Holiday PPC Campaign Optimization Tips You Need To Know

There is a lot of potential when it comes to holiday sales. Since 2018, sales across the holiday season crossed the one trillion dollar mark, driven largely by e-commerce. This in turn benefited greatly from paid search advertising which offered advertisers excellent brand exposure and gave customers increased options. When all is said and done, pay per click (PPC) ads work and can help boost your sales this holiday season.

What stops many business operators from reaping maximum rewards from holiday PPC campaigns is the inability to customize these campaigns to be effective during the holiday season. Here are some tips on how to ensure that you get the most out of your PPC ad spend this holiday season.

Budget Properly

One of the biggest factors that influence PPC campaigns is how much money you are willing to put into it. The process of determining a budget is very delicate as you want to ensure that you spend enough money to maximize returns but also without overspending. One way to get it right is to use past records to help inform your decision. To do this, it is advisable to look at your PPC ad spend in the last holiday season and analyze how effective it was. In particular, check whether you ran out of the budget earlier than you expected as this would be an indication that you under-budgeted. Another important parameter to examine is whether your bids were priced at such a high price that they did not yield the expected revenue.

By looking at other factors such as average position, top of page rate, and impression share, you can get a rough idea of what to adjust this year as you plan what to spend.

Redefine Keywords

A common mistake that advertisers make when it comes to holiday PPC campaigns is to fail to redefine keywords. Even though some keywords are effective for most of the year, there are subtle changes when it comes to holiday shopping that necessitates reviewing keywords. For example, people shopping during the holiday season are probably shopping for other people rather than buying products for themselves. This changes some of the search parameters that they may use when searching for products online. There are also specific keywords that are only used during the holiday season. Terms such as ‘stocking stuffers’ are often used by parents when looking for gift items for their children. By aligning your PPC ad campaign with such unique terms, you can reap maximum returns from your investment. Another thing to keep in mind is that a significant number of people looking for products to buy online are usually late in buying them. This means that they are likely to be searching the web using phrases such as ‘fast shipping’ and so on. Adding such phrases to your keywords can generate leads and conversions that would have otherwise gone somewhere else. The critical thing when it comes to keywords during the holiday season is to think through all the possible solutions that customers may be looking for (speed, COVID-19 safety, convenience, etc.) and ensuring that your keywords and phrases capture the essence of those needs.

Experiment

Good businesses are always testing new strategies and this applies to holiday PPC campaigns as well. As you budget for the PPC ads, remember to set aside some money to experiment with new strategies. Apart from resources such as Smart Bidding from Google which can give you alternative strategies based on your goals, you could also get experts to help you. These PPC advertising professionals can help fine-tune your existing strategy as well as generate new ideas about what could work just as well.

Optimize Your Website

There is no point in generating lots of leads only to lose them when they get to your website. It is critical that you optimize your website to ensure that you convert as many visitors as possible. This means optimizing your landing page to make it as concise and as effective as possible in enticing visitors to shop from you. It helps to also spruce up product descriptions, images, and product categories. In particular, re-orient them so that potential customers see them as gifts that they could buy for their loved ones.

Apart from the landing page, the checkout process needs to be short and flawless. Many websites lose customers at the checkout process because they put requirements for clients to fill forms or to take surveys. Avoid the temptation to do that but instead, focus on giving clients a seamless checkout experience. To get the maximum returns from your holiday PPC campaign, you need to discard the notion that what works before will work for the holiday season. Do not hesitate to get help if you think you need it. For example, you should invest in a SEO analysis to ensure that your website is as optimized as possible.