Holiday PPC Tips: What You Need to Do Now
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David
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November 22nd, 2012
No matter how you feel about them, the holidays are quickly rushing towards us. Did you know that many businesses experience a large uptick in online business on Christmas Day and throughout the holiday season?
This is the time of year you need to be ready for, and that includes your advertising strategies as well.
Sometimes, we let our other issues take over the few minutes of attention our Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns deserve, but do yourself a favor and check out these holiday PPC tips for your seasonal campaigns.
Top 5 Holiday PPC Tips for 2012
1. Go Mobile.
If you haven't optimized your PPC campaigns for mobile devices yet, consider this the kick-in-the-rear to do that right now. Our society is becoming even more on-the-go, and that trend won't be changing. It takes relatively little to make ads compatible with mobile devices, and you can expand your reach drastically by doing so.
Plus, imagine all of those people waiting for the turkey or holiday punch to wear off. What will they be doing? Probably playing on their phones. The same goes for people waiting in airports, using their new devices, or sneaking a few work emails in between courses.
2. Check your PPC accounts.
Quick question: who are you running your ads through? Although Google's AdWords is by far the number one PPC agency, it might be worth doing a few last minute looks into their competitors. Specifically, Bing has a nice chunk of market share that connects you with a very particular set of users. It might be time to spend some money over there, too, to get the best ROI.
3. Manage your budgets.
If you know enough to kickstart your PPC efforts for the holidays, your competitors probably do, too. If you've set a specific limit on various keywords or ad groups, you could rush through that entire amount before the season even gets going. You may want to consider upping your campaign values, especially for ads that are consistently high performers.
4. Use custom sitelinks.
This is one simple way of strengthening your existing ad campaigns to draw traffic exactly where it needs to go. Sitelinks allow you to link specific keywords to particular landing pages, which often increases your click-through and conversion rates since users are accessing much more relevant information.
Bing allows you to link up to 10 specific URLS.
5. Verify keywords.
'Tis the time of year to double check those keywords! Make sure you're running campaigns on the right topics. If there is a particular set of goods or services people seek out during the fall and winter, go ahead and focus on those. Narrow down the PPC results to draw in as much traffic and business as possible before the rush.
As you can see, many of these holiday PPC tips are common sense. I want you to get inside your PPC campaigns, check the numbers and figures, and prepare for an increase in traffic. It may or may not happen, depending on your specific business, but it's always worth it to do a little preventative maintenance!