As the holiday shopping season approaches, many companies will seek efficient digital marketing strategies to drive profits. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is among the most popular digital marketing strategies companies use to promote their products and increase their sales. Many ecommerce businesses allocate a significant amount of their marketing budget to PPC advertising for the holiday season.
PPC advertising can be placed on search engines, social networks, and a wide range of other sites. You’ll pay the advertising network a small amount for every potential customer who clicks on the ad. A well-planned PPC advertising strategy is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your website and enhance your brand’s exposure. Below, we will discuss the best practices you can adopt to maximize the ROI of your Black Friday or Christmas PPC advertising campaign.
Improve Your Understanding of the Attribution Model
The attribution model chosen for your PPC advertising determines the amount of credit each ad and advertiser receives for the generating your lead. A first touch attribution model gives all the credit to the first ad they see, while last click models assign it all to the very last ad served before their conversion. Other models include linear attribution for equal credit, and time-decay where ads take credit based on how recently they were served before the conversion.
Many marketing managers have a poor understanding of how different advertising networks’ attribution models are influencing purchasing outcomes. Many attribution models overemphasize the role of an ad publisher in converting prospects. Many companies, such as Facebook, use attribution models that give themselves more credit than they deserve in generating customers for your business.
While the attribution model and data used by Facebook are valid, they can prompt many ecommerce businesses to overspend on Facebook advertising for the holiday season. To get the maximum return for every dollar you spend on PPC advertising for the holidays, have a top-notch digital marketing agency audit and review your advertising campaign to help you avoid wasting money.
Evaluate the Accuracy of Your Reporting Tools
Most marketing reports do not have 100% accuracy. There are many reasons for this, ranging from technical issues, different attribution models across advertising channels, and failure to track fraudulent or unsuccessful transactions. If you want to run a successful PPC advertising campaign for the holiday season, you should evaluate the accuracy of your reporting tools before you plan this year’s Black Friday PPC or Christmas PPC marketing strategy.
Start with a lead-tracking report through your advertising platform to ensure that search engine conversion date is available. Compare the data to verify that tracking code has been implemented on your website correctly.
In some cases, paid search traffic will be mistakenly reported organic. To accurately track your results, you’ll need to add custom URL tags to your PPC accounts.
Look for any gaps in your data that need further clarification. Are all your sales recorded in the report? Are there orders reported but missing, or orders present but not reported? Did you account for spam, fraud, and returned or canceled orders?
Adopt a Consistent Attribution Model and Reporting Format
Beyond identifying gaps in your records, your attribution model and reporting standards should be consistent for the most accurate reports. Have your agency or in-house marketing team specify a common attribution model and reporting standard so you can get a more accurate understanding of your target prospect and consumer’s activity. Developing more accurate reports will help you determine which marketing practices are generating the highest value for your investment.
Analyze Past Performance
Did you run a Black Friday PPC or Christmas PPC advertising campaign last year? Review the results of your past PPC advertising for the holiday season to determine which components of your marketing strategy generated the most leads and highest conversion rates. Study your past holiday advertising programs to determine which keywords, ad designs, channels, and promotions garnered the most user engagement.
The data you gather from previous holiday advertising campaigns will reveal which marketing practices underperformed or succeeded. You can use that information to repeat successful marketing strategies for this year’s PPC holiday advertising, and avoid practices that did not deliver satisfactory results. Using data obtained from earlier holiday advertising campaigns can help you avoid misspending advertising dollars for this year’s holiday season.
Launch Your Advertising Campaign Before Q4
If you want to maximize your sales for the holiday season, you should enter the advertising market before the season begins. Cost-per-click (CPC) rates will increase exponentially during the holiday season. As a result, you should start bidding for Black Friday or Christmas PPC advertising opportunities before the holiday season begins to convert prospects for less money. Seize PPC advertising opportunities for the holidays before the peak of the season to reduce your conversion costs.
