OUR BLOG

Stepping Up Your PPC Campaigns for the Holiday Season

The holiday season is is almost here. Sure, we’ve just finished Halloween spending, Thanksgiving has almost been forgotten, and store shelves are overflowing with Christmas stock now. As far as the online world is concerned, anyone who hasn’t started putting his holiday marketing campaign into effect is behind schedule.

Organic versus PPC

Organic campaigns and PPC (pay per click) campaigns both have a lot of merit and each is just as important alone as they are together. Your organic marketing campaign is great for building a slow and steady following, social presence, backlinks, and general awareness throughout the year. Your PPC campaigns are important for driving new traffic to your website, especially if your organic campaign hasn’t put you on the first page of Google yet.

PPC is also great for the launch of new products, new sales, and new campaigns. This is where the holiday season comes into play. You really don’t have time to drive traffic to a holiday campaign via 100% organic efforts. Your PPC campaigns will be critical to your ability to grab your audience’s attention in a very busy and overwhelming holiday marketing world.  And your anticipated results may almost be immediate using paid search.

Updating Your Holiday PPC Campaign

Make sure you take some time now to review your PPC campaign and decide how you’ll modify it for the holiday season. Some important points to consider are:

• Your keyword research. Make sure it’s fresh and up to date and applies to both your general marketing terms and your holiday focus.
• You ad copy. The writing needs to be tailored to focus on your special holiday offerings. The more holiday-specific you are, the wider your holiday-shopping audience will be.
• Mobile takes the front seat. Mobile marketing campaigns are critical, especially this year. Make sure your website is mobile responsive and make sure your ads will show properly on all devices.
• Testing your ads for effectiveness.  There is still time to see what works best for the audience you are trying to engage.

Of course, there are the numbers and statistics to consider as well. Use your campaign analytics to your advantage. See which of your PPC ads worked best last year, what can be improved upon, and how you can minimize your budget while maximizing your conversion rates.

Does it all sound confusing? If so, contact WSI New Media for help. We’ll focus on the PPC campaigns so you can focus on what you know best – your products and your customers!

PPC Advertising is Practical and Effective

By now you understand the importance of good website SEO, organic search engine results, and PPC advertising. Despite this, a lot of people still balk a bit at the thought of spending money on Pay Per Click advertising. It’s the unknown. It’s a little bit scary and takes a bit of trial and error to get just right. That said, it is an incredibly practical and effective method of advertising you simply shouldn’t ignore.

PPC is Practical

PPC is great for businesses with budgets of any size. We already know that individuals looking for a product or service will use a series of keywords or phrases when using the search engines. This means you’re really simply bidding with other companies to make sure your website shows in the search result ad box. The better your keyword research, the more you can do with less competitive phrases that still drive a ton of traffic.

Even better is the ability to modify your budget and needs. For example, if you know the average person spends $100 on products your business offers, you can also determine what percentage of that amount you’re willing to spend to drive a customer towards your store. If you pay $50 on an ad campaign that drives 10 people to your landing page and only one makes a purchase, you still profit (a little). If you pay $50 on an ad campaign that drives 20 people to your page and 2 make a purchase, you’re doing better. PPC is about being able to generate leads, practically assess your results, make changes, and enhance your ads.

PPC is Effective

A lot of businesses think it’s OK to focus on organic search results while skipping PPC. As a matter of fact, people are more likely to click on your website if they see your business in both the organic results and the ad box. It is as if Google is giving your business a stamp of approval by showing it in both places on the same screen.

PPC is also great for when you have a new promotion or product to promote but don’t want to wait for organic search results to pick up. Your holiday marketing campaigns can start immediately, will be more successful with a solid PPC campaign, and you can more effectively spread the word about your new inventory.

Not sure how to get started? Contact us to find out how we can help you with SEO, paid search advertising, and more. We’ll take your business to the next level, now and throughout the year.