It’s that time of year again, which means that – Black Friday and Cyber Monday are fast approaching and you’re scrambling to prepare and monitor your PPC accounts….but how?
- Promotions…Promotions…Promotions…
Holiday shoppers are looking to save a quick buck and if you run a promotion that undercuts the competition you are one step ahead of the game. Make sure to speak of these promotions in your adcopy. You want the users to click, so spend the time now to write some enticing adcopy and speak to those promotions. Consumers are more likely to buy vs. research on these peak shopping days. Conversion rates will increase during the holidays – so if you get the click and your product is comparable to your competitors, it’s very likely a consumer will make that purchase on your site.
- Monitor Keyword Bids Closely
It is vital you monitor your PPC campaigns and top performing keyword bids on a daily basis. On the peak days, you should be watching performance/bids on an hourly basis. Search volume naturally picks up during the holiday season and if you are not regularly checking your keyword bids you could be in deep trouble. Bid too much and you’ll get hammered by the influx of traffic; Bid too little and you might not even show for some of your top terms. One day your best performing keywords may be in the top position and the next you they may not even rank on the first page.
- Budget Control and Campaign Management
This goes hand and hand with monitoring your keyword bids. Your first step is to determine what your set budget is for these peak traffic days. You don’t want to spend your last dime on the days leading up to Black Friday or Cyber Monday, or in the wee hours of the morning.
A few tricks if you want to succeeded on Black Friday with a limited budget. If you have the money to spend, do the opposite and enjoy the increased sales.
- Change your delivery settings from ‘accelerated’ to ‘standard viewing” you won’t show for all search results, but rather the most qualified ones within Google Adwords.
- Aim for positions 3-5. You won’t be able to compete with the top dogs; they are paying for those top positions no matter what the cost. Aim for the lower first page positions, but make sure you are checking your CPCs throughout the day and even hourly. You don’t want to get dropped from the first page and lose out on traffic and sales. If one of your competitors hits their budget cap or is no longer advertising on those terms – you might now be paying for top position traffic.
- Increase the campaign budget caps for your top performing terms. If you have a limited budget – take money from your underperforming keywords and re-allocate it. Again, what you think is your top performing keywords and what actually is converting on Black Friday might vary – so monitor this closely when the day approaches.
- Eat your turkey early in the day
It’s inevitable you will fall in the tryptophan coma on Turkey Day, so embrace it and get a good night sleep. If you want your campaigns successful when Friday morning rolls around, you should be checking up on our Adwords account constantly throughout the day. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of your biggest sales days – so put the time in and avoid those leftover turkey sandwiches. Don’t simply set it and forget it.