Conduct Keyword Research
If you want to run a successful PPC advertising strategy for the holiday season, you must pick the right keywords to promote your products. The keywords you select to advertise for your products and services can make or break your holiday PPC advertising campaign. If you’re unsure of what keywords to use for your PPC advertisements, you can use online keyword generator tools such as those built into Google Ads (formerly called Google Adwords) to produce a list of terms and phrases that you can use to promote your brand.
Once you obtain the keywords you might want to use in your PPC ad, conduct keyword research to analyze the popularity and performance of the keywords. For your Black Friday or Christmas PPC advertising campaign, look up which keywords customers searched for the most on Google or other search engines to purchase products similar to yours during the last holiday season. Use these keywords in your PPC advertising for the holidays to target your audience.
Keyword Conversion Rate
While targeting popular keywords is important to reach the maximum number of searchers, the specificity and relevancy of the keywords to your products play a bigger role in converting prospects to customers. In general, long-tail keywords often have less search traffic, but have higher conversion rates compared to short-tail keywords. Longer keywords tend to be more specific and relevant to a user’s query.
When selecting keywords to use in your PPC advertising for the holidays, make sure to also look for variations of your keyword that are used to search for your products. Many keyword variations use semantically-related terms and phrases to search for the same products and services. These keyword variations usually have lower CPC rates and can convert quite well, reducing your overall conversion costs.
Consider Retargeting Leads Who Have Already Been to Your Website
While you keep your relationship with existing customers though email marketing, potential customers who have visited your website are another promising source of business. Visitors who have already visited your site, read your content, or engaged with your social media posts on Facebook or Instagram are a great target for conversion as they already know about your brand and have shown interest in your products and services. That can make retargeting an effective part of your PPC advertising campaign for the holidays.
Facebook is particularly effective at retargeting because the Facebook platform allows you to focus on the demographics of your target market. You can also add a small snippet of code call the Facebook Pixel to your site that tracks people and the actions they take while engaging with your brand, empowering focused retargeting campaigns.
Google’s ‘remarketing’ campaigns have tremendous reach to place your ads on nearly any site that advertises through Google. Dynamic remarketing can even include the specific products and services viewed while on your website.
If you want to increase your customer base for the upcoming holidays, you must start your retargeting program early in the season. During this period, direct your PPC advertising for the holidays at these prospects to promote your products and maximize your sales. Pre-holiday Black Friday and Christmas PPC advertising opportunities are a great tactic for converting retargeting audiences at a lower cost.
Polish Your Brand’s Reputation
In today’s digital age, a brand’s reputation is among the most important factors in enhancing or hindering their success. Most shoppers conduct extensive online research about a brand before splurging their hard-earned dollars on the company’s products and services. A couple of bad reviews or ratings on your company is enough to damage your brand’s reputation and push prospects away from doing business with you.
Before you launch your PPC advertising strategy for the holiday season, you must work to enhance your brand’s online reputation to gain the trust of prospective customers. Much of the money you spend on Black Friday or Christmas PPC advertising campaigns will go to waste if you don’t have a stellar online reputation to enhance your brand’s image.
How to Improve Your Brand’s Image
To polish your brand’s image before the holiday shopping season begins, get your agency or in-house team to promote positive content and demote negative content surrounding your brand online. Encourage your current customers to produce user-generated content about your brand online by offering them promotions and special offers. If this task is beyond your marketing team’s capacity, employ the services of a reputable marketing agency to manage your brand’s reputation online.
Putting it All Together
There is a lot of money to be made during the holiday season. That’s why most ecommerce businesses significantly boost their PPC advertising budget for the holiday season to promote their products, increase their sales, and maximize their profits. However, advertising alone is not enough to increase your revenue during the holiday season. Incorporate the practices specified above into your PPC advertising strategy to increase your holiday season sales.
Call Coalition Technologies
Coalition Technologies is a market leader in PPC, web design, and search engine optimization (SEO). If you need assistance in planning an effective PPC advertising campaign for the upcoming holiday season, contact us at 1-888-725-0182 to receive a free quote for our services.
Let our marketing experts help you get maximum value for every dollar you spend on PPC advertising to maximize your company’s profits during this holiday season.
