You probably have all of your holiday shopping done, you're getting ready to travel or have guests, and you already have a big holiday dinner dessert on your mind. But don't let your brain leave work yet...you can't forget about your PPC campaigns. There are probably a few things you should do before leaving the office for several days.
Bid Boost
You may have a business that thrives through the holidays because all of your competitors are closed. Take advantage of it! If you know you are the only game in town and you can get additional business by showing up a little higher in the PPC real estate, by all means allocate some additional budget.
If you are using Adwords you can increase your bids with the click of a couple buttons. Find the keywords you are looking to boost, highlight them and click advanced bidding options. From here you can increase bids by a specific percent, amount or even raise the keyword to the first page bid estimate. If you are cautious about a maximum CPC you can set limiters so the CPC doesn't accidentally go above your maximum thresh hold. If you increase by a percentage you cannot simply reduce that percentage when you want to go back to the original bid. Take a $3 bid for example. If you increase that by 20% your new bid would be $3.60. If you were to reduce that same keyword bid by 20% on January 2nd your new bid would be $2.88. If you really want to revert back to the same exact bid before the holidays you should export your account prior to boosting or increase by specific dollars or cents.
Bid Down or Pause
If you are a brick and mortar store or don't wish to field calls over the holiday you should consider lowering your bids or pausing your campaign all together. Yes, there is a chance of losing some brand awareness, but as a small business you may want to save the funds and allocate them somewhere else.
Holiday Ad Copy
Although you aren't advertising for Black Friday anymore, it still won't hurt to use holiday terminology in your ad copy. Consider things like "open through the holidays", "special holiday hours", or "after Christmas sale". These are things that a consumer might be looking for at this time of year and using it in the ad copy you can catch their attention. Many of your competitors will forget or just not take the step to do this, another advantage to you.
Landing Page
I have said it before and will say it again, your landing page is vital to a well oiled PPC campaign. If you can direct the user directly to a landing page with your holiday hours, holiday sales, etc., you will have a much better conversion rate. People are generally in the holiday mood, so if you have the option you may want to have some holiday/winter themed items on the landing page as well.
You Don't Run Sponsored Ads?
It's time to consider it. As a small business owner you can compete on the same plane with Fortune 500 companies. Pay-per-click campaigns are very flexible and you can use them to boost specific areas of your business, get instant PR, and easily build brand awareness. It isn't as long term as SEO, but is often times cheaper than people think. The key factors are well researched keywords, proper account structure, and well designed landing pages. We would be happy to help you get a PPC campaign up and running!
Happy Holidays from protocol 80!
