Holiday retail sales are a trillion-dollar industry, attributed mainly to increased eCommerce sales between Thanksgiving and Christmas. During the Christmas season, paid search advertising provides several possibilities to get attention and increase income, but competition is fiercer than ever.
Recent changes to Google’s search algorithm will impact how your ads appear when consumers search for your target keywords. Businesses must modify their marketing strategies to compete during the hectic Christmas shopping season.
However, only a few marketing managers understand how to prioritize seasonal advertising techniques to optimize outcomes.
Search engine advertisers that invest in the appropriate combination of methods will be able to dominate the PPC scene this Christmas season. Here’s a look at what you should do.
Don’t Miss Out on Holiday Marketing
The advertising space becomes congested during the Christmas season, so make sure you’re getting the most out of your ads and campaigns. Begin by reviewing last year’s search impression shares during Black Friday and Cyber Monday and throughout the holiday season.
Did your competitors outbid you last year? Did you have any ads with a good ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) but a low search impression share?
Either way, you have lost a great deal of possible ROI. For this reason, don’t let your bids and budgets cause you to miss out on valuable traffic this year by planning ahead of time.
Use Holiday-Specific Keywords
While creating holiday-specific ads, look for suitable seasonal keywords to target. Add more words other than “gifts” so you’re targeting keyphrases more specific to your brand.
You can be as specific as you like, based on search volume, CPC, and prior performance of your previous campaigns. Combining these trending keywords to holiday keywords such as “Christmas,” “Christmas sale,” “Holiday gifts,” and the like can lead to better performing PPC campaigns.
Plan Holiday-Specific PPC Ads
You can’t rely on your regular product advertisements to do double duty during the Christmas season. Holiday-specific ad copy will optimize your results.
Consider what’s vital to Christmas customers and use those phrases and concepts, along with power words and Christmas phrases, into your ad content, like “Order Today for Pre-Christmas Delivery,” or “Christmas Sale: Save up to 50% Off.”
Organize the Best Performers into Their Marketing Campaigns
During the holidays, your campaigns will see a spike in traffic, something you should watch out for because it can increase your marketing funds rapidly. It is wise to pause some campaigns for a season and focus on your top-notch performers.
This allows you to bid higher when competition increases for these holiday keywords and key phrases. To optimize your campaign funds for the holidays, it’s best to go with long-tail keywords more specific to your brand or niche.
Keep a careful eye on your search impression share throughout the season if you’re manually bidding. When you see a dip in your rankings, make the necessary bid adjustments to maintain your standing.
Prepare A Post-Holiday Report
Track your holiday campaigns and how they did well in driving conversions for your brand. This allows you to improve your next holiday drive, adjust areas of weakness, and boost areas of success.
Significant factors to consider include:
- Return on Ad Spend or ROAS: A high ROAS throughout the Christmas season can indicate a positive performance on your cam-paign. This can be used to justify a larger budget in 2022.
- Cost per Action or CPA: Also called cost per conversion or CPC, CPA is the total ad cost divided by the total number of conversions. If you were able to drive your targeted volume and more, it shows you have the option to increase your holiday budget for next year.
- Impression Share: If your metrics in the first two have shown positive results and more, consider your search impression share. That should validate whether you set the right holiday marketing budget and if there is room for an increase in the next Christmas season that comes.
Conclusion: Design Your Holiday PPC Strategy Now
Internet shopping throughout the Christmas season will only increase. Sales, same-day delivery, and in-store pickup have made internet shopping popular before the holidays. To succeed in eCommerce today, you must optimize your holiday PPC advertising to grab traffic.
Prioritizing crucial months in your PPC campaign can keep you ahead of the competition and maximize the benefits of holiday shopping to generate more sales year after year.
At Analytics Beyond, we offer digital marketing solutions like web development, SEO, and PPC services in Toronto. We help you grow your digital marketing with precision so you can expand your online reach with pricing that won’t break your marketing budget. If you’re a North American company in need of a top-rated digital agency, call us today!