7 Ways To Prepare Your PPC Campaigning For The Holiday Season

Every new season brings along a fresh wave of consumer trends and advertising opportunities. As a PPC campaigner, staying ahead of the curve is crucial to maximize your campaign effectiveness. From seasonal celebrations to industry-specific events, there’s a lot to prepare for in the coming months.

In this blog post, we’ll guide you through the key upcoming events that should be on your PPC radar and how to be prepared for them.

Learn from your past campaigns 

Your past campaign can help you prepare for the next event better. Here is what you need to be sure of about your previous campaigns before planning the campaigns for any upcoming season:

Why is it important to ask yourself the above-mentioned questions:

By applying past lessons, you can determine what works best for you. Additionally, this aids in setting a target that you should exceed.

Apart from the past, research the current trends and forecasts to understand what products and themes are likely to dominate the holiday shopping season. Here are some resources that can get you started: 

1. Industry Reports

Find market research reports that predict the holiday shopping trends within your specific industry. 

2. Retailer Insights

Major retailers often publish holiday shopping forecasts based on consumer surveys.

3. Social listing

You can use social listing tools to find hashtags and discussions surrounding gifts and shopping experiences.

Address Supply Chain Challenges 

Supply chain has a great impact on your business so it’s important to consider the potential issues you may encounter regarding it. These issues can cause disruptions in product availability and delays in fulfilling orders. 

When you take these issues into account in advance, you can make adjustments in your campaign messaging, set realistic expectations for the customers, and optimize your advertising strategies to mitigate the impact of supply chain challenges. This can help you manage customer satisfaction and maintain the brand reputation during the crucial holiday shopping period. 

Here are some strategies you can implement to mitigate the impact of these challenges and ensure a successful season:

1. Find out what items have been popular in the past and check how much of them you have in stock right now. This helps you decide which products to focus on in your PPC campaigns so you don’t advertise things that are out of stock.

2. If facing potential stock shortages, create PPC campaigns specifically targeting pre-orders or waitlists. This secures early sales and manages customer expectations.

3. Be upfront about potential delays through your ad copy and landing pages. Here is how you can do it:

Let customers know when their orders will arrive and suggest other options if needed. This helps build trust.

4. Use words like “in stock” and “fast delivery” in your ads to attract customers who want things right away.

5. Encourage people to shop early for the holidays to avoid running out of popular items.

6. Use tools to update your website in real time so customers only see what’s available.

7. Show product availability clearly on your website, including pre-order options.

8. Offer similar products if what the customer wants isn’t available.

9. Try advertising on social media or other websites to reach more people.

10. If you have physical stores, target ads to people nearby and promote products they can get quickly.

11. If you’re low on stock, offer extras like gift wrapping to make the shopping experience special.

Make Your Calendar 

As you plan for the upcoming holiday season, it’s essential to start organizing your promotional content calendar or scheduling tool right away. Having attractive offers during this busy time can really help your business stand out. This will ensure that your offers scale well, stay competitive, and contribute to profitability.

Carefully consider the promotions you want to implement, whether they involve product bundles, discount codes, buy-one-get-one-free offers, or free expedited shipping. Also, decide on the timing and specific conditions for these promotions.

It’s important to map all of this out in advance and get your creative assets ready, including any additional extensions like promotion extensions, so that you can schedule the ads and have everything pre-approved. This way, you won’t have to worry about anything on this front later—it’ll be all set and ready to go for the holiday rush.

Expand on Targeting and Bidding Strategies

Different times present different opportunities to make your PPC campaign a huge success. Here are some ways to leverage the peak shopping periods:

1. Consider income levels and age groups most likely to be gift-giving during the holidays. This way, you can target the higher-priced items towards the people with higher disposable income.
2. Take note of past growing behaviour and interests of your audience.  Increase your engagement with the users who have shown interest in buying gifts or were searching for specific product categories relevant to your offerings. 
3. If you have a customer list with email addresses, upload it to create a “Customer Match” audience. It will allow you to target your customer base with special promotions or loyalty programs during the holidays. 
4. Use automatic bidding like “Maximize Conversions” in busy shopping times. This helps Google Ads choose the best bids for clicks likely to lead to sales. Set a goal for sales or return on ad spend (ROAS) to control spending.
5. Use tools to adjust bids based on past data and trends. Increase bids when more people are shopping, like on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
6. If you have stores, raise bids for local searches and promote in-store pickup. This helps shoppers nearby find you, especially last-minute ones.
7. Use remarketing lists for search ads to target people who’ve visited your site before. Show them ads reminding them of your products during the holidays.

Use Specific Keywords

During the holiday season, online search patterns change drastically as people move beyond generic terms like “bedsheet” and search for specific gift-oriented keywords. Here are some examples:

• Egyptian cotton bed sheets for winter warmth (targets winter/holiday season)
• Hypoallergenic bed sheets for sensitive skin (highlights specific benefits and gifting intent)
• Queen-sized bed sheets for holiday guests (target size and gifting occasion)

Also don’t ignore the importance of using negative keywords:

Pay Attention to the Sales Funnel.

While holiday shoppers can be quick and highly motivated to buy, you should not disregard the full digital sales funnel and buyer’s journey. Many customers either engage in frenzied shopping (Buying impulsively and without much planning) or explore various options before deciding to buy anything.

Developing a PPC ad funnel that covers every stage of the buying process is crucial to maximizing the number of sales during the holiday season.

Prepare Shopping Ads to ensure customers browsing Google products can easily find your products. Upload your keyword-focused search PPC campaigns in advance, and use extensions to guide customers to the right products. Don’t forget to select the keyword based on different stages of the buyer’s journey; for example, someone searching for “Women’s clothing” may have different intentions compared to someone searching for “women’s accessories.”

Lastly, have retargeting ads set up? Dynamic and responsive display ads are effective for showcasing products that customers have previously viewed, along with relevant items.

Maintain a highly detailed funnel with your holiday PPC ads for the best chance of driving conversions and completing purchases.

Boost Bidding Intensity

As you gear up for the holiday season, it’s crucial to anticipate not only a surge in traffic but also heightened competition. It’s time to step up your bidding strategies to maintain your edge.

During the peak time you can expect cost-per-clicks to rise for popular products and keywords. To stay competitive, you need to adjust your bidding strategies accordingly.

We highly recommend harnessing automated bidding strategies to amplify the aggressiveness of your bids and ensure your positions in ad results. Relying solely on manual bidding could mean missing out on crucial traffic during this peak period.

Before implementing automated campaigns, including Performance Max, review your current setup. Many of these strategies require a learning period to achieve optimal performance. Therefore, don’t expect to activate them a week before Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) and see immediate success.

Conclusion

As seasons change, your PPC strategies need to adapt to stay ahead. Planning ahead now ensures your campaigns are primed for success in the upcoming season. We trust these tips will bolster your efforts! Stay tuned to Kinex Media for more insightful guidance.