Optimising PPC for bank holidays
During bank holidays, there can be a sudden fluctuation in keyword bids and keyword expansions, which can hinder the performance of your businesses PPC. If you are trying to figure out the best way to optimise PPC this bank holiday, then you are in the right place.
This article will tell you all you need to know about PPC strategy, tools you can use, and ways to keep your ads being clicked all year round.
Things that we will cover:
- Holiday PPC advertising strategies
- How to spend ad money wisely during the holiday season
- Mistakes to avoid when planning PPC campaigns
If you want to know about the benefits of PPC in general, read here to see how you can use PPC for eCommerce. Or, continue reading to find out how you can optimise your PPC for bank holidays.
The importance of holiday advertising
Before we jump straight in, let’s really understand why holiday PPC advertising is significant.
Holiday shopping trends are a digital shopping frenzy, with normal shoppers actively hunting down the perfect holiday gifts, food, and vacations. PPC ads come in extremely handy in these scenarios – it acts as your personal storefront and is guaranteed to get clicks.
It is essentially the prime time to make sure that your ads are being seen by shoppers as soon as they press search on Google. The right PPC strategy can make all the difference, and we will further explain how those optimising your PPC in the right way can really benefit your business.
Head of PPC, Cal, shares his advice:
“It all dramatically depends on the client and their offering, but for PPC specifically we typically see lower intent and a lot of window shopping, so we typically downscale for bank holidays, unless there are sale periods being ran we typically run damage control mentalities to profitability vs pushing heavier in bank holidays.”
PPC holiday advertising strategies
Budget
During the holiday season, it can be tricky to figure out where to put your money. It can be hard to beat competitors whilst also increasing customer purchases. Therefore, the first thing that should be on your mind is budget. Purchasing ads may require an increase in budget – or certainly a larger investment from your digital marketing team.
Advertising space can get extremely crowded during the holiday season, which is why having a planned bidding approach can ensure you are maximising your ads’ exposure. You should plan accordingly, and decide how much you’re willing to spend on each campaign before getting too ahead of the game.
Keyword research
During bank holidays, identify and target specific keywords that are related to your products or services. Try to uncover holiday themed search terms that you think your potential customers are likely to use.
Keyword research can be one of the most important elements of any successful SEO campaigns. Take a read of some keyword research statistics. This will tell you why keyword stats are important and how they can elevate pay per click ads.
Set clear objectives
Before launching your bank holiday PPC campaigns, you must define clear objectives. The more precise your goals are, the easier it will be to measure success. It might be a good idea to precisely plan, or come up with bullet points to set yourself clear goals and objectives.
Spending tips
As we have just touched on, setting yourself a bigger budget can be really beneficial to your business during the holiday season. Creating yourself a PPC strategy plan that doesn’t consider the increase in holiday spending means that your digital marketing efforts can quickly be doomed.
Something you should definitely be aware of during bank holidays or holiday season is that costs will rise. More people shopping online means more competition, and with more competition, the cost of digital clicks (PPC) will increase. Therefore, you need to be prepared to adjust accordingly.
Use some of these strategies to keep costs down:
- Bidding – control your bid settings in the best and most cost effective way
- Brand awareness – limit holiday costs and increase sales through brand awareness campaigns
- Wrap-up – maximise efficiencies and minimise wasted ad spend
Common mistakes to avoid
Not everyone can get their holiday advertising campaign right the first time, but here are a few common mistakes to avoid.
Increasing your budget too much – although we’ve talked a lot about budget, be careful that you don’t overspend. Raising your PPC budget is a must, but also be realistic and cautious.
Using the same ad copy you usually would – make sure that you are running holiday specific ads. This is an opportunity to switch up your regular copy by incorporating some more holiday appropriate keywords.
Not running ads on mobile – having a solid mobile PPC strategy will ensure that you win over customers during the bank holiday season. All PPC channels have huge mobile audiences, and that is really crucial to have when it is peak spending season. Make sure you implement campaigns that really target mobile devices.
Maximise profit this bank holiday with PPC
Hopefully you’re feeling slightly more confident in your PPC choices for the next coming bank holiday. Following these steps can make a huge difference, and using the right optimisation tools can ensure huge PPC success.
Remember the importance of holiday advertising, and implement these tips to maximise your PPC strategy.
FAQs
Answered by Tom McGuigan
Do I create a new campaign for bank holidays or optimise my current ones?
This all depends on strategy. Creating a new campaign will help segment bank holiday audiences with BAU customers, but there are learning periods with new campaigns that you may want to be cautious of. I’d typically just make adjustments to current campaigns but it all depends on your rationale and chosen objectives.
Why should I invest in PPC over the holidays instead of SEO long-term?
While I’d argue against PPC purely being considered a “quick win” as a channel, the results are typically a lot quicker to achieve than SEO and this means you can immediately rank for certain key terms of the holiday season, so this immediacy is sometimes necessary for results over short-periods.
Should I do this for all bank holidays even if it might not be relevant to my business?
I wouldn’t recommend any extra activity for bank holidays if it’s not relevant to your business. It could lead to a lot of wasted spend if performance doesn’t reflect the extra activity, and it could also disrupt the account and the data that’s accumulated over the previous weeks.
How soon before the bank holidays do I need to implement these strategies?
I’d recommend at least a week to allow for data accumulation so that once the bank holiday period does come around then your bidding strategies will be warmed up and you can optimise to reduce wasted spend where needed.