In the digital marketing world, preparation for the holiday season is key. As we talked about in part 1 of this two-part series, getting your strategy in place during the fall will help you introduce your brand/product to customers during the all-important research phase of the gift-giving season. Today, we’re sharing the last 5 tips you should consider when building or holiday marketing plan.
Hunt For New Keywords
Yes another evergreen practice that becomes more important during the holiday season is finding new keywords because more and people are searching for items they’re not familiar with. This falls under the old advertiser adage that it does not really matter what you say you do or sell, it is what your potential customers say you do or sell.
Your keyword list during the holiday season is definitely not something that you simply “set and forget.“ Of course, you’ll do lots of initial research as you build out your ad groups and campaigns. But, we would wager a bet that your initial list will change up to 50% to 60% by mid-December if you’re being diligent, adding new keywords you’ve never thought of, and adding variations of your initial keywords.
Some effective keyword planning tools include:
- SEM Rush Keyword Magic Tool
Use All Available Extensions: Own The Real Estate!
Ad extensions are a very powerful tool for your ad campaigns. They help maximize your Google Ads budget by increasing the chance of a high-value end user clicking on your ads, and help cater your messaging further to a bottom of funnel buyer. And, simply put, the more active extensions that you have, the higher your chances are to take up more space on the search results page.
It is important to note that ad extensions do not appear every time your ad does. It is still up to Google to choose when they appear. You need to simply set them up with in the Google Ads Account and Google will determine when they are shown. Here are some of the more critical ones to have active for your holiday campaigns:
- Sitelink extensions
- Call extensions, (this is if you are set up, or want to take phone calls from your audience.)
- App Extension, (only applicable if you have an app for your business. )
- Callout Extensions
- Structured Snippits
- Price Extensions
- Location Extensions, (if you have a brick and mortar location. )
- Promotion Extensions
Spread the Joy: Supplement Traffic With Paid Social Traffic
Social paid ads allow you to reach a hyper-targeted audience at a relatively effective cost per acquisition. This is not just the opportunity to sell your product/service, but also a chance for a larger audience to discover your brand.
As you may know, competition on the social channels spikes during the holiday season. This makes it extremely important to ensure that your ads are on point with compelling imagery and messaging. Be sure to regularly update creative throughout the season.
Keep top of mind with your audience
We have discussed how much research is done throughout this season. According to Inc Magazine, more than 9 out of 10 visitors come to a site for the first time for something other than making a purchase. The vast majority are somewhere higher in the funnel, doing their research on a product/brand.
The visitors to your website are a very valuable audience. At some level, they have expressed a significant amount of interest in your brand. Using Remarketing Image Ads or Remarketing Lists Search Ads (RLSA) can help you pull an already qualified audience further down the sales funnel.
These ads are generally much more cost effective than reaching somebody the first time. To get the most out of these kinds of ads, the images and messages you use should be appealing and have a slightly varied message than your original ads.
Be Flexible And On High Alert!
You should approach monitoring and adjusting your campaigns with the same vigilance that you spend making sure your kids don’t find their holiday gifts early. The competition, fickleness of a sophisticated audience, and the small time period for success makes it so much more important to make adjustments. Monitor your campaigns several times throughout the season and have contingency plans in place as you digest the data.
In other words, be ready to:
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The post Time To Get (Your Digital Marketing Strategy) In The Holiday Mood (Part 2) appeared first on FRUITION.