This holiday season, make PPC your secret weapon when it comes to finishing the year profitably.
When done correctly, PPC can produce a great ROI for businesses of all sizes. However, like any other form of advertising, PPC can be a risky move if you’re not sure what you’re doing. This is where we come in! But, if you don’t want to hire a digital marketing company to handle your PPC, you can follow these tips to make sure that you’ll get the most out of your advertising efforts:
When done correctly, PPC can produce a great ROI for businesses of all sizes. However, like any other form of advertising, PPC can be a risky move if you’re not sure what you’re doing. This is where we come in! But, if you don’t want to hire a digital marketing company to handle your PPC, you can follow these tips to make sure that you’ll get the most out of your advertising efforts:
Expand Keyword List
• Add “Gift” Terms
Right now your keyword list may just include the names of your products or descriptive terms for your products. For instance, let’s suppose that you sell fancy olive oil. You may be using keywords like “garlic infused olive oil” or “gourmet olive oil” but around the holidays you should also experiment with keyword phrases like “gifts for cooks” and “home chef gifts.”
• Consider Mobile
People on mobile devices use simpler search terms, so while you may be selling fig and pear infused extra virgin olive oil, the chance of someone searching for that on a mobile browser is slim. So to appeal to mobile searchers, use shorter keywords like “sweet evoo” or “fig olive oil.”
• Include Variations
During the holidays people are stressed and rushed, which leads to a higher than average rate of misspelled search terms or accidental search terms. In the same scenario, it would probably be prudent to include keywords like “olve oil” or “olives oil.”
• Bid on Branded Terms & Competitors’ Names
All is fair in love and war and holiday advertising. Bidding on your competitors’ brand names during the rest of the year may be something you’d prefer not to do, but during the holidays it gets more cut throat so you may find yourself having to do this to stay relevant. And remember, this goes both ways– you should also bid on your own branded terms during the holidays because your competitors probably are and you don’t want their ads being the only ones showing up when someone is searching for your company.
Create New Ads
• Infuse Ads with a Holiday Theme
Mentioning the holidays in your ads draws people in (just like department stores that create holiday window displays and decorate inside their stores). At the very least take your existing ads and “holiday them up.” An ad like this:
Buy Gourmet Olive Oil
Olive Oil Flavors for Every Recipe.
Every 5th Bottle is Free - Shop Now!
Can be holiday-ed to read:
Flavored Gourmet Olive Oil
Makes a Great Gift for Foodies.
Get the 5th Bottle Free - Shop Now!
• Include Promotions
Explaining your holiday promotion(s) in your ad text serves both to inform shoppers and also make your ads more compelling. Including a promotion is the easiest way to make your ads stand out amongst your competitors. If you are running a holiday promotion that requires the use of a discount code, include that in the ad text as well.
• Test the Call-to-Action
Testing your CTA (Call-to-action) is very important because some may convert much more strongly than others. Which works better – “buy now,” “shop now,” “buy today,” “save now,” “find it for less”… or something else? You won’t know until you test them out!
Modify Settings
• Accelerate Ad Delivery
Right now your settings are probably causing your ads to be shown evenly throughout the day, but during the holidays this can mean that you are missing out on ad impressions. Setting your ads to accelerated delivery will cause your ads to show every time someone searches using your keywords until your ad budget is exhausted. Using accelerated ad delivery for a couple of days is a good way to gauge what your daily budget should be during the holidays. Once you see when you are set to run out of ad spend each day, you can adjust your budget accordingly. (For instance, having your ads shut off at 10am versus 10pm indicates that a substantial budget increase may be needed.)
• Optimize Ad Rotation
Having your ads set to rotate evenly throughout the rest of the year will help you to more effectively test ads against each other in a controlled setting. However, during the holidays there’s a risk that using even ad rotation will result in a less effective ad showing too often (subsequently causing you to miss out on ad revenue). Therefore, during the holidays, don’t worry about being scientific in your testing. Let Google show your most effective ads more frequently so that your PPC can be as profitable as possible.
Kate Pierce is the owner of LionShark Digital Marketing LLC, a West Michigan internet marketing company. Her areas of expertise include Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Consulting for small businesses, Copywriting and Local Online Marketing. She lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and enjoys cooking, watching sports and spending time outdoors. Like a true digital marketing expert (i.e. geek), she loves talking about marketing theory and SEM trends… so don’t say you weren’t warned!
• Add “Gift” Terms
Right now your keyword list may just include the names of your products or descriptive terms for your products. For instance, let’s suppose that you sell fancy olive oil. You may be using keywords like “garlic infused olive oil” or “gourmet olive oil” but around the holidays you should also experiment with keyword phrases like “gifts for cooks” and “home chef gifts.”
• Consider Mobile
People on mobile devices use simpler search terms, so while you may be selling fig and pear infused extra virgin olive oil, the chance of someone searching for that on a mobile browser is slim. So to appeal to mobile searchers, use shorter keywords like “sweet evoo” or “fig olive oil.”
• Include Variations
During the holidays people are stressed and rushed, which leads to a higher than average rate of misspelled search terms or accidental search terms. In the same scenario, it would probably be prudent to include keywords like “olve oil” or “olives oil.”
• Bid on Branded Terms & Competitors’ Names
All is fair in love and war and holiday advertising. Bidding on your competitors’ brand names during the rest of the year may be something you’d prefer not to do, but during the holidays it gets more cut throat so you may find yourself having to do this to stay relevant. And remember, this goes both ways– you should also bid on your own branded terms during the holidays because your competitors probably are and you don’t want their ads being the only ones showing up when someone is searching for your company.
Create New Ads
• Infuse Ads with a Holiday Theme
Mentioning the holidays in your ads draws people in (just like department stores that create holiday window displays and decorate inside their stores). At the very least take your existing ads and “holiday them up.” An ad like this:
Buy Gourmet Olive Oil
Olive Oil Flavors for Every Recipe.
Every 5th Bottle is Free - Shop Now!
Can be holiday-ed to read:
Flavored Gourmet Olive Oil
Makes a Great Gift for Foodies.
Get the 5th Bottle Free - Shop Now!
• Include Promotions
Explaining your holiday promotion(s) in your ad text serves both to inform shoppers and also make your ads more compelling. Including a promotion is the easiest way to make your ads stand out amongst your competitors. If you are running a holiday promotion that requires the use of a discount code, include that in the ad text as well.
• Test the Call-to-Action
Testing your CTA (Call-to-action) is very important because some may convert much more strongly than others. Which works better – “buy now,” “shop now,” “buy today,” “save now,” “find it for less”… or something else? You won’t know until you test them out!
Modify Settings
• Accelerate Ad Delivery
Right now your settings are probably causing your ads to be shown evenly throughout the day, but during the holidays this can mean that you are missing out on ad impressions. Setting your ads to accelerated delivery will cause your ads to show every time someone searches using your keywords until your ad budget is exhausted. Using accelerated ad delivery for a couple of days is a good way to gauge what your daily budget should be during the holidays. Once you see when you are set to run out of ad spend each day, you can adjust your budget accordingly. (For instance, having your ads shut off at 10am versus 10pm indicates that a substantial budget increase may be needed.)
• Optimize Ad Rotation
Having your ads set to rotate evenly throughout the rest of the year will help you to more effectively test ads against each other in a controlled setting. However, during the holidays there’s a risk that using even ad rotation will result in a less effective ad showing too often (subsequently causing you to miss out on ad revenue). Therefore, during the holidays, don’t worry about being scientific in your testing. Let Google show your most effective ads more frequently so that your PPC can be as profitable as possible.
Kate Pierce is the owner of LionShark Digital Marketing LLC, a West Michigan internet marketing company. Her areas of expertise include Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Consulting for small businesses, Copywriting and Local Online Marketing. She lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and enjoys cooking, watching sports and spending time outdoors. Like a true digital marketing expert (i.e. geek), she loves talking about marketing theory and SEM trends… so don’t say you weren’t warned!
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