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The turkey is in the oven. The football game is on TV. The house is ready for the in-laws coming over (more or less). And while you’re busy preparing for the upcoming Thanksgiving feast ahead, your desktop is shut down and you’re ready to leave the office for an extended holiday weekend. But just as your household is being prepared for the holiday, your Thanksgiving PPC campaigns are also in need of some holiday preparation.
Thinking ahead, you’ll want to ensure that you’re still maximizing ROI and giving conversions a boost, even when you’re in post-Thanksgiving food coma bliss. So, while we’re sure you have plenty of other distractions, here are a few tips for your Thanksgiving PPC campaigns to keep in mind over the holidays.
While your primary audience will stay the same, it will likely be expanded a bit to account for one-off buyers and additional holiday searchers. To take advantage of this anticipated uptick of potential customers, as well as ensure that your campaigns will be found in holiday searches, be sure to capitalize on all related holiday-themed keywords relevant to your offerings. In the same vein, you’ll want to think of the plethora of long-tail and related keyword combinations that could further hone in on likely targets.
From there, be prepared to adjust bids accordingly to make sure you’re showing up strategically throughout the weekend. Because CPC spikes on high-traffic days when customers are at home and unusually eager to part with their money, be prepared to bid higher than you normally do than at other times of the year.
We all know the holidays are a bit nuts and chances are your customers aren’t running on a normal schedule either. So if your ads are set to run for a specific span of time during the day, or day of that week, make sure they’re adjusted to accommodate abnormal holiday traffic flows. People might not be in the office, but that doesn’t always mean they’re ready or available to shop online. And be sure that all of your promotions are carefully aligned with your Thanksgiving PPC campaigns so that you’re truly maximizing the value of your campaign and achieving the highest possible ROI.
Once that campaign is underway, be sure to keep up on the holiday metrics with granular reporting -- there could likely be some aberrations or surprises due to the holiday. Pay close attention to keyword performance, click-through rates, and conversion rates, as these metrics will likely diverge from usual, non-holiday levels. And it never hurts to learn from the past by comparing last year’s data to this year’s metrics. Attempting to exceed those results will not only help your campaigns reach new levels, but it will also likely score some bonus points with your superiors.
Remember that these days, the majority of holiday searches -- including those on Black Friday and Cyber Monday -- occur from mobile devices. And the number of mobile purchases are rapidly growing. So you’ll want to ensure that you expand your strategy around your Thanksgiving PPC campaigns to capture the dearth of anticipated mobile traffic as busy shoppers buy gifts while doing a thousand other holiday errands. To make sure you’re providing an optimal mobile experience, check to make sure that consumers are going to the right mobile landing page on their devices, and that you’ve updated your mobile bid modifiers. You also might want to customize mobile tracking so you can parse and analyze conversion rates on these platforms.
‘Tis the season. This may be a no-brainer but the only way you’ll rank for holiday keywords is if you actually have holiday content to post. So work up some catchy, memorable holiday copy. And start early to get ahead of the competition -- as well as the eager consumers looking for holiday-themed ideas and goods the moment the Thanksgiving leftovers are put in the fridge. Be sure your ad copy is posted well before the holidays so they can easily find you the moment they embark on their holiday shopping.
There’s never been a greater time to write a powerful CTA than the day after Thanksgiving. The reason? Many prospects are home for the extended weekend and already feeling pressure to get started on their shopping bonanzas. And they’re already in the mood to look for that “perfect” gift, so your CTA might be just the boost that they need to put them across the finish line as an actual conversion.
That said, you have a lot of competition vying for the same eyeballs. Be sure your copy is succinct and to the point, reflecting the spirit of the season while also creating a sense of urgency -- without being aggressive. (it’s a tall order, we know.) Tailor your copy to accommodate anticipated spikes in traffic around each holiday and event -- like Thanksgiving, Black Friday or Cyber Monday. And complement your copy with eye-catching colors and graphics, which can sometimes mean the difference between a click and being passed over for something else.
Between a Thanksgiving dinner to prepare, visits from friends and family, and holiday decorations to pull out of the basement, we’re pretty sure that your plate is full. But it’s likely that the health and success of your PPC campaigns are never that far from your mind. (Plus all those metrics will be right there waiting for you when you return to the office Monday morning.) Applying a few holiday best practices ahead of time will set your Thanksgiving PPC campaigns on a solid and profitable course over the holidays and give you one less thing to worry about -- and could even bring you much-needed peace of mind amid the holiday chaos.