planning your holiday PPC campaigns. Some companies have already started and you should not be any later.

Ecommerce industries that greatly benefit from the holidays are stores selling entertainment items (book, movies, music, games), clothing, shoes and accessories, flowers and gifts, and health and beauty products.

The holiday season is online business nirvana – some of the highest recorded sales for ecommerce were made during the holiday season. Cyber Monday 2015 garnered the highest online sales in the United States so far.

As sales grow year by year, expectations for 2016 is even greater. That is why it is really important for you to take advantage of the season and take your PPC campaign a step further!

Plan your promotions, ready your supplies, groom your Landing Pages, and strategize your PPC campaign – and start now!

Obvious Fact: Online Customers Buy Early During the Holidays

One reason why you should start your Holiday PPC campaign is that it is an undeniable truth that customers buy early.

During the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East held last September 27-29, the following facts were shared:

25 percent of holiday shoppers started buying in October.
48 percent had completed most shopping by Cyber Monday last year.

It is therefore really essential that you start with your PPC campaign. It’s already November and sales are already on the rise. Better start with your holiday PPC campaign preparations now!

Start Preparing PPC Holiday Marketing Campaigns

As it is true that online shoppers are already on the move, there is no reason to be slacking. Stop procrastinating! Let’s try to capture the early shoppers by starting with your Holiday PPC Campaign.

Strategizing your PPC Campaign for the Holidays is not an easy task. There are lots that should be done including the following:

1.You Will Need to Dress up Your Campaign for Every Holiday

You cannot simply go with a campaign that will cover all holidays. It is best to use keywords and ad copies that are fit for each holiday.

Think about what you will do for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Free Shipping Day, Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day.

Make sure that you dress up your landing pages accordingly too! Give your pages a holiday feel. The holidays is a season for gift giving and so the more that your visitors feel that the holidays are here, the more that they would want to buy.

2. You Will Need to Have a Stronger Campaign for Products That Are Available Only During the Holiday Season

Some products are very popular during the season, and some more for specific holidays only.

Although shoppers are expecting you to have such products, they won’t know you have them if you don’t make them visible enough.

Strategize your campaign in a way that your special product offerings are featured.

3. Consider Giving Gift Ideas.

Some shoppers do not know what to buy. Be suggestive. Otherwise, they would just scroll through your product listings without buying anything.

4. Try Remarketing

Remarketing campaigns are tools that will help make your customers come back. During the holidays, there are more chances that shoppers will want to shop again.

5. Research About Targets And Bids.

You’ll need to be smarter when you come up with your PPC campaign strategy. Again, some products sell more on specific dates so you will need to know what products these are.

Google Trends may help you with that. Go on and research!

6. Ensure That Your Match the Right Keyword to the Right Product

You would not want to waste your PPC budget by linking the wrong product to the wrong keyword. Thoroughly recheck all links.

7. Most Importantly, Make Sure That You Are Ready for the Surge of Traffic!

You want to take advantage of the increased traffic during the holidays. However, all your efforts would be for nothing if your site would slow down, or worse, go down because of not being able to handle such a surge of traffic. Ensure that your site will perform well during the holidays.

Consider these PPC Holiday Marketing Campaigns in 2016

When shoppers really can’t decide on what to buy, they end up buying gift cards. This year, don’t forget to offer gift cards.

Don’t forget to market your gift cards as well. Capitalize on how gift cards will save your customers from the troubles of thinking what to buy, and that it gives the receiver the ability to buy what he really wants.

It also saves the buyer from stress and embarrassment in giving a gift that the receiver already has.

Also, support for Expanded Text Ads (ETA) are already available on AdWords so you might need to consider lengthening your ads.

This new ad format will give way to more descriptive ads, but this also means that previous ads would have to be rewritten. Otherwise, they would fall behind those that have changed format. So start your new ads in the new format from here on.

Too late? It’s Not Too late!

Although others have already started with their holiday PPC campaign, it is not too late for you!

It could have been better if you have started earlier, but it you haven’t that’s fine. But start now or else it really will be too late!

Here are some tips from us so you can catch up with your holiday PPC campaign:

1.Use Last Year’s Data as a Blueprint.

If you have tried PPC for the 2015 holidays, you can use the data you got as a guide on what to do this year.

So which of your products sold well on specific dates? Which keywords performed best? Check your 2015 stats to strategize for 2016.

2. Strategize Your Bids

Your bidding strategy is vital. First of all, you should not settle for bids that you can’t afford.

A PPC campaign will only be successful if you can recover your expenses by increased sales that your campaign may drive.

There are ways for you to know how much a bid for each keyword is. Try out Google’s Bid Simulator Tool.

3. Give a Holiday Feel to Your Campaign.

We cannot express how important it is for you to make your campaign festive, and that it exude a holiday feel. You can do this by offering special promotions.

If you always give discounts, calculate how much more you can give. If you always offer free shipping, think about what else you can throw in.

The holiday season is special so make it special! Trigger excitement and turn their holiday-mode on! Don’t forget to turn your site itself to match the holidays!

When to Start Preparing? Start now!

You should really be starting now with your holiday PPC campaign. And we’re not talking about just planning now, you should be executing them now!

However, don’t end up with campaign that is obviously made in a hurry. Strategize fast but strategize well. Your campaign won’t work if you don’t think about what you’re doing.

May this be a lesson for you to make your 2017 preparations earlier but for now, go and start working with your holiday PPC campaign! Do it now!

For more holiday marketing madness, the Lander blog has more to offer: