Boost Your Google AdWords Campaign for the Holiday – Top 10 Helpful Tips
December 11th, 2011
Before you know it, the Holiday season is here and as a small or large business owner, you have to make adjustments to your online marketing strategy to gain the most out of this special period of the year.
If you don’t have an online marketing strategy yet! I totally recommend setting up Google AdWords campaign; you can have your ads up and running in a matter of few hours. Whether you’re starting out or have been running your campaign for long time, the following tips will guide you to fine tune your Google AdWords Campaign.
1- Start Fresh: Create a new ad groups with holiday theme, Consumers think differently around this time of year; whether they are loyal, discount or last minute shoppers. Carefully crafted ads could capture their attention and improve your Return On Investment (ROI).
2- Select your Keywords Carefully: Consumers search differently during the holiday season, so try to include keywords that consumers are more likely to use when searching for your products e.g. “gifts for women, TV deals” or “cheap presents for kids” etc. Use AdWords Keyword Tool to build extensive, relevant keyword lists from one simple interface.
Note: Use negative keywords, i.e.: if you sell high end and expensive perfumes; then you should include words such as cheap, low cost, etc in your negative keywords
3- Holiday Ad Copy Theme: If you have existing ad copy, pick the best performing 2-3 ads and incorporate holiday season related wording like “sale”, “gifts”, “discounts”, “free shipping”, “same day delivery” etc to stand out from the crowd.
4- Be Specific with your Targeting: Targeting on Google AdWords means a lot more than just geo targeting. You can target based on time of day, devices, demographics, networks, and much more.
Note: Research shows that consumers are searching / shopping sites during work hours. Increase your bidding during office hours to get better Click Through Rate (CTR) and higher conversions.
5-It’s Time to Test the Display Network: Having your ads displayed on Google AdWords Content Network could provide you with great source of cheap traffic and cost effective conversions.
Note: Keep your content network and search campaigns ad group(s) separate so you could make changes to each campaign independently.
6- Link with your Google Places Account: Google’s made major modifications over the last few months to link and boost their local marketing solutions and AdWords. If you target local consumers and encourage walk-ins, then I highly recommend connecting your Google Places and Google AdWords accounts. Start now by claiming your business on Google Places.
7- Setup Ad Extensions: Ad extensions expand a standard text ad with one or more lines that provide additional information such as an address and phone number (location extensions and phone extensions), more page links (ad sitelinks), and product images (product extensions). Ad extensions help users to easily find out more about your business and its offerings. Read more about AdWords Ad Extensions.
8- Test Google’s New Display Ad Builder: Google has made it really easy to build an attractive, nicely designed and animated ads to encourage users to click on your ads and drive traffic to your site.
9- Improve your Landing Page(s): All you have to do; is asking yourself “what do I want my visitors to do on this page?” Let me help you with few tips: Use benefit-driven copy, not product description & have a clear call to action & match the message of the ad with the copy on your landing page and finally Keep It Simple.
Note: it’s recommended to remove the navigation from your landing page. If you included navigation elements of your website such as links to home page, about us and other products you’ll significantly dilute the direct response you want your visitors to take.
10- Be Wise: Don’t Overspend, Adwords could eat up your entire budget quickly if you do not know what you are doing, so start small and test everything. If it’s your first time to run an AdWords Campaign, I recommend that you don’t spend more than $20-$40 a day on all your ad groups.
