7 Ways to get the Most out of your Holiday Paid Search Advertising

Increasing paid search advertising for Christmas and the holidays is not enough. If you want to get the most from your paid search throughout this year’s busy shopping season, there’s more you can do.

Identify key products to focus on for the holidays

Holiday marketing can be very broad in the goals one may intend to accomplish. By noting key strategic products you want to promote for the holiday season, you can set aside irrelevant account details and get down to business on what matters.

Ad extensions direct consumers to the right information

Ad extension products throughout the holiday season will help a brand receive more qualified leads. Sitelink extensions for all holiday pages, visual sitelinks, callout extensions to highlight delivery schedule and services, promotion extensions to identify ongoing deals and discounts, and structured snippet extensions to help get more optimized words into an ad are all valuable.

Build from generic terms

People are more likely to be searching for products to purchase and specifically for ads in the holiday season. By using generic terms with a holiday angle on them, different long-tail combinations may be just what you need. For example, there’s ‘baby’s first Christmas’, ‘Christmas gifts for pets’, and ‘best Christmas gifts for girlfriend’.

Re-design ads to reflect Christmas copy

Make Christmas prominent in your advertising copy. Combine this with a sense of urgency in a countdown model and continue building on impulses. For example, "It’s only 2 Weeks from Christmas and Holiday Shipping ends Friday!" Also, many people buy for themselves throughout the season so don’t hesitate to have some ad copy that focuses on the personal, such as, "Don’t Forget to Treat yourself This Holiday Season!"

Merchant promotions to shopping campaigns

Merchant promotions on shopping campaigns are highly effective to make a product stand out from its competition. Use the ‘special offer’ link on you ad. Shoppers are looking for deals so provide them with one. The best increases in conversions oftentimes come from these type of merchant promotion strategies.

Target visitors who visit holiday pages

Use Google Analytics to see consumer behaviours, time on site, and other metrics. Use this data to target the consumers that are visiting your holiday pages. Remarketing and dynamic remarketing are great ways to heighten conversion.

Don’t forget about the Bing search engine

Though most use Google, some sites receive as much as 30 percent of their search traffic from Bing. Building campaigns and ads in Google, it is fairly easy to import these over to Bing. Doing so will ensure you are maximizing all available opportunities.

Though it’s easy to get excited about the sales possibilities of the Christmas season, there’s a lot of competition out there. Ramping up your holiday advertising is almost a necessity but it does not guarantee any success. Be smart with where you invest your time and pay attention to the metrics. By following these 7 tips, you will get the most from your holiday paid search ads and capitalize on the shop-friendly time of year. Make this the biggest quarter in your company’s history!

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