Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a powerful tool for businesses looking to reach customers during the holiday season. However, there are a lot of other businesses vying for holiday shoppers' attention. That's why it's vital to make sure that your campaign is set up to get the best return on investment possible.
Here's a checklist of things you should look out for when optimizing your holiday PPC advertising:
1. Use Holiday Keywords
Before you dive into creating your campaign, it's helpful to understand what type of holiday-related keywords will perform well for your
business. There are some great opportunities to reach a highly targeted market that is already primed to buy during the holidays.
For example, someone searching for "stocking stuffer ideas" is probably looking for Christmas presents, and therefore is more apt to purchase products suggested by the ads.
2. Create Holiday-Specific Ads
Once you've identified the keywords that will drive traffic to your site, it's time to create your holiday ads. Don't simply copy/paste ads from your general campaigns. Get festive with your ad copy and consider what's important to holiday shoppers like
special offers and fast delivery.
When setting up your ads, it's also important to match the language and content of your landing pages so that users aren't confused and bounce from the page.
3. Test Different Ad Formats
Depending on the size of your budget, you may choose between different ad formats. Some popular options include responsive search ads, dynamic search ads, display ads, shopping ads, and video ads.
Additionally, leverage ad assets (formerly called "ad extensions" in
Google Ads) for responsive search ads to provide additional details about your business and maximize performance. These include sitelinks, callouts, location, phone number, images, pricing, and seller rating.
4. Add Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are words that you can add to your ad groups or campaigns in order to exclude certain search terms from appearing on your ads. They're a great way to improve targeting and reduce the number of irrelevant clicks.
For example, if you sell artisanal coffee online, you should exclude products you don't sell (e.g. coffee makers) from showing your ads to improve conversions.
5. Review Audience Targeting
The goal of audience targeting is to deliver relevant messages to specific groups of people who are most likely to convert. When done correctly, audience targeting helps advertisers avoid wasting money on irrelevant traffic.
Check that your campaign's audience targeting settings are appropriate, as well as not too broad or too narrow.
6. Make Purchasing Easy
The key to driving PPC sales is making sure customers understand how easy it is to buy your products. This includes offering free shipping, allowing shoppers to pick up items in-store, and providing multiple delivery options like curbside pickup and same-day delivery.
Get More Out of Your Holiday Advertising
With the holidays quickly approaching, now is the perfect time to review and optimize your holiday PPC advertising. You can do this by leveraging holiday-specific keywords, ad copy, landing pages, and other PPC tools (e.g. audience targeting, ad assets) to get the highest return possible.
Want to make sure that your online advertising is set up for success?
Book a free discovery call with Sales & Marketing Technologies to maximize your results!